Hélène Sallon
FeatureIn the villa and presidential palaces left behind by the fleeing al-Assads, Damascenes were able to see the opulent life of the deposed dictator’s family in a country plunged into poverty after 13 years of war.
Huda Tabbakh cautiously ventured into the four-story villa, waiting to be invited in. “I’m the neighbor across the street. I wanted to see the house,” said the 60-year-old Syrian woman, her short hair dyed blond, to the young hooded fighter. Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, Raghab browsed through the bound books on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, stacked, untouched, in the entrance hall. The 20-year-old from Homs was assigned by his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham unit (HTS, Liberation Organization of the Levant, former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria) to guard this street in the upscale Malki district of Damascus.
From her balcony with its green shutters, on the third floor of the building facing the modern villa surrounded by lush vegetation, Tabbakh has a breathtaking view of the residence of the deposed Syrian president president, president Bashar al-Assad. “This is the first time I’ve been here. I was even scared before looking at the house,” she said. In the 40 years she has lived in this apartment, she has never met either the father, Hafez al-Assad, who lived in the adjoining villa until his death in 2000, or the son, Bashar, his wife, Asma, and their three children, who moved in next door “in 2006, if I remember correctly.”
The Tower Post 