Feature: Damascus youth return to favorite hangout during truce

After unwillingly abandoning their favorite weekend rendezvous of fear of blind mortars, Damascus youngsters were quick to revive their old habits, to hang out at the Bab Touma district, following the recently-established truce.

Enjoying its old narrow allies, with restaurants punctuating its ancient corners, the young people in Damascus thronged Bab Touma after a ceasefire was established in Syria last week.

Before the crisis, the Christian-dominated neighborhood was an attraction to Damascenes from all over the city, especially on Fridays, the official weekend in Syria, during which all of the markets and stores close, except for Bab Touma.

During the crisis, Bab Touma, large parts of which are entwined with the old city of Damascus, was a target to the blind mortar shelling from the rebels in the eastern Damascus, which scared off the young men, who used to hangout along with their girl friends in that district.

"True that the truce is still shaky, but I couldn't resist coming here and enjoy my time once again. I have lots of memories here, each crack on these walls has hundreds of stories," Nairmin, a 24-year-old university student, told Xinhua.

Sitting in a cafe, and blowing smoke rings while puffing her cigaret, the economic student said "it's been a long while since I enjoyed staying up late here."

"Of course I had come here before the truce, but to be honest I didn't have the guts to stay. The fear of being hit by a mortar or even a shrapnel scared the security out of me," she said, reflecting the fear of the visitors of Bab Touma, which is also one of the old seven gates of Damascus.

The mortars which were landing from the nearby Jobar and other rebel-held areas in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of Damascus have taken a toll on the residents of the district as well as the adjacent districts of Qassa' and Bab Sharqi.

But with the still-shaky truce, which was agreed upon by Russia and the U.S. and honored by the Syrian government as well as nearly 130 rebel groups, Bab Touma has regained some of its lost glamour.

"Maybe on the outside, the situation has become better, but most importantly, the people seem to have regained some of their peace of mind," Maher, a 28-year-old said.

"Maybe the streets in Bab Touma are not yet as full as before the crisis, but you can sense the relief in the faces of the people here and even the visitors. There is a laughter now instead of the wary faces," Maher, who lives in the nearby neighborhood of Qaimariyeh, said.

Another thing Maher said he had noticed is the closing hour of the shops there, saying that the shopkeepers now dare to stay late.

"Now shops close at around midnight, and I think if the truce continued, the market situation will be better," he said.

Ahmad al-Ashqar, another resident of Bab Touma, told Xinhua that the ultimate relief of the residents there was to not hearing the sound of shelling either from the government side toward Eastern Ghouta, or the mortar shelling from Ghouta on Bab Touma and elsewhere in the capital.

"We are no longer waking up to the sound of airstrikes and shelling. Now I wake up to the sound of my alarm clock again, not the war alarm," he said.

"Before the crisis, we used to get annoyed by the honking of cars, but now we hear this everyday and we think it's a bless," al-Ashqar described.

While more feat now stomps Bab Touma, the security measures in that district are still as tight as before, with checkpoints searching cars at the entrances and others check the passersby and even ask them where exactly they are going.

Hani said it's been over four years since he took his mother to the old quarter of Damascus.

"I have come here less often than before, but my mother was completely reluctant to visit this spot even though she used to come here every Friday," the 35-year-old man said.

He said that after the truce has been holding for a week, his mother finally agreed to visit Bab Touma, even though not completely encouraged.

"Once she set a foot here, she started recalling the fun times she used to spend here. She said she will return to her old habit to visit the area each week," he said.

U.N. envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said Thursday that the truce in Syria is largely holding despite sporadic clashes in some areas.

While describing the situation as "fragile" and that "success is not guaranteed," the envoy said "progress has been visible." Endit