We would return to Syria when the war was over, sit in a courtyard in a small town north of Aleppo and eat figs, we said. Maybe we’d have a barbecue in the evening and talk about the war and then try to forget about it.

That was the plan my friend and fixer Yasser and I made when I left Syria in late 2013, after it had become too dangerous for western reporters; when friends and colleagues had already been kidnapped but not yet beheaded by ISIL; and President Bashar al-Assad’s air force kept pounding cities, towns and villages with barrel bomb after barrel bomb.

Now, more than two years on, I return to my favorite country in the Arab world. The war is still raging.

* * *

Syria today has become extremely fragmented. You need skilled and fearless drivers to navigate the territory. Wrong turns and a few hundred meters in the wrong direction can lead into ISIL-controlled areas or into the crosshairs of their snipers. There are numerous frontlines: between Islamists, “moderate” Islamists, Kurds, the Free Syrian Army and sometimes even invisible frontlines between different factions of the Free Syrian Army. And in the sky, Assad’s helicopters and Russian jets.

Entering Syria through Turkey we take dusty paths that lead us through endless rows of olive trees and fig orchards. The trees shield us from ISIL positions and protect me from being spotted by the thugs who’ll trade anything with anyone. In this case, a western reporter with ISIL for a few thousand dollars.

Syria was bad when I was last here in 2013, but it has become much worse. I was used to seeing graffiti proclaiming “Assad or we burn down the country,” written by the troops and militias loyal to the tyrant. But only on this trip do I see what it really means. Syria has become a wasteland. Both in infrastructure and human spirit, there is nothing left.

The war has reduced everything to rubble: homes, roads and public buildings, schools and hospitals. Driving through Syrian towns I am no longer so sure if Assad’s bombing really was indiscriminate. It looks more like he was very discriminately bombing everything.

I see mosques without minarets, school yards pocked with shrapnel, small mounds of stones that used to be homes. Some buildings have been bombed three times: first by Assad’s air force, then by ISIL suicide commandos, then by the Russians. Syria has become a country where they bomb craters.

Even more devastating than the physical destruction is the toll the war has taken on its people. Syria has become a place of shocking, harrowing emptiness. When there are no explosions to be heard in the distance, it’s quiet as only places where human life has ceased can be. There are no sounds of kids playing, no traffic, no market chatter. The towns are deserted. Those who could afford to flee have fled. Even those who could not afford to flee have fled.

“We held out for four years,” one man in a refugee camp tells me. “But when the Russians started bombing there were 20, 25 attacks on some days. We just couldn’t take it anymore.”

It’s so quiet in Syria that the sound of birds singing can be terrifying — because it makes you realize how little sound there is left.

In the town of Marea, north of Aleppo, we walk down a street that used to be full of shops and people. Now the shops are closed and the people gone, the walls riddled with bullet holes from a repelled attempt by ISIL to take over the city. The street leads us to a cemetery I first visited in 2012. Back then, I remember, we saw rows and rows of new graves. Young men from Marea dug their own graves before picking up guns and traveling to the front lines to fight the Assad regime. They expected to become martyrs and wanted to spare their families the trouble.

Now all those graves have been filled, and marked with tombstones.

I find only a few people left with whom to talk. Those who are still holding out in their cities and villages show a certain nervousness, ticks of various kinds. Some mumble to themselves, some laugh hysterically as they tell their stories, others are short-fused and start to rage at my first question. It seems to be impossible to keep one’s sanity in the meat grinder Syria has become.

In a refugee camp I am quickly surrounded by children whose last possessions appeared to be the clothes they’re wearing. They laugh, and check out my camera and iPhone with the kind of excitement universal to young kids encountering gadgets. They want to take selfies and make silly faces with me. When I ask them about their lives, a young boy answers: “Since the ceasefire started there are fewer Russian jets that bomb us. I don’t like the ceasefire because I always liked to run away from the jets and hide from them.”

Hiding from the Russian jets had become his favorite game.

To me the boy’s devastating words summed up what Syria had become: a wasteland. In the early years of the war I had fallen in love with this country and its people. Their spirit, their sense of humor, their thirst for life, their food. Covering the war, I had put down roots in their midst. I loved Aleppo and the people’s ceaseless pride in their city, even when less and less was left of its ancient walls, and mayhem and destruction took over.

Now, after five years of war, it seems death has overwhelmed Syria. Buildings and towns have become ruins; people’s spirit has given way to a quiet madness. I had tried to revisit the Syria I once fell in love with, but there is just nothing left.

Julian Reichelt is editor-in-chief of Bild.de.