After the War: Using Heritage to Rebuild

Trudi Sandmeier 0:07
This is Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier, Director of Graduate Programs in Heritage Conservation, and an Associate Professor of Practice in Architecture at USC.

Cindy Olnick 0:23
And I’m Cindy Olnick, a communications pro with a passion for historic places and a mission to help people save ’em.

Trudi Sandmeier 0:30
So Cindy, today we have a tale of another hometown.

Cindy Olnick 0:37
Yes, I love hearing students talk about their hometowns. This one is very, very far away, and very, very old. It’s the city of Aleppo in Syria.

Trudi Sandmeier 0:48
This is in the context of this incredible historic city and some of the difficult years that it’s experienced in the last decade or so, while the war in Syria has been ongoing.

Cindy Olnick 1:04
It’s horrible. What’s happening in Syria is horrible on so many levels. It’s been 10 years, half a million deaths, an estimated 13 million displaced, and it’s still going on. But today, we’re talking with Dalia Mokayed, a native of Aleppo, who’s passionate about helping, even from afar.

Trudi Sandmeier 1:22
So it’s her hometown. It’s what she is trained in, it’s what she’s continued to study as a student, getting her master’s degree in heritage conservation. And this really is a passion for her to be from a place that has experienced that kind of destruction.

Cindy Olnick 1:42
I don’t know, I have no idea what that’s like, but I look forward to hearing her perspective. But you know, what does strike me is that the fact that historic places in war zones are targeted specifically for destruction, which really hurts. But it also underscores their meaning and their value to the community, and what it means to erase a place that has been there for so long and that means so much to the people who live there.

Trudi Sandmeier 2:10
It’s a difficult topic. But it’s an optimistic conversation, because this is about rebuilding. This is about bringing back the community and reestablishing Aleppo in a way that is meaningful for the people who are from there.

Cindy Olnick 2:30
Yeah, exactly. And the community’s involvement in rebuilding. I mean, we deal with that a lot in terms of development and redevelopment, and how, you know, sometimes community outreach is sort of a box to tick. And we want communities to have more self determination and what happens in their neighborhoods. But it sounds like she’s got some good examples of different approaches to that and different levels of community involvement.

Trudi Sandmeier 2:58
And if you’re interested in seeing some of the places that we talked about on today’s podcast, be sure to go check out our show notes page, which has some images and some additional resources if you’re interested in following up.

Cindy Olnick 3:09
So let’s listen to Trudi’s interview with Dalia Mokayed.

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Trudi Sandmeier 3:18
Welcome to Save As, and thanks for sitting down to talk with me today about your thesis. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your background?

Dalia Mokayed 3:30
Thank you for having me. My name is Dalia Mokayed. I recently graduated from the master’s program of heritage conservation in the University of Southern California. My thesis was about heritage conservation for rebuilding cities after a crisis, a case study of the Old City of Aleppo.

Trudi Sandmeier 3:52
You are originally from Aleppo, and you grew up there. This is your hometown.

Dalia Mokayed 3:58
Yeah, that was basically the reason why I wanted to do this topic. I went to the University of Aleppo School of Architecture there. And I specialized in urban planning and heritage conservation. I worked for 10 years for the municipality of Aleppo, where I was involved in the preservation of the city of Aleppo as part of the rehabilitation project of the Old City.

Trudi Sandmeier 4:26
So you were working in conservation in the city prior to coming to the United States. And so why did you come to America?

Dalia Mokayed 4:34
I came to America because I got married, and I moved with my husband to the United States. When the conflict started in Syria, I was watching this for seven years, and I was waiting for when the rebuilding process will start when the conflict is ended, so I can join the process of rebuilding the city. I thought that I have to do the heritage conservation program. And it was since day one, I wanted to do something that can serve the rebuilding of my city of Aleppo. Being outside the country made it a bit hard to be part of this process. But I thought that I can have my part of joining this process by doing this research and writing this topic and providing tools of rethinking heritage in the city and rebuilding cities after conflict.

Trudi Sandmeier 5:36
Walk me through Aleppo, tell me about the place.

Dalia Mokayed 5:41
Aleppo is one of the oldest settled cities in the world. Some people say it’s the oldest city, and some others say it is one of the oldest. This really does not matter. The city is basically layers over layers of heritage, the different civilizations settled in the city. And a lot of the buildings which are still existing in the city are witnesses for these civilizations. Basically, what is very special about the city of Aleppo is it still exists as a whole city with the residents. It’s not ruins. It’s an existing city with a residential part, with the commercial part, with the same exact fabric that it used to be a long time ago.

Trudi Sandmeier 6:31
So it’s not a museum. It’s a living city where people are going about their daily lives, but doing it in the context of this incredible historic place with all of these old places and buildings still a very much an active part everyday.

