Cease-Fire

The View From Syria as a Cease-Fire Takes Effect

By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA

The timing of the cease-fire in Syria, which took effect at sundown on Monday, is fraught with symbolism.

It coincides with Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. The tale is central to the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths — and a recurring literary metaphor in many cultures for society’s sacrifice of the young in the wars of their elders.

Observant Muslims sacrifice sheep for the holiday, often in public, and many Syrians on Monday expressed mixed feelings at seeing animal blood run down gutters in times of human slaughter. Over the weekend, the Syrian government’s Russian-backed air war killed nearly 100 people, rebel shells fell on several government-held areas, and insurgents in the south declared a new offensive.

It is unclear how committed the Syrian combatants are to a complicated, multistage plan that was negotiated over their heads.

Here are the terms of the deal, negotiated by the United States and Russia: All attacks will stop — except for attacks on the Islamic State and groups linked to Al Qaeda. But the public does not know what Russia and the United States have defined as those groups’ territory, and mistrust runs deep.

If relative calm lasts for seven days, the United States is to begin coordinating with Russia to target Islamic State and Qaeda forces. In return, Russia is to make sure Syrian government warplanes do not fly over opposition areas.

Here, in the coming days, we will track the experiences and observations of people in many parts of Syria as the truce changes, or fails to change, their lives.

Children ‘Didn’t Celebrate or Experience Joy This Eid’

ALEPPO (western section, government-held territory) — This city, the capital of a province by the same name, was once Syria’s largest city and commercial hub, famed for its medieval covered markets and citadel. It has been divided between government- and rebel-held districts since 2012. The government roughly holds the west, and the rebels the east, but the lines are far more complicated, like a kind of spiral front line splitting the city into sections resembling a yin and yang.

The government-held west is more populous, including many people displaced from opposition-held areas. They come seeking safety from warplanes, which only the government has. But rebel shelling can still be deadly. Western Aleppo has better supplies of food, electricity and medicine than the east, but it has also faced shortages, especially of clean water.

Samsam, 26, is an aid worker, who asked to be identified by only a nickname — it means “sesame” in Arabic — because she was not authorized by the government to speak to foreign reporters. Shelling in her neighborhood was intense this summer, but when government troops took back a nearby area that insurgents used to launch projectiles, the danger eased, she said in a telephone interview.

There was a big shelling the previous Eid, which hit an open area and it killed lots of children.

She said that this time, it would be different because the troops and the Free Syrian Army, a rebel force, would take part in the truce. But in the same breath, she said that people have come to find cease-fires frightening, partly because when they break down, violence escalates, but also simply because they interrupt war’s predictable routine.

We hear shelling, bombing and this kind of stuff, and we got used to it, but when we hear there is a cease-fire, we say, “God protect us.”

I was watching from my balcony, and people were just happy. Shops were open until 3 a.m. Lights everywhere. Kids are out, playing like nothing ever happened.

People didn’t forget. They manage their life without thinking what will happen next. They take each day individually. They get used to not thinking about the future: We see this day, we are going to work, we are going to the cafe, to meet some friends or some relatives. Just for today. I think it’s a powerful message.

ALEPPO (eastern section, rebel-held territory) — The eastern side of Aleppo has been ravaged by intense airstrikes for years. Hospitals there are hit by government airstrikes frequently; in recent weeks, children have been killed or injured on a daily basis. The area has been under on-and-off sieges during the summer, disrupting access to food, water, fuel and adequate medical care.

Dr. Omar Abu Mariam, 30, a neurosurgeon, asked to be identified by only his first name and a nickname, for the safety of his family. He is the only neurosurgeon working in rebel-held Aleppo, where many patients with brain injuries die because doctors lack equipment and the evacuation route to Turkey has lately been cut off by shelling.

Even the less severe cases he treats can be heart-rending, like Khaled, 8 months old, who suffered a skull fracture in a missile strike. He shared the boy’s picture, below, on Friday, hours after the cease-fire was announced, saying doctors did not know where his mother was, “if she made it.”

He often operates round the clock and does not expect the cease-fire deal to change that, he said in a text message.

I don’t trust Russians!

For Eid, he went to a friend’s house for dinner. His friend had managed to find a sheep to slaughter, more difficult and expensive to come by than usual, and they ate sheep’s liver and honey-soaked baklava, traditional Eid sweets. On the way back, the city was almost pitch black, with electricity long gone and generators out of fuel.

The streets were empty. Dark. No fuel for cars. Few generators.

The first evening of the truce passed without a call to the emergency room. But when he got home, he could hear explosions in the distance. Surface-to-surface missiles, he speculated, with the expertise that Syrians have developed. Residents had reported several attacks on the city by government helicopters, and his colleagues at the hospital said in separate text messages that they could hear artillery bombardment as well as machine-gun fire from warplanes overhead. The doctor wondered if he would make it through another day without heading back to the operating room.

