To rebuild from battle, Syrian firefighters work to rebuild belief — in one another

DAMASCUS, Syria — Each morning for 28 years, Haitham Nasrallah has opened his locker and placed on his firefighter’s uniform. It is a job he loves, however a uniform he now hates.

The uniform marks him as a firefighter from the previous regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in December 2024 after an almost 14-year civil battle.

A few of Nasrallah’s colleagues took off their uniforms and fled on the day Assad fell. However Nasrallah, 52, stayed on, hoping for a firefighting job within the new Syria. So he was nonetheless at his cement-block firehouse within the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of southwest Damascus when, three days after Assad fell, a convoy rolled in from Idlib — a northwestern Syrian metropolis within the coronary heart of what was as soon as insurgent territory.

“My first impression was, ‘Wow, these guys have much better equipment,'” Nasrallah recollects.

They have been the White Helmets, volunteer first responders who received worldwide fame for working into hurt’s solution to rescue civilians throughout Syria’s civil battle. They have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize many instances. A documentary about them received a 2017 Oscar.

However for anybody who labored for the Assad regime, the White Helmets weren’t heroes. They have been scary. Assad related them with rebels attacking authorities forces. He and his ally Russia unfold conspiracy theories about them and plastered the capital with billboards vilifying the White Helmets as traitors and terrorists.

Now, with the battle over, the White Helmets’ founder Raed Saleh has been appointed to Syria’s Cupboard as minister of emergencies and catastrophe administration. And the drive he began 12 years in the past is taking on firefighting duties for all the nation.

The boys Nasrallah had been inspired to consider as terrorists have been out of the blue transferring into his barracks and turning into his bosses.

Bunking with “terrorists”

With the top of the civil battle, Syrians who lived, labored — and typically fought — on reverse sides are coming collectively to rebuild their nation. However as the primary responders on the Kafr Sousa firehouse attest, that course of requires rebuilding belief in addition to state capability. It may be delicate, intimidating and troublesome.

When NPR visited this firehouse in April, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan had lately ended and firefighters have been celebrating the end-of-fasting Eid vacation. Members of the White Helmets had commandeered the kitchen for festivities.

“We’re using their kitchen. But we’re not actually eating with them,” one of many White Helmets, 33-year-old Moaz Daoud, defined as he fried eggplant. “We eat and sleep in separate quarters, because we have different morals.”

After a clumsy silence, “I’m not afraid of them though,” he stated. “Trust is being built.”

However a slapdash brick wall divides this firehouse: Almost two dozen veteran firefighters dwell on one aspect, and roughly the identical variety of White Helmets dwell on the opposite.

Once they first arrived in December, the White Helmets went room by room, searching for weapons.

“At first, they looked at us with suspicion, like we were behind Assad’s bombings and killings,” says the previous regime firefighter Nasrallah, a father of 4. “We have decades of firefighting experience. But they tried to sideline us. They didn’t see us as equals.”

The internationally-funded White Helmets have been incomes six or seven instances the previous regime firefighters’ salaries. This summer time, the White Helmets introduced that they are merging into Syria’s public sector. Officers say they don’t seem to be positive if or how compensation inequalities between employees from the previous and present regimes can be resolved.

Nonetheless, each day, the White Helmets and former regime firefighters within the Kafr Sousa firehouse are doing the identical work, responding to the identical emergencies collectively.

They slide down hearth poles from completely different elements of the firehouse — into the identical hearth vans.

Proving loyalty

Out with a staff on an emergency name, NPR asks Hussein Elyassine, one other former regime firefighter, if he seems like he has to show his loyalty to the brand new, post-Assad Syria. The 58-year-old merely lifts up his shirt — revealing an enormous vertical scar throughout the size of his torso.

It is from a shelling assault in 2014 or 2015 — he cannot recall, he says, there have been so many — which he believes the previous regime ordered in opposition to its personal males. He additionally has scars from bullet wounds to his palms and hip — from a sniper, he says, in a special incident. 4 nerves in his hand have been severed.

Elyassine’s home was destroyed by Assad’s forces, he says. However he is nonetheless combating fires each day.

A few of the White Helmets look on, see his scar, hear his tales and shake their heads, mumbling: “Respect.”

Over time, the White Helmets started inviting the previous regime firefighters to work out with them. They do calisthenics within the yard, run laps across the constructing and pump iron in a basement health club strewn with barbells. A punching bag hangs from the ceiling.

However the technique of sharing their respective previous traumas and opening up with one another occurs far more slowly.

“The regime threatened us not to speak about how they treated us in prison,” says Mohammed Khdeir, 30, a former regime firefighter who has braces on his tooth, slicked-back hair and unhappy eyes.

Khdeir says it was his lifelong dream to be a firefighter. He joined the division in 2017, after a six-month coaching course. A 12 months later, he was arrested by the regime that employed him.

“Someone filed a report denouncing me as a terrorist,” he recollects. “My cousin and I both went to prison together, and he died there under torture.”

He breaks down, weeping, grabs NPR’s producer and hugs him.

Employees say 17 members of the Damascus hearth division have been imprisoned throughout Syria’s civil battle, between 2011 and mid-2024. 9 of them died behind bars, in accordance with one of many former regime firefighters, 53-year-old Nasser Bourjas.

Khdeir says he was one of many fortunate ones. He was launched after two and a half years.

“After I got out, I just wanted to go back to firefighting. It’s my passion, it’s my life. It’s how I want to help in the world,” he says. “But they wouldn’t let me rejoin, because I’d been in prison and had a record.”

Forming friendships throughout a brick wall

On the day the Assad regime fell — Dec. 8, 2024 — Khdeir rushed again to the job he loves.

“I guarded the firehouse from vandalism on that chaotic day,” he says, beaming. “I’m still not on the books. But I’ve been fighting fires like before.”

Khdeir says he is been dwelling and dealing on the Kafr Sousa firehouse ever since, with out amassing a wage.

With the White Helmets now answerable for the firehouse, NPR asks them about Khdeir’s standing. The White Helmets say they do not know him — although he is been dwelling in the identical firehouse, on the opposite aspect of that brick wall.

“But from how you’ve described him, he sounds like a hero,” says supervisor Mustafa Bakkar, 38. “We need people like him.”

Bakkar says he is keen to fulfill Khdeir. So the following day, NPR introduces the 2 males within the parking zone of the firehouse — and it seems, they acknowledge one another. They only did not know one another’s names — or what the opposite had been by way of.

“I know Mohammed, I know him!” Bakkar says. “But he never told me these things.”

Sharing high-fives, hugs — after which later, inside, Eid tea and sweets — they begin to share their tales: Khdeir recounts his jail expertise and tells Bakkar and a number of the different White Helmets concerning the cousin he misplaced, together with 4 different members of his prolonged household. Bakkar describes being wounded 10 years in the past in an assault on his east Damascus neighborhood, and the way he was rescued by the White Helmets — after which joined them.

“This is like group therapy!” Bakkar says.

When NPR asks when the brick wall between their barracks can be taken down, half a dozen males all chime in: “Soon, soon!”

“That wall will eventually come down,” Bakkar says. “But there’s still a psychological wall, and that one may take some time.”