“Is that a warplane over us?” a doctor asks. “Yes, it is,” says another, as an airstrike rumbles overhead. “Don’t look so frightened. It will be alright.” “Don’t worry dear,” a different doctor tells one of his patients. “We don’t have anesthesia, but we have music.” They are in a town outside Damascus in the midst of a five-year military siege. Their makeshift hospital is underground, in a series of tunnels and basement shelters below the devastated streets of eastern Ghouta, pummeled by the Syrian army, including with chemical weapons, and by Russian bombers. These scenes are captured in “The […]
