SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The civil war in Syria is over. Sanctions are being lifted. People who are on opposite sides are trying to come together to rebuild their country, but with difficulty. It can take time for attitudes to change, if they ever do. NPR's Lauren Frayer found these issues at play in a Damascus firehouse.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOCKER DOOR OPENING)
HAITHAM NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Every morning for 28 years, Haitham Nasrallah (ph) has opened his locker and put on his uniform as a firefighter. It's a job he loves, but a uniform he now hates.
NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: It marks him as a firefighter from the old regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in December.
NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: Nasrallah recalls how some of his colleagues took off their uniforms and fled that day. But he stayed on, hoping for a firefighting job in the new Syria. And so he was still here in this cement block firehouse in southwest Damascus, when three days after Assad's fall, a convoy rolled in from what was once rebel territory.
NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: Nasrallah says his first impression was just, wow. These guys had way better equipment.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEPHONE RINGING)
NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic). Hello?
FRAYER: They were the White Helmets, volunteer first responders who won international fame for running into harm's way to rescue civilians in Syria's civil war. There was an Oscar-winning documentary about them. They operated for years on the opposite rebel side of the war, and they were demonized by the government. With the war over, the White Helmets are now taking over firefighting for all of Syria, which means the men Assad once called terrorists have suddenly moved into Nasrallah's barracks.
(SOUNDBITE OF EGGPLANT FRYING)
FRAYER: When I visited, one of the White Helmets, Moaz Daoud (ph), was frying up eggplant for a Ramadan Iftar meal in the former regime guys' kitchen.
So some of the firefighters here worked for the regime. And you worked against the regime. And now you're having Iftar together. What's...
MOAZ DAOUD: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "We're using their kitchen," he says. "But we're not eating with them." There's actually a huge brick wall dividing their quarters. Veteran firefighters live on one side of the firehouse, and the White Helmets are on the other. When they first arrived, the White Helmets went room by room looking for weapons.
NASRALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "At first, they looked at us with suspicion," the former regime firefighter, Nasrallah says, "like we were behind Assad's bombings and killings." We have decades of firefighting experience, but they tried to sideline us," he says. "They didn't see us as equals."
The internationally funded White Helmets make six or seven times the firefighters' salaries. And yet, every day, they've been responding to emergencies together.
(SOUNDBITE OF FIREHOUSE BELL RINGING)
JAWAD RIZKALLAH, BYLINE: Asking for - telling the people get ready and get clothed.
FRAYER: These are the fire poles, and there's three in a row, and one is for the first floor. One's for the second floor, and one comes all the way from the third floor. Oh, yeah, here they come.
FRAYER: Sliding down fire poles from different rooms down into the same fire trucks.
(SOUNDBITE OF FIRE TRUCK SIRENS BLARING)
FRAYER: Out on a mission, I ask another of the former regime guys, Hussein Elyassine (ph), if he, too, feels like he has to prove his loyalty to the new Syria. And instead of answering, he just lifts up his shirt.
He was shot? He was stabbed?
RIZKALLAH: No, this is from shrapnel.
FRAYER: And shows me and my producer Jawad Rizkallah a huge scar across his belly from an attack he believes the old regime ordered against its own men. Some of the White Helmets look on, shake their heads, and mumble, respect.
UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: (Speaking Arabic).
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOTS HITTING GROUND RHYTHMICALLY)
UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: Over time, the White Helmets start inviting the former regime guys to work out with them...
(SOUNDBITE OF WEIGHTS CLANKING)
FRAYER: ...Doing calisthenics in the yard and pumping iron in a basement strewn with barbells.
(SOUNDBITE OF WEIGHTS CLANKING)
FRAYER: But it takes us visiting and asking questions for the guys to open up with each other.
MOHAMMED KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "The regime threatened us not to speak about how they treated us in prison," says 30-year-old Mohammed Khdeir (ph), who has braces on his teeth, slicked-back hair and sad eyes. It was his lifelong dream to be a firefighter. A year in, he was arrested by the regime that employed him.
KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "Someone denounced me," he says, "accused me of being a terrorist." "Me and my cousin both went to prison, and he died there under torture," Khdeir says.
RIZKALLAH: (Speaking Arabic).
KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic, crying).
FRAYER: He breaks down then, grabs my producer, Jawad, and hugs him.
KHDEIR: (Crying).
FRAYER: Staff here say 17 members of the Damascus Fire Department were imprisoned during the war, and nine of them died behind bars. Khdeir got out after 2 1/2 years but was banned from returning to the fire department because of his record. The day the regime fell, though, in December, he rushed back to the job he loves.
KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: He describes guarding the fire station from vandalism that day, and he's been living and working here ever since, without taking a salary. The day after I hear his emotional story, I mention it to the White Helmets.
Did you know that there's a guy here who's working for free? He still doesn't have any salary.
One of the supervisors, a big bear of a man named Mustafa Bakkar (ph), with floppy hair and kind eyes, says...
MUSTAFA BAKKAR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: ..."I don't know who this man is that you're talking about, who's been through so much, but he sounds like a hero."
(CROSSTALK)
FRAYER: They live in the same firehouse, in fact, on the same floor, on opposite sides of a single brick wall, and they've never met. So...
BAKKAR: (Speaking Arabic).
KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: ...We introduce them.
BAKKAR: (Speaking Arabic).
KHDEIR: (Speaking Arabic).
RIZKALLAH: He's saying I've met him before. I didn't know this was Mohammed.
FRAYER: It turns out they do know each other. They just didn't know each other's names or what either one had been through. Ten years ago, Bakkar had been wounded and rescued by the White Helmets and then joined them.
BAKKAR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: "This is like group therapy," Bakkar says. "I know him. I know Mohammed, but he never told me the things he told you."
When will they ever take down this wall between these two sides?
BAKKAR: (Speaking Arabic).
FRAYER: Soon. Soon, they promise. That brick wall in this firehouse between the old regime firefighters' living quarters and the new ones - it will come down. "But there's still a psychological wall," Bakkar says, "and that may take some time."
Lauren Frayer, NPR News in the Kafr Sousa Firehouse, Damascus.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEB WILDBLOOD'S "OF TRANSITION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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