Aleppo field hospital reveals grim reality of war in once-vibrant city

The turmoil of Syria today is revealed with the first steps visitors take on its soil.

The arrival is announced by a huge banner that reads, "Welcome to Free Syria." Above it, flutters the green, white and black flag of the revolution.

New arrivals can wipe their feet on a doormat bearing the image of the president, Bashar Al Assad, outside a small prefabricated building. Inside, two "revolutionary" passport control officers check papers before allowing people into the country.

Once into Syria from the Turkish border town of Kilis, the first town you reach is Azzaz, where the charred skeletons of several regime tanks litter the main road.

From there, farmland is interspersed with dusty villages where many homes have been damaged by regime shelling and air strikes.

Checkpoints are manned by rebels, some as young as 16 or 17, armed with assault rifles and carrying two-way radios.

But signs of the regime's power are visible as the journey takes you past a major air force base.

Further on, the secondary road leading to Aleppo, used by the rebels, runs perilously close to the main motorway under the regime's control.

"Frequently our road will be shelled from the air force base, but often only at night," revealed the driver, who would only give his nickname, Abu Ahmed.

"There is a sort of an unwritten understanding on who gets to use which road. So, the rebels use this road and the regime uses the motorway."

Once in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria with its population of three million people, the grim realities of the war are revealed.

The city shakes from the blasts of artillery, tank shelling and mortar rounds. The scream of aircraft engines sends many scurrying for cover. In rebel-held areas, entire streets are deserted, with mounds of rubble blocking the roads. Scores of people wait in line outside bakeries to buy bread.

The stench of rubbish fills the air, with a mound of trash sitting at almost every corner. Men and teenage boys scavenge the waste looking for anything that they can sell. Most stores are shuttered. Those open have little to offer.

But some men, women and children walk the streets seemingly unmoved by the thuds of shells impacting nearby or the crackle of gunfire.

After more than three months of street-to-street fighting, neither side has been able to deal the other a decisive blow and take full control of the city.

Rebels drive their cars, mostly covered with a coat of dust and without number plates, at breakneck speed, ferrying their wounded to the field hospital, Dar Al Shifa. Occasionally, rebels who are struck by grief over the loss of their comrades shoot into the air, which terrorises residents and infuriates hospital staff.

Fuel is sold on the pavement by black market hawkers taking advantage of shortages to make a hefty profit. Lengthy power and water cuts are a daily occurrence. The city is blanketed in darkness after nightfall with only rebels roaming the streets.

It is the Dar Al Shifa hospital though that speaks the most about what has befallen this city that was once vibrant with commerce and culture.

Once a private hospital owned by a regime loyalist, the seven-storey Dar Al Shifa was taken over by a band of volunteers as well as trained doctors and nurses, who turned it into the city's main field hospital. The staff treat rebels as well as civilians - a total of 100 cases on average every day. About 80 per cent of cases are civilians.

The hospital has been shelled six times since the volunteers took over in July. The shelling damaged the building's upper floors, leaving just the ground floor, the basement and the first and second floors in use. Medical supplies come from donors, who also supply the staff's meagre salaries.

The hospital's lobby is the main hub of activity since the emergency room has only three beds. In the minutes that follow the sound of an explosion, the area fills with wounded, pools of blood cover the floor, the air is filled with the groans and screams of the wounded, some of them are laid down on the floor for a lack of gurneys. Some of the wounded beg for attention, but are told, often firmly, they must wait until the more critical cases are dealt with. The wounded are men, women and children of all ages.

When the atmosphere becomes too charged up or depressing, someone calls on everyone to do "takbeer," and everyone chants in unison "Allahu Akbar".

Those with serious wounds are sent to better-equipped hospitals in government-controlled areas or clinics in the rural areas of Aleppo. Those who succumb to their wounds are placed on the pavement outside. If they are not identified by relatives or friends within 12 hours they are taken away for burial in the Modern Islamic cemetery.

Like clockwork, the hospital's volunteer orderlies begin washing the blood from the floor with water and disinfectants as soon as the wounded are cleared from the lobby. Staff members take a break: a smoke or a bite to eat. Some sleep on chairs or stretch on a mattress behind the reception's counter.

The political convictions of the hospital staff at times feed the tension. The hospital's two doctors - Abu Rayan and Osman Al Hajj - are secular minded, along with several members of the staff. Many others are conservative or even militant Islamists who embrace the ideals of extremism and frame the Syrian conflict in a religious context.

The tension between the two sides surface when they engage in discussions on the future of Syria and the role of religion in post-Al Assad Syria. There are also disagreements over the growing influence in Aleppo of local extremists who have joined forces with foreign fighters who embrace a similar ideology.

In some ways, their differences mirror the fault line in Syria about the vision for the country's future - a nation that embraces the values of democracy or an Islamic state hostile to the West.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae