In Damascus, there are neighborhoods that resemble memory more than geography. Jobar is one of those places that cannot simply be described as an ordinary Damascene district. Throughout its long history, it was always a place of passage: for prophets, caravans, conquerors, the besieged, and people searching for some form of survival in this exhausted. It is said that the name “Jobar” comes from the “well” where the Prophet Elijah once sought refuge, back when the area was nothing more than orchards surrounding old Damascus. Since that distant time, the place carried a kind of spiritual solitude — as though the neighborhood was destined to become a shelter during difficult moments.
“Some neighborhoods are built not only from stone… but from the stories that passed across their”
A Neighborhood at the Edge of Ghouta
Over centuries, Jobar became one of Damascus’ most diverse and lively districts. Muslims and Jews lived side by side there, and it housed one of the oldest synagogues in the world, which preserved an ancient Torah scroll for generations. Among orchards, wells, and modest Damascene homes, an entire life was formed around farming, craftsmanship, and a deeply rooted relationship with the land. The people of Jobar resembled their neighborhood: quiet on the outside… but carrying a resilience difficult to break. Historically, Jobar also remained Damascus’ sensitive eastern gateway. Conquerors entered the city through it, and Damascus watched the eastern horizon through its fields and roads. Even in traditional Damascene architecture, Jobar remained spiritually connected to Ghouta through water, orchards, agricultural paths, and gardens stretching toward the capital.
When the Neighborhood Became a Frontline
But history, as it often does, was preparing another chapter for Jobar one far harsher than the last. When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Jobar did not merely participate in protests. It rapidly transformed into one of Damascus’ most important resistance frontlines. During the long years of war, the neighborhood became a permanent contact line, a name repeated daily in news bulletins, and a symbol of refusal despite siege, bombardment, and devastation. Little by little, the features of the place disappeared beneath rubble. Homes that had sheltered families for generations became walls open to the sky. The old alleys vanished. Mosques, schools, and orchards all entered the battlefield. More than ninety percent of the neighborhood was destroyed, as though an entire city was being erased stone by stone before its people’s eyes.
“In Jobar, destruction was not merely a scene of war… it was the slow erasure of memory itself.”
A City Beneath the Earth
Yet amid the devastation emerged one of the strangest and most human stories of the Syrian war: The tunnels. Beneath the ground, another world was quietly taking shape. Residents and fighters dug an enormous network of tunnels stretching nearly twenty-seven kilometers, reaching depths between five and twenty meters underground.
These tunnels were never merely military passages. They became complete arteries of life. Through them came food, medicine, weapons, and through them the wounded escaped. While aircraft, barrel bombs, and shells tried to crush the neighborhood above ground… people below continued digging with their bare hands for a small chance to continue living.
“When life became impossible above الأرض… the people of Jobar tried to reinvent it below.”
Tunnels of Freedom
Perhaps this is exactly why Jobar’s story feels different from many others. Because the neighborhood resisted not only through weapons, but through the very idea of life itself. Through the belief that when humans are besieged above ground… they may still try to survive beneath it. To many observers, the tunnels were only a military tactic. But for the people of Jobar, they meant something much deeper: a desperate attempt to preserve hope. As years passed, the neighborhood slowly transformed into a ghost city. Families fled their homes, fighters were later evacuated toward northern Syria, and Jobar remained behind in ruins so severe it became difficult to believe this place had once been full of life.
Returning to the Rubble
But the story did not end there. Because cities do not die easily especially cities that carved their memory with their own hands. Many residents eventually returned carrying a painful contradiction: the agony of seeing their childhood shattered, and the relief of surviving years that once felt endless. They returned to a neighborhood no longer resembling old photographs. Yet they returned carrying one thing destruction failed to erase: belonging.
“War may destroy homes… but sometimes it cannot destroy people’s certainty that this place still belongs to them.”
More Than a Neighborhood
Today, when Jobar is mentioned, it no longer refers merely to an eastern Damascene district or a war-torn area. It refers to an entire story reflecting something essential about Syria itself. A neighborhood that began as an old legend about a prophet seeking refuge in a well… then became a home of orchards and coexistence… then a frontline… then a city beneath the earth… and finally, a memory. Perhaps that is why:
“Tunnels of Freedom”
feels like far more than the title of a documentary film. It is the perfect description of what the people of Jobar spent years trying to do:
“To carve a path for life… through all that death.”