CITY OF WAILS

At the Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus, people grapple with death, despair and the overwhelming brutality of the Assad regime

- ANAGHA SUBHASH NAIR

Head turned towards the sunlight, arm dangling off the edge of the bed, Mohammed lies in a shared ward in Damascus’s Mujtahid Hospital. It seems he is looking at me, but his eyes are distant.

Bruises and dried blood line the side of his face. On his abdomen is a large white dressing, covering what I imagine to be an even bigger injury.

He speaks through persistent coughing. “Praise be to God,” he says, in a low, deep voice.

Mohammed is one of thousands who escaped ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s infamous Saidnaya prison. When rebel forces, headed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), overthrew Assad in a lightning offensive, prisoners, who once did not dare to dream about stepping out of their vicious daily routine, poured out of the large iron gates.

The prison consists of multiple large, white buildings, located on the top of a hill in the outskirts of Damascus. The prison consisted of a “white” zone overground, and a “red” zone underground, which apparently held the most severely abused prisoners. Conditions in the prison were depraved—in some rooms, there were massive piles of clothes which once belonged to the prisoners. In another room, I found what rebels said was a “human iron press”. There were many bloodied nooses, and in a room with acrid smell, the rebels said, bodies were disposed of using acid.

Mohammed claims he was a former member of the army, and was sentenced to five years for owning a weapon. He served three years.

“This is the best feeling,” he tells me, talking about his escape. But his eyes don’t light up, and his face remains deadpan.

The relative peace in the room is in stark contrast to the chaos outside, where relatives crowd the hospital corridors, holding up old photos of their relatives to every staff member they can find. In a ward, I saw a pool of dried blood on a bare stretcher, and the floors were grimy.