Dalia Mokayed 6:50
Exactly. So the Old City of Aleppo is in two parts: inside the walls, what we call inside the walls, and there is another part which is outside the walls, that is still inside the boundaries of the city. Especially during the 20th century, the huge part of the walls was lost. So you can still see seven gates, but the wall is basically lost or covered with buildings. So it’s not like the cities that you can enter and see the walls. Now you feel that like the part of the Old City which is outside the wall is connected with the other parts. But historically, we know that there is an inside and outside part, right>

Trudi Sandmeier 7:40
That would be insider knowledge. So what kinds of places are there?

Dalia Mokayed 7:50
When you enter the Old City, you can feel the difference between the new and the old, you just immediately can recognize that you have just entered the Old City. There are a lot of narrow streets, which are the alleys which really made it very special. Also the Umayyad Mosque, which is an Islamic building, used to be itself a location for gathering. And for ages this exact location was a place called agora. People were coming to this place to gather, to meet, and in some ages, to do poetry. There are also other locations like the Citadel of Aleppo, which is located on the highest point of the city because it’s high. It used to be a religious place, and after the city was conquered a couple of times, it was converted into what it is like now, that Citadel as a place to keep people during wars and during conflicts and when enemies conquered the city.

Trudi Sandmeier 8:59
So it started off as a religious site and became a military strategic location, a defensive site to protect people in times of war.

Dalia Mokayed 9:13
For a long time, the city of Aleppo was known for its important location, strategic location on the trade roads, the Silk Road, which connects the east and the west in this area, and very close to where there is this very important part of the city, which is the old traditional souks. The souk is a traditional market, which is a narrow road that has shops at the two sides. The souks of Aleppo is known to be more complex, they could count up to 35 different souks in the same location. These souks have a lot of different goods and make it a bigger place for trades and for gathering for people. Also this location and people who are coming to visit the city was very important. And it also affected the residents of the city in a way that people gained a lot of knowledge. You know, a lot of languages.

Trudi Sandmeier 10:16
So it was a very cosmopolitan place, because there were cultures convening in Aleppo from all over the world because it was such an important trade site.

Dalia Mokayed 10:26
And beside the shops also were kahns, which we call inns or small hotels, where the caravans used to rest overnight.

Trudi Sandmeier 10:37
A place to stay, a place to stay, you know, everybody needs a place to rest while you’re shopping.

Dalia Mokayed 10:41
So the kahns, they serve this purpose. Also, the baths. So the public baths are located in different locations in the city, but there are a couple of them in the souks as well. So the city of Aleppo was registered as a World Heritage Site in the UNESCO in 1996. Since then, a lot of interest came into the city of Aleppo. And that was a reason to start a new project, which is called the rehabilitation project of the Old City of Aleppo, which was a cooperation between the Syrian government and the German technical incorporation GIZ.

And this particular project was concerned about the preservation of the Old City, including different aspects, the built environment, also the local community, they used to meet with them in order to help them plan for the city. So one of the important aspects of working on the rehabilitation project of the city of Aleppo is that they used the bottom-up approach, and the bottom-up approach made sure to make the local community be part of the planning process for the city, for preserving the city. So basically, the team used to meet with the people doing interviews, and do workshops before starting to plan or implement any pilot area in the city.

Trudi Sandmeier 12:15
So people were involved from the ground up, in conservation work, prior to the war?

Dalia Mokayed 12:22
Yes.

Trudi Sandmeier 12:22
So tell me what happened when conflict came to Syria.

Dalia Mokayed 12:29
In the summer of 2012, the conflict started in Aleppo, and very soon, the Old City, the heritage part of the city, became part of this conflict, the historic buildings were targeted and a huge part of the Old City was damaged. The damage in the Old City varies between completely destroyed, severely damaged, and moderately damaged. Only 20% of the city was not damaged at all. The conflict and devastation in the Old City continued until the end of 2016. In early 2017, the old part of the city of Aleppo was free of conflict. And since day one, all the efforts were put into the rebuilding process, first of all, by cleaning the city and trying to clean the damage and open the roads to allow for the rebuilding team to get inside.

Trudi Sandmeier 13:30
So this rebuilding of the Old City of Aleppo has been a community priority for the city from the very beginning. Immediately when the conflict died down in the city itself, people began to rebuild.

Dalia Mokayed 13:45
It was a local community interest. And it was an international community interest as well.

Trudi Sandmeier 13:54
So have you been to Aleppo since the war ended?

