Middle East Eye details Armenians' efforts to rebuild life in Syria

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Middle East Eye has published an article about eastern Aleppo which the Syrian army managed to retake from the Islamic State group in December 2016. In the feature, the publication weighs in on the conditions that the Armenian community is living, the school that the children go to and the way they have managed to survive the war.

In western Aleppo near what was the frontline, 400 boys and girls have just started the autumn term at the Karen Yeppe College, a secondary school for Armenians, the article says.

Pupils had to move to another school in a safer part of the city for three years where they were taught in shifts because of the overcrowding. The school used to have 1,200 pupils, three times the present number. Until the other 800 return, if they do, the school has time to repair the damaged teaching block provided money comes in from donations.

Many parents fled Aleppo with their children. The Armenian community is well off and many could leave Syria with official visas, the article says. Arez Sharian, a 12-year-old girl, spent two years in Armenia during the worst of the bombing.

“We left because of the explosions. Luckily no-one in the family was injured and our house is all right,” she said.

George Bebian is an English teacher who used to work as interpreter for the Grand Mufti of Syria, a fact which he is proud to reveal as a sign of Syria’s pre-war religious tolerance.

The author then goes on to write about the Armenian Orthodox cathedral which is now badly damaged. A crater in the floor of the main aisle shows where a mortar landed sending shrapnel into the wooden pews. Our shoes crunched on broken glass.

"Fragments of rockets have been laid out in the courtyard of the nearby Forty Martyrs Armenian church as a grim exhibit of what happened to this and numerous other Aleppo shrines and churches," the article says.