‘We lived in the land of the Assads, everything belonged to them’ – Technologist

Huda Tabbakh cautiously ventured into the four-story villa, waiting to be invited in. “I’m the neighbor across the street. I wanted to see the house,” said the 60-year-old Syrian woman, her short hair dyed blond, to the young hooded fighter. Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, Raghab browsed through the bound books on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, stacked, untouched, in the entrance hall. The 20-year-old from Homs was assigned by his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham unit (HTS, Liberation Organization of the Levant, former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria) to guard this street in the upscale Malki district of Damascus.

From her balcony with its green shutters, on the third floor of the building facing the modern villa surrounded by lush vegetation, Tabbakh has a breathtaking view of the residence of the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. “This is the first time I’ve been here. I was even scared before looking at the house,” she said. In the 40 years she has lived in this apartment, she has never met either the father, Hafez al-Assad, who lived in the adjoining villa until his death in 2000, or the son, Bashar, his wife, Asma, and their three children, who moved in next door “in 2006, if I remember correctly.”

Four days after the fall of Damascus on December 8, the villa – looted and ransacked – remains unoccupied. HTS men man the roadblocks on both sides of the street, where an official of the rebel faction has taken up residence. They put an end to the endless stream of curious onlookers who came to see the private residence of the hated dictator. Papers and belongings, still scattered on every floor, reveal the daily life of the Assad family. It was an opulent life in a country plunged into poverty after 13 years of war, during which several hundred thousand Syrians were killed, the majority under fire from Assad’s army.

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