A gardener who tended to Aleppo’s lost hopes of peace.

Abu Al-Ward—Father of the Flowers—and his 13-year-old son Ibrahim have been running a garden center in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo for the past five years. Among death and destruction, the sanctuary is a subtle defiance of the everyday horror of war.

For the 250,000 people remaining in Aleppo, the quiet resilience of flowers sustains the memory of this once-flourishing cultural and historical city—one of the oldest inhabited in the world.

“My place here is worth billions of dollars!” Abu Al-Ward says, and he could not be more right, even if you could not put a price on a glimmer of hope and life’s elusive beauty.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ipopba

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