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Abood Hamam: ‘An image can kill you or save your lifestyles’

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Abood Hamam

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For years Abood Hamam chronicled the conflict in Syria for information shops in every single place the arena with out ever revealing his title – and in spite of being hired through other combatants. He started as non-public photographer to the presidential couple – Bashar and Asma al-Assad. Later he filmed Islamic State’s victory parade. Now, in the end, he is damaged duvet, to inspire exiles to go back to his liked homeland, Raqqa.

Abood Hamam laughs when requested – as a certified studier of faces – to explain himself. His appears and his character, he says, had been formed through the conflict in his nation that is already lasted 9 years.

“Every time I glance within the reflect, I am astonished through how a lot white hair I’ve now,” he says. “And it is all on account of the conflict and the tension I have been residing via.”

Abood is handiest 45. However he lives his lifestyles on a tightrope, in consistent concern, risking the entirety to deliver the reality of what is going down in Syria to the arena.

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Abood Hamam

He is most certainly the one photojournalist to have labored underneath each main drive within the warfare – the Assad dictatorship, the opposition Loose Syrian Military, the rival Islamist teams Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, and the Kurdish-controlled SDF.

“An image can kill you, simply as an image can save your lifestyles,” he says.

He feared his secretly taken footage of rise up assaults in Damascus, early within the rebellion, would get him killed through the name of the game police, the Mukhabarat, in the event that they came upon what he used to be doing. At that level the regime used to be prepared to cover the rebels’ rising army energy.

And later, his digital camera abilities will have helped stay him alive when the Islamic State (IS) wanted him to file the army parade celebrating their takeover of his house town, Raqqa.

Abood’s exceptional tale starts amid the rolling fields round Raqqa – the topic of a lot of his footage – the place his father used to be a farmer.

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Abood Hamam

“To be truthful, the society I grew up in, and in addition my oldsters, they did not actually admire journalism or photographers. They might have most well-liked me to be a instructor or a attorney,” he says. “They concept photographers, it is only a foolish activity.”

However Abood turned into hooked when his elder brother gave him his first digital camera, a Russian-made Zenit.

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Abood Hamam

He graduated from the Faculty of Pictures in Damascus, and ended up, ahead of the rebellion of 2011, as head of images on the state information company, Sana, a propaganda arm of the federal government.

A part of his activity used to be to file the reliable comings and goings of President Bashar al-Assad and his spouse, Asma.

Regardless of the picture she cultivated as a down-to-earth First Girl, keen to speak and concentrate to atypical other folks, Abood says she and her husband by no means spoke to him in always he hovered round them together with his digital camera.

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Abood Hamam

“On reliable missions we photographers have been all the time accompanied through senior military and intelligence officials,” he says. “I hated it, since you needed to handle them in a undeniable [respectful] method, and that’s the reason simply now not my persona.”

When the mass side road protests of 2011 become armed rise up, Abood started to reside a terrifying double lifestyles. By means of day he helped polish the regime’s symbol together with his reliable footage. By means of evening and at morning time, he secretly recorded the opposition Loose Syrian Military’s assaults within the capital.

He despatched his footage to world information companies the use of a pseudonym, Nur Furat. Furat is the Arabic title for the River Euphrates which flows via Raqqa, the place Abood loves to loosen up when he will get the danger – he calls the river his “therapist”. Up until these days, he says, the shops that printed his footage do not know his actual title.

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Abood Hamam

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A frame lies on a Damascus side road in 2012

However quickly, it turned into too unhealthy to proceed. “The reminiscence stick that I sneaked in my pocket after protecting those occasions that I wasn’t allowed to hide, I all the time considered a bullet that will kill me if I used to be came upon,” he says.

In 2013, after Raqqa turned into the primary provincial capital in Syria to fall to the rebels, Abood escaped from Damascus and returned house. He had defected. However lifestyles as a photojournalist there used to be no much less dangerous. He feared the numerous rise up forces jostling for regulate of the town would suspect him of being a regime infiltrator.

Then, in mid-2014, his place turned into extra precarious nonetheless.

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Abood Hamam

“I noticed automobiles and bikes roaming the streets with black flags. Anyone approached me and mentioned, ‘That is the brand new Islamic caliphate.’ And I did not know what that supposed. What used to be this caliphate?”

When IS took over, maximum newshounds fled. Abood, a former servant of the Assads, will have to had been in additional threat than maximum. However he stayed – and went on running. Abnormal photos came upon later within the cell phone of a lifeless IS fighter presentations him in a protracted beige galabiya robe filming at a highway junction – the snapper snapped.

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Media captionAbood Hamam noticed filming IS takeover of Raqqa

However then Abood were given an be offering he could not refuse. IS requested him to movie their victory parade, when captured army decked in black flags rolled in the course of the streets.

His footage have been utilized in an IS propaganda video and despatched to world companies.

