How a Damascus Firehouse Illustrates Syria's Divisions and Hope for the Future
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Today on State of the World, how a Damascus firehouse illustrates Syria's divisions and hope for the future.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Syria was embroiled in a bloody civil war for more than a decade. Then, in December, the regime of Bashar al-Assad rapidly crumbled. Life in Syria changed seemingly overnight. But attitudes can take much longer to shift, if they ever do.

And PIR's Lauren Freyer brings us one illustration of a divide that still exists in a Damascus firehouse. Every morning for 28 years, Haitham Nasrallah has opened his locker and put on his uniform as a firefighter.

It's a job he loves, but a uniform he now hates. It marks him as a firefighter from the old regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in December. Nasrallah recalls how some of his colleagues took off their uniforms and fled that day. But he stayed on, hoping for a firefighting job in the new Syria.

And so he was still here in this cement block firehouse in southwest Damascus when three days after Assad's fall, a convoy rolled in from what was once rebel territory. Nasrallah says his first impression was just, wow, these guys had way better equipment.

They were the White Helmets, volunteer first responders who won international fame for running into harm's way to rescue civilians in Syria's civil war. There was an Oscar-winning documentary about them. They operated for years on the opposite, rebel side of the war, and they were demonized by the government.

With the war over, the White Helmets are now taking over firefighting for all of Syria, which means the men Assad once called terrorists have suddenly moved into Nasrallah's barracks.

When I visited one of the White Helmets, Mawaz Dawood was frying up eggplant for a Ramadan iftar meal in the former regime guy's kitchen. So some of the firefighters here worked for the regime, and you worked against the regime, and now you're having iftar together. We're using their kitchen, he says, but we're not eating with them.

There's actually a huge brick wall dividing their quarters. Veteran firefighters live on one side of the firehouse, and the white helmets are on the other. When they first arrived, the white helmets went room by room looking for weapons. We first considered ourselves

At first, they looked at us with suspicion, a former regime firefighter Nasrallah says, like we were behind Assad's bombings and killings. We had decades of firefighting experience, but they tried to sideline us, he says. They didn't see us as equals. The internationally funded white helmets make six or seven times the firefighters' salaries. And yet, every day, they've been responding to emergencies together.

These are the fire poles, and there's three in a row, and one is for the first floor, one's for the second floor, and one comes all the way from the third floor. Oh yeah, here they come. Sliding down fire poles from different rooms down into the same fire trucks. Ah!

Out on a mission, I ask another of the former regime guys, Hussein al-Yassin, if he too feels like he has to prove his loyalty to the new Syria. And instead of answering, he just lifts up his shirt. He was shot? He was stabbed? No, this is from Shrapnel. And shows me and my producer Jawad Rizalla a huge scar across his belly. From an attack he believes the old regime ordered against its own men.

Some of the white helmets look on, shake their heads, and mumble respect. Over time, the white helmets start inviting the former regime guys to work out with them, doing calisthenics in the yard and pumping iron in a basement strewn with barbells.

But it takes us visiting and asking questions for the guys to open up with each other. The regime threatened us not to speak about how they treated us in prison, says 30-year-old Mohamed Khadir, who has braces on his teeth, slicked back hair and sad eyes. It was his lifelong dream to be a firefighter. A year in, he was arrested by the regime that employed him. I was arrested.

Someone denounced me, he says, accused me of being a terrorist. Me and my cousin both went to prison, and he died there under torture, Khadir says. He breaks down then, grabs my producer Jawad, and hugs him.

Staff here say 17 members of the Damascus Fire Department were imprisoned during the war, and nine of them died behind bars. Khadir got out after two and a half years, but was banned from returning to the fire department because of his record. The day the regime fell, though, in December, he rushed back to the job he loves. He describes guarding the fire station from vandalism that day.

And he's been living and working here ever since, without taking a salary.

The day after I hear his emotional story, I mention it to the White Helmets. Did you know that there's a guy here who's working for free? He still doesn't have any salary. One of the supervisors, a big bear of a man named Mustafa Bakar, with floppy hair and kind eyes, says, I don't know who this man is that you're talking about who's been through so much, but he sounds like a hero.

They live in the same firehouse, in fact, on the same floor, on opposite sides of a single brick wall. And they've never met. So... We introduce them. I know Adel and Yadir. This is Mohammed Adel Shadid, the narrator.

He's saying, Muhammad is our friend here. He says, I've met him before. I didn't know this was Muhammad. It turns out they do know each other. They just didn't know each other's names or what either one had been through. Ten years ago, Bakar had been wounded and rescued by the White Helmets and then joined them. There's no cure for this.

This is like group therapy, Bakar says. I know him, I know Mohammed, but he never told me the things he told you. When will they ever take down this wall between these two sides? Soon, soon, they promise. That brick wall in this firehouse between the old regime firefighters' living quarters and the new ones, it will come down. But there's still a psychological wall, Bakar says, and that may take some time.

Lauren Freyer, NPR News, in the Kafar Sousa Firehouse, Damascus. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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