The cease-fire is a big lie!

Ibrahim Abo Allith, one of the volunteer rescue workers with the so-called White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defense, recounted a tense prelude to the planned cease-fire in Aleppo. According to unconfirmed reports from Mr. Allith and other activists on the ground, there were barrel bomb attacks on Monday in the neighborhood of al-Shokaief.

We in Aleppo support the cease-fire and stopping the killing in Syria. Children didn’t go and play on the swings; they didn’t go to the playgrounds. They didn’t celebrate or experience joy this Eid because of the violent bombardment that neighborhoods were subjected to before the cease-fire.”

He is married, with one child he hopes someday to raise in safety.

We hope that the killing stops so that everybody can live in security. We hope that the war in Syria will end, that the killing will end, so that a new Syria can be built.

‘We May Get Killed’

MOADHAMIYEH (Rebel-held territory) — This suburb less than two miles from downtown Damascus has been through the worst of the war: years of siege and starvation, with on-and-off truces with the government of President Bashar al-Assad. It was one of the areas hit with chemical weapons in August 2013. Now, tense negotiations are underway for a surrender under which rebels and civilians would choose either to go government-held areas or be bused to insurgent-held areas in the north.

Dani Qappani, 28, graduated from Damascus University with a degree in English literature in 2011, the first year of the revolt. He became an antigovernment media activist, posting videos like this one.

Mr. Qappani writes poems and posts them along with his news and political updates on Facebook. He is worried about divisions in the town, between those who want to accept reconciliation with the government and others, like him, who do not. Moadhamiyeh has not been bombed in a few months, but the threat is always there. Here’s how he described the situation in an online chat:

They threaten us every now and then that they would attack the city if we don’t agree on anything they want from us. All the people of Moadhamiyeh are busy-minded and talking about the evacuation these days, not to mention the regime’s agents, the troubles they make. In short, it’s not safe anymore for me and people who reject the reconciliation. We may get killed.

He marked the holiday, tersely, with this Facebook post:

and they gathered like sheep in front of the guillotine

And he described his expectations for the cease-fire in a chat:

The cease-fire wouldn’t make any difference because the crisis is not all about attacks. It’s about the militias of Assad, Iraq, Iran etc. It’s about the Assad security forces... It’s about Assad.

Skeptical, but Waiting for Peace

DAMASCUS (Government-held territory) — In the capital, life is relatively normal – relatively. Occasional rebel shelling from the suburbs has dwindled as the government makes advances and evacuates pockets of fighters who are holding out. Bars and restaurants are open, but there is great economic strain. Checkpoints dot the city, and many men have fled, fearing army conscription.

Khaled Khalifa, 52, is an author well known for his novel “In Praise of Hatred,” about the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982 and the government’s crackdown. In the dark hours of Monday morning, he posted on his public Facebook page about his plans for Eid.

Back in Damascus… Here I am, everything is sad, even the stone sidewalk.

He chatted online about his plans for Eid with the Beirut bureau of The New York Times a short while later:

No Eid here. And my family is so far. My family is in Aleppo, it is so sad. They are on both sides [of the divided city]. But they don’t want to leave.

I will only call them, and I will read. And maybe at night I will get to a bar alone. Or with some friends. I am reading a biography of Virginia Woolf, by Quentin Bell, her nephew. And I recently finished a book on Dostoyevsky.

Here, people can’t believe anything. But they are always waiting for peace.

‘They Are All a Bunch of Criminals’

BINNISH, Idlib Province (Rebel-held territory) — This northern province was the second to fall out of the government’s control, in early 2015. It is controlled by groups ranging from the Levant Conquest Front, until recently called the Nusra Front and officially affiliated with Al Qaeda, to larger Islamist groups and United States-vetted rebel groups. Idlib has suffered some of the most intense bombing in the government’s Russian-backed air war. Over the weekend, scores of people were killed in an airstrike on a marketplace in the provincial capital.

Muhammed Najdat Kaddour went there to film the aftermath and interview survivors. He is a 31-year-old with a degree in economics who joined the protests early on, also becoming an antigovernment media activist. In a phone interview on Monday, he described a local Eid celebration (he sent photos, below), his own pessimism about the cease-fire and his distrust of President Assad and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia:

Do you believe there’s something called a truce? Do you think they are serious? If Putin wasn’t a bastard he wouldn’t have taken Bashar’s side. They are all a bunch of criminals.

We organized a celebration especially for the children of martyrs. We did the whole celebration in the basement. We were worried about the random shelling… Imagine, you could hear sounds of prayers in Binnish and Fouaa for the Eid, followed by the sounds of shelling. The sounds were very clear.