Dalia Mokayed 13:58
Yes, I visited Aleppo twice in the summer of 2017 and in the summer of 2019. My visit to Aleppo in 2019 was more focused, because I knew that I’ll be doing my thesis topic about rebuilding Aleppo. So I started collecting more information, meeting with people and interviewing people, and visiting the Old City and walking through its streets taking pictures and recording videos. One of the things that happened and really touched me [was] when I entered the old souk and it was still damaged and it was empty. I mean, most of the stores were damaged, only very few of them were still standing at the beginning of the souk, near to the entrance.

When I met one of the merchants, the owners of the shops, he was selling cultural items. And I wanted to really buy something from him just for the feeling of support. I was happy to see him at the first place. And when I asked him, How is everything’s going here, is there anyone coming to buy from you, he said that he really does not care if he’s gonna sell something during the day or not. He told me that he was waiting for seven years for this moment, to come back and see that his own shop is still standing and he can open again. And he thinks that by doing this, he’s going to encourage more merchants and more shop owners to come and open their stores. And this might bring back life to the old souk and to the Old City.

Trudi Sandmeier 15:43
So it’s an effort at cultural conservation, this idea that the souk is such an important community hub. And he was trying to lead by example, and bring people back to recreate maybe a new version of a community that existed for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Dalia Mokayed 16:02
Yeah, absolutely. It’s very important to understand that people are an important part of the rebuilding process. They know that and everyone has to know that they have to be the priority. And they have to be part of the decision making.

Trudi Sandmeier 16:20
Sure, it’s certainly not only about the buildings, is it, right?

Dalia Mokayed 16:23
Absolutely.

Trudi Sandmeier 16:27
In the course of your research, you looked at a lot of different ideas about how communities have recovered after a crisis, and in particular, a crisis of conflict, of war. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the ideas that you looked at, including things like the term urbicide, which, for our listeners, is not the thing you kill weeds with, but is in fact u-r-bicide? So what does that mean? What is urbicide?

Dalia Mokayed 17:06
So urbicide is a term that was used to really connect the destruction of heritage buildings to a genocide, like to make people understand that destroying buildings is very like killing people, and it may really affect a community in the same way.

Trudi Sandmeier 17:30
By killing the urban environment and these important historic places, you are killing the culture and the community that goes with it.

Dalia Mokayed 17:40
Exactly. It’s because the very important relation between the heritage and the people, and understanding that the cultural heritage of a group of people means their identity.

Trudi Sandmeier 17:51
So they’re being erased, in effect, right? You talk about some examples from around the world where historic places have recovered from disaster. So those three sites were Beirut, Warsaw, and Bosnia.

Dalia Mokayed 18:06
Specifically, before we talk about each case, what really made me choose the three [was] because the three of them dealt with the situation of community participation in a different way. Starting with the city of Beirut, in the case of rebuilding the downtown of Beirut, they really use the top-down approach, the whole plan was done for political reasons. And it was done by the government and bringing an investment to the city to draw up a new picture of the city that ignores the role and existence of the local community and the area. And that resulted in new downtown Beirut, which has nothing to do with what it used to be before. When you walk in the streets of downtown Beirut now, it’s mostly empty, with high-end stores, restaurants that are basically full with people who are coming to visit the city. The people of the city of Beirut, they hardly can really visit downtown Beirut because it’s becoming more expensive. This whole idea really raises the important issue of making the local community part of the rebuilding process.

The other two cases, in Bosnia and in Warsaw, they dealt with the rebuilding process in a different way. So they made the local community part of this process. The Mostar Bridge was one of the examples in Bosnia. They decided that this location is very important and dear to everyone in the city, and everyone in the city has memories of this bridge. And they thought that by rebuilding the Mostar Bridge, they are going to connect the two parts of the city.

Trudi Sandmeier 20:13
The Mostar Bridge was both symbolic and a real connection of one side of a river to another, which had been destroyed in the war. But then, reestablishing that connection was more than just a transportation link. It was a cultural link as well.

Dalia Mokayed 20:32
And in the case of the city of Warsaw, they managed to make the people of the city as well, part of the process. A lot of people really participated in rebuilding the city, I mean, really in rebuilding it by their hands. So also that was a very good example.

Trudi Sandmeier 20:50
So it gave people work, yes, in a postwar period where people were needing employment. But it also helped to rebuild the infrastructure of the city. I think it’s interesting to note that these are all places that people know something about, you know, that they were well-known before.

Dalia Mokayed 21:14
So yes. In the case of Warsaw, they wanted to renovate the city and bring back the city to the way it used to be in the 18th century. So they used documentation, which are paintings of the cities in the 18th century. And they used this to bring back the buildings the way it used to be. So in this case, there is only one thing that they were criticized for, that by bringing back the city to the 18th century, they missed this period of time between the 18th and the 20th century, and that caused more destruction to the buildings in the late 19th and in the early 20th century.

