HOMS, Syria — For more than 24 hours, President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers fought their way through this city, bleary-eyed men, worn down by months of combat. Afraid to go into the streets, where snipers pick their targets, the government men snaked their way through “mouse holes” punched in walls of blown-out buildings. Their goal was to retake one building, just one, a former school controlled by the rebel Free Syrian Army.

“We will eventually get this school,” said Rifaf, part of a small group of soldiers on the mission. “But it’s a matter of time.”

In many ways, Homs serves as a microcosm of Syria, a community of Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites and Christians who lived side by side, only to find that the collapse of the police state quickly dissolved any sense of common purpose. Civil war came to Homs early, and it has ground on ever since, one street, one building, one apartment at a time. It has been a seesaw, with the opposition gaining ground, then the government taking it back.

That is the story of the school, this group of government soldiers and a nation caught in a contest of attrition. Half of Homs exists as it did before, where some Christians and Alawites, allied with President Assad, still cling to a normal routine, visit cafes and enjoy strolling the streets.