'The Old City Will Come Back Better': Residents Of Mosul Return And Rebuild
On Mosul's Sarjkhana Street, old love songs spill out from a speaker in a tiny shop the size of a large closet, as a workman installs colorful strip lighting on the ceiling. The music is from decades ago — beloved local songs so infectious that the carpenter across the street seems to pound his hammer in time to the tune.
The business owners here — some of whose families have run shops on this street for generations — are starting again from nothing.
Before 2014, Sarjkhana Street, near the covered market in Mosul's historic old section, boasted hundreds of shops. The street was a legacy of Mosul's status as a thriving commercial hub dating back to medieval times.
But the war that freed Mosul from ISIS rule last year left entire neighborhoods flattened. The shops on Sarjkhana Street were ruined. Explosives are still buried under the rubble and a lack of help from the cash-strapped Iraqi government and international organizations has left Old City residents to their own devices to try to rebuild —
