By Light of a Blood Moon, Life Returns to a Bombed-Out Syrian Landscape
11, 2018
KOBANI, Syria — The blood moon rose over a scene of bombed-out buildings reduced to boulder-size rubble, with
newly printed street signs noting the names of people who had died here in this little Syrian city of Kobani.
Fluorescent light fizzed and lit up the shop of Muhammed Noor, 40, the only place back in business, revealing fruit
and vegetables, cabbages the size of basketballs as well as sweets, snacks and a shelf of light bulbs.
The martyrs’ street signs are a start; the authorities say they plan to have a placard for each of the estimated 1,300 to
1,400 Kurdish fighters who lost their lives here, said Arif Balli, a co-president of the Martyrs Institute of Kobani.
Mr. Noor had been shot three times and left for dead when the Islamic State, apparently seeking vengeance for its
defeat here, infiltrated squads of fighters behind five suicide bombers crossing from Turkey in June 2015.
Fatma Muhammed, 34, limped outside her lighted doorway on what is now called Serzan Bufa Street
— after a martyr of the fight — five of her nine children, ages 2 to 15, at her skirts.
A block from Ms. Muhammed’s house, the entire Armenian Quarter, once a warren of narrow twisting lanes,
has been reduced to piles of concrete, no light anywhere, the old lanes filled in by dirt and rubble.
On what used to be 38th Street, Muhammed and Mustafa Muslim, with three of their brothers, once had five of the 10 houses in one block.