Centuries-old Bazaar in Syria's Aleppo Making Slow Recovery

In this Saturday, July 27, 2019 photo, a Syrian man walks on the newly renovated al-Saqatiyah Market in the old city of Aleppo, Syria. Much of Aleppo's centuries-old covered market is still in ruins but slowly small parts of it have been renovated where business is slowly coming back to normal nearly three years after major battles in Syria's largest city and once commercial center came to an end. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
In this Saturday, July 27, 2019 photo, a Syrian man walks on the newly renovated al-Saqatiyah Market in the old city of Aleppo, Syria. Much of Aleppo's centuries-old covered market is still in ruins but slowly small parts of it have been renovated where business is slowly coming back to normal nearly three years after major battles in Syria's largest city and once commercial center came to an end. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Centuries-old Bazaar in Syria's Aleppo Making Slow Recovery

In this Saturday, July 27, 2019 photo, a Syrian man walks on the newly renovated al-Saqatiyah Market in the old city of Aleppo, Syria. Much of Aleppo's centuries-old covered market is still in ruins but slowly small parts of it have been renovated where business is slowly coming back to normal nearly three years after major battles in Syria's largest city and once commercial center came to an end. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
In this Saturday, July 27, 2019 photo, a Syrian man walks on the newly renovated al-Saqatiyah Market in the old city of Aleppo, Syria. Much of Aleppo's centuries-old covered market is still in ruins but slowly small parts of it have been renovated where business is slowly coming back to normal nearly three years after major battles in Syria's largest city and once commercial center came to an end. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Bit by bit, Aleppo's centuries-old bazaar is being rebuilt as Syrians try to restore one of their historical crown jewels, devastated during years of brutal fighting for control of the city.

The historic Old City at the center of Aleppo saw some of the worst battles of Syria's eight-year civil war.

The bazaar, a network of covered markets, or souks, dating as far back as the 1300s and running through the Old City, was severely damaged, nearly a third of it completely destroyed. Most of it remains that way: blasted domes, mangled metal and shops without walls or roofs, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

But planners are hoping that by rebuilding segments of the bazaar and getting some shops back open, eventually they re-inject life into the markets. Before the war, the historic location drew in Syrians and tourists, shopping for food, spices, cloth, soap made from olive oil and other handicrafts.

The latest to be renovated is al-Saqatiyah Market, a cobblestone alley covered with arches and domes dotted with openings to let in shafts of sunlight. Along it are 53 shops, mostly butchers and shops selling nuts and dried goods. This souk had seen relatively less damage, and the $400,000 renovation took around eight months, with funding from the Aga Khan Foundation.

One butcher, Saleh Abu Dan, has been closed up since the summer of 2012. Now he's getting ready to open again in the next few weeks. He said he's happy with the renovation, which added a solar power electrical system, though he still needs to spend about $2,000 to fix his refrigerator and buy a new grill and meat grinder.

"I inherited this shop from my grandfather and father and I hope that my grandchildren will work here," he said.

The market's official inauguration is scheduled for later this month. But rebuilding is one step — bringing life back is another. Al-Saqatiyah is the third souk to be rebuilt in Aleppo, after the Khan al-Gumruk and the copper market.

A year after their reopening, both those souks still struggle to attract customers. Most days they are largely empty.

"I open for few hours a day but rarely sell anything," mourned the owner of a cloth shop in Khan al-Gumruk.

Many of the customers who used to throng the markets before the war have either left the country or got used to shopping in other parts of the city since business stopped in old Aleppo. Getting into the opened markets in the souk today is still difficult as many of the alleys are closed and deserted.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city, was the country's main commercial center before the war. Reconstruction of its devastated eastern sector has hardly begun.

Basel al-Dhaher, the architect who led renovation of al-Saqatiyah market, said it will take tens of millions of dollars to rebuild the entire bazaar. Western sanctions that block money transfers to and from Syria are delaying work, he said, according to AP.

He said al-Saqatiyah was chosen for renovation because the work could be finished quickly and inspire others to rebuild in other parts of the bazaar.

Some shopkeepers are hopeful that strategy can work. In the copper market, Ahmad Zuhdi Ghazoul used his hammer to gently tap an embossed decoration into a copper piece. Across the alley, workers were fixing the ceilings in two other shops.

