February 15, 2013

Syria: Life “in Ruins”

By Michael Shaw

This photo leads Time’s “Pictures of the Week,” I believe, because it so essentially captures that adage — of Assad bombing his people back into the stone age. (Or, to about the year 500, anyway.)

At the same time, one sign of a healthy society is the veneration of its archeological heritage. Contrary to that, scenes from Syria continue to demoralize, from the necklace of bodies in its waterways to the bombing of its universities to the reoccupation of its (ancient) ruins.

(photo: Leal-Olivas—AFP/Getty Images caption: Feb. 11, 2013. A Syrian girl stands at the entrance of a makeshift home set up in the catacombs of the ruins of an ancient building in the Roman city of Serjilla in northwestern Syria.)