Al Jazeera (slideshow)

I first visited Syria in 2009, and spent my first night there in Aleppo. I was a backpacker, and spent several days taking in the sights of the city before making my way southwards. I fell in love with Syria so much that I twice renewed my visa and lived in Damascus for two months.

The next time I went back, in August 2012, was a much more melancholic experience. I spent two weeks in and ...

Sheikh Abu Maryam sits in a crisp, white jalabiya in the living room of his first floor apartment in the northern Syrian village of Marea. His beard is short, and his hair tightly clipped as he sits, cross legged, on the floor. He has just been walking the streets of Marea in a demonstration against the al-Assad regime which ...

It was getting dark as we arrive in Jadeideh, an old Christian neighbourhood in Aleppo's UNESCO-listed Old City. The chants of Allahu akbar ("God is greatest") were incessant with the shooting. The Free Syrian Army had commandeered an old, recently renovated Damascene house to serve as  ...