It has been almost 12 years since I left my city. And I have never been able to return. Homs, the place I was born and grew up, has been destroyed and I, like many others, have been left in exile: left to remember how beautiful it once was. What can a person do when their home – that place within them that carries so much meaning – has effectively been murdered?
I have spent my academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction of home, termed by scholars as domicide. Domus is the Latin word for home and domicide refers to the deliberate destruction of home – the killing of it. I have investigated how architecture, both at the time of war and peace, has been weaponised; wilfully targeted, bombed, burnt and contested. It has led me to publishing my first book, Domicide: Architecture, War, and the Destruction of Home in Syria.
From the burning of housing, land and property ownership documents, to the destruction of homes and cultural heritage sites, the brutal destruction in Homs, and other cities in Syria, has not only erased our material culture but also forcibly displaced millions.