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Abood Hamam

Many extra adopted of lifestyles within the “caliphate”, regardless that Abood says he have shyed away from public executions, even staying indoors on days they have been held.

“I by no means swore allegiance to IS and I by no means needed to. I constructed a approach to stay unbiased always.”

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Abood Hamam

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Public prayer in Raqqa underneath IS

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Abood Hamam

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A bonfire of cigarettes

He escaped arrest he believes, as a result of he had just right contacts with tribal leaders in Raqqa who later joined IS. However in 2015, two IS enforcers knocked on his door and warned him he’d be in nice threat if he carried on running. So later that 12 months, he left Raqqa to document at the conflict in different places in northern Syria.

He handiest returned in past due 2017, after the bombing marketing campaign through the US-led anti-IS coalition had freed the town from the terrorists – however in large part lowered it to ruins.

  • Concentrate to The Many Colors of Raqqa on Crossing Continents, on BBC Radio four, at 11:00 on Thursday 23 July
  • Or catch up later on-line

“At the first day I used to be silent. I had not anything to mention,” Abood says. “It wasn’t me. On the second one day, once I went out and began taking footage, I began crying. I used to be roaming the streets and crying always.”

For months, he wandered perpetually in the course of the wreckage of Raqqa, digital camera on the able.

He turned into, he says, the mother or father of the town, getting to grasp each silent, shattered side road, each damaged circle of relatives. The UN mentioned 80% of the town used to be uninhabitable; 90% of its inhabitants had fled.

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Abood Hamam

Of all of the unhappy footage he took, the person who’s affected him maximum presentations a ruined block of apartments, the partitions most commonly blown out, with a vibrant turquoise girl’s get dressed placing down from the threshold of what used to be as soon as a room.

“I felt it used to be an enormous invasion of privateness,” he says. “As a result of that is generally a get dressed girl wears handiest within the home. The circle of relatives is not right here, there’s no extra happiness right here, and the get dressed is placing on my own. It made me stand and stare because the wind blew it left and proper. I believed it used to be placing like anyone hangs on a rope, choking to demise.”

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Abood Hamam

Slowly, regardless that, color crept again into Abood’s footage as the town started to return again to lifestyles – the yellow and pink indicators of reopened retail outlets, the swirling blue waters of the Euphrates dotted with bathers. In spite of everything, he made up our minds to return out of the shadows and show off his footage – underneath his actual title – on a Fb web page, Abood with out Obstacles. His challenge: to inspire other folks to go back.

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Abood Hamam

“It used to be one of those shout within the face of all of the unhealthy issues that took place to my town. My handiest function used to be to turn Raqqa voters who’re away, that you wish to have to have a look at your town another way. I do know that gray has been the color of your town. However bear in mind how Raqqa appears in different colors, love Raqqa once more and bring to mind coming again. In case you glance into my footage, you all the time see, even with probably the most extraordinarily unhappy and fatal footage, one thing vibrant, a component of lifestyles.”

The image he is proudest of presentations a lady in a vibrant get dressed smiling shyly as she holds out a plate of ripe, freshly picked plums.

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Abood Hamam

She’s the daughter of a person who had moved to Saudi Arabia however returned to rejoin his circle of relatives in Raqqa – and contributed to the rebuilding of a neighborhood faculty – after seeing Abood’s footage on-line. Others, too, he says, have come again on account of his Fb web page.

However now Abood himself is not in his liked town, even supposing he swore he’d by no means depart. Journalistic impulse despatched him off to hide preventing in and round Turkish-controlled portions of northern Syria. And now he is scared to move house, for concern Raqqa’s present masters, the Kurdish-dominated SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), will suspect him of being a Turkish infiltrator.

He is survived probably the most brutal forces, but it is the person who freed Raqqa from extremists – along Western allies – that he now feels he cannot chance running underneath. It is a reminder that, together with his activity, in Syria, concern by no means ends.

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Abood Hamam

“I will be able to’t bring to mind any second the place I lived peacefully or thankfully in all this era. I bear in mind, for instance, how when I went filming after an air strike, and afterwards they informed me my cousin used to be a few of the lifeless. I went again to my video, and noticed his frame there.

“I am now 45 years outdated and, on account of the conflict, I did not get married. I shouldn’t have a circle of relatives. I shouldn’t have a spouse. And it is actually unhappy.

“If did not have this digital camera, I’d have carried a gun. I’m in opposition to guns, however I feel that if I had were given concerned within the conflict simply as a standard citizen, the have an effect on of it could had been much less on me.

“I will pass on taking footage of what’s going down in Syria, whether or not depressing or satisfied. I need everybody to look it. But when I had the selection, I might take footage of flora and fauna in an excessively non violent space. I have all the time dreamed of going to Switzerland… I want the peace and calm.”

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Abood Hamam

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