"Thank God they are all coming back to renovate," said Ghazoul, who has been a copper worker for three decades. "Business will be stronger than before."



End of the Road for Kolkata’s Beloved Yellow Taxis 

This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
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End of the Road for Kolkata’s Beloved Yellow Taxis 

This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)

Kolkata locals cherish their city's past, which is why many in the one-time Indian capital are mourning a vanishing emblem of its faded grandeur: a hulking and noisy fleet of stately yellow taxis.

The snub-nosed Hindustan Ambassador, first rolling off the assembly line in the 1950s with a design that barely changed in the decades since, once ruled India's potholed streets.

Nowadays it is rarely spotted outside Kolkata, where it serves as the backbone of the metropolitan cab fleet and a readily recognizable symbol of the eastern city's identity.

But numbers are dwindling fast, and a court ruling means those that remain -- lumbering but still sturdy -- will be forced off the roads entirely in the next three years.

"I love my car like my son," Kailash Sahani, who has sat behind the wheel of an Ambassador cab for the past four decades, told AFP.

"It's a simple car -- no electronics, no frills," the 70-year-old added. "It's unbelievable how much things have changed... The end of these taxi cars also marks our end."

Sahani is among thousands of Kolkata cabbies relinquishing their vehicles in line with tough emissions standards introduced in 2009 to ease the city's endemic smog problem.

Only around 2,500 Ambassador taxis were still working at the start of this year, down from 7,000 a year earlier, according to Bengal Taxi Association figures.

Another 1,000 will be retired this year, and West Bengal state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told AFP that the remainder will be gone by the end of 2027.

"The car is strong. Parts and maintenance are cheap and if it breaks down, it's easy to find a mechanic," said Bengal Taxi Association spokesman Sanjeeb Roy.

Their disappearance, he added, "represents all that's wrong with India's changing economy".

- Litany of defects -

The Hindustan Ambassador was the cornerstone of India's automotive industry for decades from its 1957 debut at a factory on Kolkata's northern outskirts.

Modelled on a similarly regal sedan car from Britain's now long-defunct Morris Motors, the car was a triumphant achievement of industry in the first years of India's history as an independent nation.

A deluxe model, its windows adorned with lace curtains, was for years the main means of conveyance for government ministers and captains of industry.

But the car's shortcomings also served as a reminder of deep structural problems with the quasi-socialist economic system that prevailed in India at the time.

Buyers sat on wait lists for years because pervasive red tape stopped Hindustan Motors from raising production to meet demand, while a near-monopoly on sales left no incentive to maintain quality standards.

That gave rise to an oft-repeated joke about the litany of defects found in the average "Amby": the only thing in the car that doesn't make a sound is its horn.

Market reforms from the 1980s onwards saw the Ambassador muscled off Indian roads by more modern vehicles, and production was halted entirely in 2014 after years of flatlining demand.

- 'Get with the times' -

Kolkata, the headquarters of Hindustan Motors, is the last place where the cars are seen in any great number -- a reminder of the tethers binding the city to India's past.

Grand public buildings evoke the immense riches that flowed through the city's tree-lined boulevards back when it was the second-largest city in the British Empire, after London.

Nobel laureate poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore was born and died in Kolkata, where the national anthem he composed was sung for the first time during India's long independence struggle.

The city is also renowned for its thrumming nightlife, with crowded and dimly lit restaurants serving up chicken Kiev alongside the same suite of old-world European staples that have been listed on their menus since the late colonial era.

But its importance has shrunk dramatically since that heyday, first with the relocation of India's capital to Delhi in 1911 and then with Mumbai's ascension as the country's most important commercial hub.

Many of Kolkata's younger generations have left in search of better opportunities elsewhere, giving it a median age at least six years older than other big Indian cities, according to census data.

The city's skewed demographics prompted its pre-eminent novelist Amit Chaudhuri to once quip that while Delhi was for seeking power and Mumbai was for chasing riches, Kolkata was for visiting one's parents.

"People like me are under pressure to get with the times," retired Kolkata schoolteacher Utpal Basu, 75, told AFP.

"Old cars go, new ones come," he added. "But it will break my heart when the city loses another icon."