Trudi Sandmeier 21:59
They lost a few years in the middle, there, when they went all the way back to the 18th century.

Dalia Mokayed 22:05
Right. I mean, this makes us think that rebuilding cities is complicated. It’s just not easy. Making decisions is not easy to do it, there is no right and wrong way to do it. It’s just gonna be based on policy at the first place, which has an effect on every rebuilding case that happened in history. And also it’s going to depend on how much they are going to make the local community part of the process. So since the rebuilding process started in Aleppo, since day one, the approach was to bring back everything the way it used to be, especially for the historic buildings that they are really emotionally related to the people.

So one of the examples is Umayyad Mosque, which is one of the very important monuments in the city and for the people of the city, which was severely damaged during the conflict. And the minarets of the mosque was completely destroyed, which the minaret is a thousand-year-old monument. In this case, they made the decision right away that they want to rebuild the minaret and to rebuild the destroyed parts in the mosque. And that was one of the monuments that received international financing. And that was very helpful. So the work on the mosque started right away after receiving the financial support. Also choosing the locations that needs to be rebuilt was related to the importance of these locations. So they started first with the main mosque. And also they started with the traditional souks because they consider that these locations are very important to the city.

Aga Khan, which is an international organization, which used to be involved in the rehabilitation process before the conflict, is now also part of the rebuilding process. The team of Aga Khan is working together with the local authorities, with the government, on choosing the locations and putting the plan for rebuilding these important locations in the city. So they started with one of the traditional souks called Souk Al-Saqatyeh. This souk was famous for selling meat in the past. They decided that they are going to choose this souk because it was not severely damaged. So they knew by doing this, it will need less financial support and this is going to finish very quickly. And this will make people feel like rebuilding is happening in the city.

Trudi Sandmeier 24:55
And that it’s possible. You know, we all like instant gratification. So it’s nice to be able to see progress.

Dalia Mokayed 25:02
Exactly. At the other hand, there are other rebuilding projects that are happening in the city, people are focusing on the religious buildings, because it’s very related to them, the Islamic and the Christian buildings that were severely damaged. In this case, it’s more like a local community work. Like they’re collecting money, or a wealthy person who is interested in rebuilding a mosque, they’re putting money in, and they’re bringing a contractor to do the job. They are participating, especially in the religious buildings, and because they believe that religious building has to come again to the city. But on the other hand, you can see that there are a lot of residential neighborhoods [that] are still waiting. And there’s no financial support for this.

Trudi Sandmeier 25:56
So they may be rebuilding important community sites, but the community itself is not yet able to return because they don’t have a place to live.

Dalia Mokayed 26:06
Exactly right. A lot of areas, including one of the areas which is very important, and it’s close to the center, it’s called Al Jdaydeh. This area was really severely damaged. I entered the area, and I couldn’t really recognize places when I entered the neighborhoods, and it’s still waiting. No one is putting any money in rebuilding, it’s because it’s a hard situation. I mean, all the skills that everyone who worked in preservation, the city, all the skills that we got related about preserving heritage, you know. Rebuilding heritage is something else.

Trudi Sandmeier 26:48
It’s a different process altogether. When you’re creating something or recreating something from the ground up. There’s choices to be made all along this path about what to rebuild, and whether to rebuild.

Dalia Mokayed 27:02
Which made it very important to raise this issue that the city needs a comprehensive plan, which is still related to the whole city. You cannot do a comprehensive plan to rebuild the Old City without being part of the plan of rebuilding the city of Aleppo.

Trudi Sandmeier 27:23
So are you hoping to be able to go back to Syria and to do work in Aleppo?

Dalia Mokayed 27:29
I would love very much to be part of the rebuilding process of the Old City of Aleppo one day.

Trudi Sandmeier 27:35
Thank you so much for spending some time talking about your research and about your hometown, and about this place that you have such a deep connection to.

Dalia Mokayed 27:45
Thank you so much, Trudi, for having me and giving me the chance to talk about my thesis and talk about my city. That means a lot. Thank you so much.

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Cindy Olnick 27:57
All right. Well, thank you, Trudi, for that enlightening conversation with Dalia. I appreciate it. And I learned so much, including a new vocabulary word, urbicide.

Trudi Sandmeier 28:07
Urbicide is an amazing term that, sadly, we’re probably going to need to incorporate into more of our conversations about conservation.

Cindy Olnick 28:16
Well, we talk about it, we talk around it, I think, a lot here. We just don’t actually convey the magnitude–and obviously, different parts of the world, you know, have different contexts–but I do think we can do a better job of conveying what these places mean to us and what we lose when we lose them.

Trudi Sandmeier 28:35
Absolutely.