Life Returns to Aleppo’s Old Town

Life Returns to Aleppo’s Old Town

"Three or four years ago, all of this was just a pile of rubble,” said Samir. He was standing outside his newly rebuilt cosmetics shop, in the now bustling Souk al-Saqatiya, at the heart of the old souks in Aleppo. As he said this, four potential customers were trying on perfume recently imported from Turkey (under the Bashar al-Assad regime, many imports were banned). They paid with dollars, a crime for which they would have been imprisoned by …