I first moved to Aleppo 10 years ago. At that time, the city was the world for me: the glorious past and the present, the bitter and the sweet. I attended university in mid-Aleppo’s wealthy neighborhoods. To get there, I took the bus from my apartment in the crowded Al-Myassar, one of Aleppo’s poorest slums. We rode by the ancient gates of Bab Al-Hadid and Bab Al-Nasr, through which the Silk Road once curved. Old Aleppo’s walls had vanished over the years, but its gates survived as if to remind residents of their history: the city may have been destroyed before, by Mongols and by earthquakes, but every time it got up on its feet again.

Aleppo wore its heritage with pride, but beneath its beauty lurked darker contradictions. Aleppo’s western half was a rapidly modernizing playground for the elite. But inhabitants of the city’s east, who had fled their villages to seek better prospects in the city’s outskirts, stayed mired in poverty. While the government labeled these slums agricultural plains, on the ground they were a maze of concrete cells, run by clans of organized criminals who dealt drugs and extracted “taxes.” The government used these clans as enforcers—especially when the revolution’s wind briefly blew on Aleppo in 2011.

During this time, I was a student at Aleppo University. My classmates and I saw the campus transformed by these enforcers and by the Mukhabarat, or the Syrian secret police. They planted informants amongst students and persecuted student protesters. Hundreds would disappear forever into the Mukhabarat’s dungeons. Despite this, students kept challenging the security forces. Revolutionaries across the country nicknamed the school “The Revolution’s University.”

But most of Aleppo regarded the Arab Spring with indifference. When the revolution broke out in earnest later that year, much of the city distanced itself from the turbulence. Demonstrations remained confined mostly to slums like Al-Saladin, Bustan Al-Qasr, and Al-Marijah. Protests were brief, with demonstrators chanting before running from the security forces.

Life in the war zone that is Aleppo is peculiarly harsh on children. Childhood has become an irrelevant stage that young locals skip over. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

In Aleppo, the revolution gives the impression that it is a revolt of the poor. When rebel groups from the northern countryside pushed towards the city, these slums were the first that welcomed them, unlike the richer neighborhoods, which, instead, remained in the hands of the regime.

Aleppo is now a city divided, with each half shelling the other. World-heritage sites have become front lines, and treasures turned into ramparts.

I left Aleppo in 2012 and only returned this May. No words could have described my shock. The once bustling northern districts were now empty except for blocks of rubble with flags of the innumerable rebel groups flapping above. As I stood staring, the wind slapped my face, coating me with the city’s dust. It seemed to whisper, “What brought you here?” The Aleppo of the past is not the Aleppo of today; but for me, it still felt like home.

Since the war, most of the old city’s neighborhoods had become inaccessible. Charred vehicles blockaded central streets. Trips that before the war took minutes had become seven-hour marathons, traversing hundreds of kilometers and dozens of checkpoints, each controlled by different warring groups. Regime snipers positioned atop the Citadel’s towers could survey huge areas of the city. Bodies caught in their cross fire might remain unburied for weeks, or months.

To block the view of snipers positioned just a few hundred meters away in the neighboring Masharqah, rebels and locals placed charred buses in between buildings in the entrances to the Bustan Al-Qasr battlefronts. Illustration by Molly Crabapple

A variety of groups control rebel-held Aleppo. As in the rest of the country, Islamists are the most prominent. The strongest rebel group is Al-Jabha Al-Shamiya, which claims 10,000 fighters throughout Syria. Of those fighters, 1,500 are from its “Security Institution” (its own Mukahbarat).

“Aleppo is a jungle,” one “judge” from the Security Institution said to me, after interrogating me for taking photographs. He, offering me a cigarette and a glass of tea, was referring to the lack of discipline amongst the rebel ranks. In recent days, his group had been at odds with the Free Syrian Army’s 16th Division. After mutual accusations of kidnapping, each group placed more checkpoints at vital junctions, and each mobilized their fighters for a confrontation. Three days later, the two sides agreed to free each other’s hostages. The problem may have been solved, for now, but it wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last.