Zoya Masoud (Berlin): Snapshots of Memorycide and Moments of Self-Identification with Invisible Monuments in the Old City of Aleppo

Aleppo, long considered the heart of Northern Syria, has been in a state of rupture, division, and non-belonging since 2012. Syrian war torn the city apart into regime-held areas in West Aleppo and rebel-controlled areas in East Aleppo. The frontlines were located within the UNESCO world heritage site, the Old City of Aleppo. Not only did the fighting parties shirk the responsibility to preserve and care for the Old City’s historic fabric, the old stones themselves became a focal point where the discourse of space and power was promulgated through acts of destruction. These acts culminated by the blow-up of al-Khusrawiyya Mosque and Waqf Ibshir Basha, which were located on the Front line of war, i.e. East-West
Aleppo. The blowing of monuments invoked much irritation in the national and international scientific context. But this international hustle about the lost value did not reflect how locals perceived these monuments. This research carried out interviews with Aleppines in Aleppo and in the diaspora, who visited the two sites regularly. During their talking about place-based memories in Aleppo, over the three years of field research, monuments of formerly low importance to Aleppines became to be the space of commemoration and identity representation. Between processes of structural amnesia and repressed memories, these buildings, despite their cultural significance, were practically invisible when they stood, as the first set of interviews showed. Nevertheless, they became an important visual symbol after their destruction. Regardless of where they took place, the second set of interviews, in 2017 and 2019, attests to a strong shift of meanings toward these buildings. Understanding the phenomenological hermeneutics of the meanings’ shifts entails to analyze the different matrix of local affiliation within the Aleppine community and the external perception of destruction being internalized within community groups in the diaspora and in Aleppo. Interviewees spoke often about a collective »we«. This paper highlights the ambiguate meanings and properties, associated to »we«. This ambiguity gives an incubator for such spacing-processes as memory is an intersubjectively produced entity and contemporary construct.
Romanticizing these monuments and their loss through metaphors attempt to (re)build the missing parts of the memories and make it relevant in the present.