By Light of a Blood Moon, Life Returns to a Bombed-Out Syrian Landscape<br />11, 2018<br />KOBANI, Syria — The blood moon rose over a scene of bombed-out buildings reduced to boulder-size rubble, with<br />newly printed street signs noting the names of people who had died here in this little Syrian city of Kobani.<br />Fluorescent light fizzed and lit up the shop of Muhammed Noor, 40, the only place back in business, revealing fruit<br />and vegetables, cabbages the size of basketballs as well as sweets, snacks and a shelf of light bulbs.<br />The martyrs’ street signs are a start; the authorities say they plan to have a placard for each of the estimated 1,300 to<br />1,400 Kurdish fighters who lost their lives here, said Arif Balli, a co-president of the Martyrs Institute of Kobani.<br />Mr. Noor had been shot three times and left for dead when the Islamic State, apparently seeking vengeance for its<br />defeat here, infiltrated squads of fighters behind five suicide bombers crossing from Turkey in June 2015.<br />Fatma Muhammed, 34, limped outside her lighted doorway on what is now called Serzan Bufa Street<br />— after a martyr of the fight — five of her nine children, ages 2 to 15, at her skirts.<br />A block from Ms. Muhammed’s house, the entire Armenian Quarter, once a warren of narrow twisting lanes,<br />has been reduced to piles of concrete, no light anywhere, the old lanes filled in by dirt and rubble.<br />On what used to be 38th Street, Muhammed and Mustafa Muslim, with three of their brothers, once had five of the 10 houses in one block.
