These Syrian women rarely left the house. Then the men disappeared

A small clothing factory that was flooded by calls from widows seeking work in Aleppo, Syria. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

The women of eastern Aleppo were rarely visible before the war, but now they shape the bitter peace. In the poor, conservative districts of Syria's ancient commercial capital, many women seldom used to leave the house, and only with their husbands if they did; the men not only won the bread, but also went out to buy it.

Then came the civil war.

Eight years and counting of bloodshed have condemned a generation of Syrian men to their deaths, to prison or to precarious lives as refugees. Now, with most of the country once again under government control, yet ruptured beyond recognition, moving forward is up to the women left behind: part survivors, part mourners, part mop-up crew.

Grandmothers are raising orphaned grandchildren. Single women worry they will never find husbands. Widows are supporting families gutted by losses that once seemed unendurable, and that the world now treats as routine.

In many cases, women are leaving the house on their own and working for the first time, old customs succumbing to the extremities of war and an economy in collapse — nothing new in large cities like Damascus, the capital, but a swift transformation for some of the more traditional corners of this socially and religiously conservative country.

"Before, women were afraid of everything," said Fatima Rawass, 32, who opened a beauty salon for veiled women in May, three years after her husband died in the war. "But now, there's nothing to be afraid of."

"A very long, hard walk"

Rawass had never met a man outside her immediate family when, at 19, she found out she was engaged to a cousin, she says. No one had consulted her. Born stubborn, with a barbed tongue that would later win her a reputation as a neighbourhood brawler, she informed her parents she wasn't interested.

"You can say 'no' if you don't like him," her mother was finally hounded into saying. Then her fiancé started calling her three times a day. By the time they married, she was in love.

After they settled in east Aleppo, Rawass said, she left the house so infrequently that she could wear high heels under her abaya — the long black robelike gown worn by many conservative Muslim women — all day. It was much the same as in other conservative parts of Syria, which is mostly Sunni Muslim, marbled with religious minorities: Her husband did the grocery shopping and the errands. She minded the children.

Fatima Rawass with her children at her family's home in Aleppo. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

In 2012, fighting between rebels in eastern Aleppo and government forces in western Aleppo tore the city in two. By the time the government reclaimed it in late 2016, after four years of relentless bloodletting, eastern Aleppo was all but pulverised. The war's momentum swung irreversibly to the government.

Rawass had begged to flee, but her husband insisted on staying to guard his carpentry workshop. He refused to join the rebels, who eventually threw him in prison.

Fifteen days later, the children were hungry, and, with trepidation drumming in her veins, Rawass resolved to go out to buy some milk for what would be her first time. Government bombs and shells were falling outside, some targeting hospitals; snipers stalked the streets. It was, she recalled later, "a very long, hard walk" — the first of many.

To pay her husband's way out of jail, she sold everything she could, took in sewing work and borrowed.

"I hope I die before you," she remembered him telling her one day in July 2016, after his release, "because you're stronger than I am."

The next day, they heard explosions. When he ran outside, flying shrapnel killed him on the spot.

Rawass said she soon discarded the heels she had worn even during the war.

Women walk by destroyed buildings and makeshift shops in Douma, a suburb of Damascus. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

She walked to the store through still-unfamiliar streets, dodging the glances of male strangers. She walked to the doctor who treated her for exhaustion and depression and to the beauty school where she eventually started taking classes. She saved up and got a loan from the Red Crescent. And in May, she opened a salon in her partly ruined upstairs room and hung up a sign with her name on it.

"When you work, you don't have to ask anyone for anything," she said. "Women who need things can be taken advantage of."

She offered makeup, eyebrow and hair services to veiled women like her. They continued to attend to appearances, despite everything ("Should we die after our husbands die?").

Although she had grown up cutting hair for friends and family, her father never let her make money from it, saying employment would expose her to the predations of men. Now, her parents wanted her to quit and come live with them. She refused.

"When you work, you don't have to ask anyone for anything," Rawass said. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

Rawass had fallen in love again, she said, but she dared not defy her father's prohibition against remarrying; he believed a widow should devote herself to her children, and her children only. If she disobeyed, he could take them away.

If only she were childless, she sometimes thought. Then she would have to worry only about herself.

What she had was work. It helped her forget.

"It's only at night," she said, "that I remember all the bad things that happened."

"There are no men"

A few hours south of Aleppo, in the coastal city of Latakia, Lekaa al-Shaekh and her fiancé were being photographed inside the ancient Egypt-themed wedding hall where they had met, and where — finally! — they would be married. They posed on a white sofa bathed in neon-pink light and crowned with fake white flowers, a fluorescent bridal fantasia.

