Sitting on a cinder block on a devastated street in Daraya, Mahmoud al-Qara watched the constant stream: trucks filled with scrap metal, dumpsters full of rubble, and construction machinery. This suburb of Damascus, located 10 kilometers Southwest of the Syrian capital, emptied of its population during the civil war, has become a vast open-air construction site. "Since the fall of the regime [of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024], more and more families are returning," said al-Qara, a retired man in his 60s, wearing a white shirt that stands out against the gray dusty landscape, as he slid the beads of his rosary through his fingers.

He himself spent several years in other cities of the Damascus area before returning to Daraya in 2019. "When we came back, we found our building considerably damaged," he said. Resting on six fragile pillars, lacking a door or walls on the ground floor, the building seemed to hover above his head. "We had nowhere else to go, so we settled and began to repair it on our own."

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