Aleppo, SANA – Despite his old age, carpenter Mohammed Janat (nicknamed Abu Bakri) from Aleppo continues to make everything by hand and preserve the profession of the ancestors to prove that with determination comes strength and indomitable will to live.
Every morning, the elderly Abu Bakri leaves his home in Bab al-Hadid, the most ancient area in Aleppo city, and heads for his rented carpentry shop passing by his terror-damaged shop in the old market with tear-dimmed eyes.
“We will rebuild Aleppo together,” said the carpenter who has more than 40 years of experience in this authentic handicraft and shed a bitter tear.
He added “I worked here with my brothers in making wooden farm tools before the armed terrorist groups forced us to leave. And now, after more than 5 years, we returned to find the shop completely demolished amid a huge amount of rubble.”
Abu Bakri sits down on the floor of his shop, takes up an axe and starts to trim a piece of wood turning it into a mattock. He said that he used to make wooden agricultural tools and equipment such as shovels, hoes, axes, pickaxes, plows and grain sieves and send them to the market in al-Arqoub and al-Sheikh Najjar industrial areas which were a destination for farmers from Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Hasaka and Qamishli to buy their needs of agricultural equipment.
The elderly carpenter urged concerned authorities to take action and provide necessary facilitations to rehabilitate and rebuild what has been destroyed due to the terrorist war and enable him as well as his neighbors to return to their shops.
R. Raslan/ Ghossoun