"I've been waiting so long to sit on this couch," she said, rolling her eyes.

She and her friends used to expect a great deal from future husbands. Traditionally, Syrian grooms paid a bride-price: a car, a house and cash in Latakia; a kilogram of gold jewelry in Aleppo.

Lekaa al-Shaekh and her fiancé posing for photographs at a wedding hall in Latakia. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

Then the fighting came, and Latakia, an area dominated by President Bashar Assad's Alawite minority religious sect, sent thousands of young men to battle. All over Syria, the economy buckled. Al-Shaekh, 34, decided she could not afford prewar standards.

"There are so few men; that's the problem now," she explained. "Some of my friends are waiting for men to give them everything, but it's tough. We're in a war, after all." (Not, she hastened to add, that she had compromised in choosing her fiancé, a soldier she described as kind, handsome and responsible.)

She had advised single friends to make concessions to the emergency, yet many remained disappointed. Some had resorted to adding eligible-looking strangers on Facebook, a stratagem unheard-of before the war. It had even worked for a few.

A crowd of women looked at a wedding dress at a shop in Damascus. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

It was rare to find a single woman who did not survey the field with some despair.

"There are no men in Syria," said Afraa Dagher, 36, a Latakian who said she had many friends in the same, perpetually solo boat. "At my age, they're all martyrs or soldiers."

How did she meet men now?

"I don't know," she said, with a brief, tired smile. "Leave it to God."

"I come to escape"

Paro Clothes' business card proclaimed the Aleppo garment workshop "different & fashionable," and its owner was both. Paro Manoukian, 44, was an Armenian Christian and a woman in a male-dominated industry. In her windowless basement headquarters, the June heat had bargained her down to a red tank top, red lipstick, red nails and a profusion of gold jewelry.

Manoukian opened the workshop after getting divorced in 2011. Half her all-female workforce had surrendered husbands, brothers or sons to the war. A few dozen toiled at home, applying furbelows to garments; three more worked in the back, shielded from male eyes by a teal plastic curtain.

Paro Manoukian at her garment workshop in a basement in the city of Aleppo. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

"I asked for the divorce, but I'm sure if I got married now, my husband would want a divorce because I work all day," Manoukian said, laughing throatily.

In the back, three employees chatted about their troubles — money, men, children — as their fingers disciplined the cloth. They tried not to talk too much about the people they had lost.

Hayat Kashkash's husband had forbidden her to work, but after his government salary fell behind rising prices last year, Kashkash, 53, got hired without asking permission.

"I found a job," she told him. "I'm going to work."

"OK," he said. "Go."

This was sometimes as much burden as triumph.

"Now you have to cook, wash, clean and take care of the kids, plus work," she said. "Before you leave the house, you have to clean it. After work, you go home and cook."

But with two sons conscripted into the army, she wanted to keep busy.

"I come to escape," she said.

"I'm here to escape my kids," put in Fatima Kelzy, who was hot-gluing pompoms onto a T-shirt, a cigarette dangling from one corner of her flashing smile. Everyone laughed. She was the joker, the one who got up and danced when they needed a pick-me-up.

Hayat Kashkash, left, at Manoukian's garment workshop. Her husband had once forbidden her to work. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

Married at 11, she had never imagined any career but housewife. Now, at 44, she was a working widow with six unmarried daughters to feed.

"Actually, I'm working for my kids," she said, serious now, "because I'm both mom and dad."

The streets around Paro Clothes were wallpapered with signs recruiting female tailors.

Muhammad Dagher, 38, was surprised to be swarmed by calls from widows seeking employment when he reopened his factory three years ago. Now several women laboured there in a curtained-off section, snipping extra threads, checking stitching.

But he paid them less than men, judging them too inexperienced to sew. Why?

"They're slow, they're weak," he said. "It's new for them."

Reading his audience, he course-corrected.

A young couple in Damascus, where women have long enjoyed more freedom than in more conservative parts of Syria. Photo / Meridith Kohut, The New York Times

"The women are becoming equal to men," he declared. added. "They work just as hard."

Samia Hanuf, 39, was not brought up to work. She left school at 15 and married at 19, settling in Latakia. Three children followed before a sniper's bullet killed her husband, a government soldier, in 2013.

She still talked to his photo all the time, telling him everything: about how, without child care options when she started shifts at a dairy factory, she would make breakfast for the children, lock them in and hope for the best; about accidentally buying spoiled vegetables on her very first grocery run.

As soon as they finished school, she vowed, their daughters would work.

"I don't want them to be like me," she said, "not being able to take care of themselves."

Written by: Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad
Photographs by: Meredith Kohut
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES