Photoblog: Kafr Nabel’s Walls Are Painted with Fresh Life

After Kafr Nabel experienced severe destruction and its walls were covered with obscene scrawls that were an affront to common decency, a group of local youth came together to rejuvenate the walls and bring colour and life back to certain neighbourhoods as part of an initiative they called “Aish” (Life).

The head of the campaign, Hassan al-Ahmad, 26, summarized it:

“Aish is a campaign to paint murals on walls that express our current situation and relieve some of our pain after the destruction we’ve lived.”

Ahmad and his friends launched the initiative together in Kafr Nabel, in the southern part of the Idlib governorate, in May 2013. The campaign was halted when the city was taken over by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as Ezzat al-Abboud, 25, one of the activists, explains.

“Since ISIS entered the city and occupied Kafr Nabel, we brought our activities to almost a complete halt, with the exception of a few murals we worked on by night for fear of being arrested, kidnapped or mugged by extremists from ISIS.”

After ISIS left the city, Aish continued its work with redoubled effort.

 

Damascus Bureau correspondent Youssef al-Ahmad captured these photos of Aish’s work in full swing.