DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Just as Leen Arbid entered the front gate of the Damascus Opera House, a potent
symbol of the Assad family’s decades-long authoritarian rule over Syria, she heard a deafening bang. And
then, everything went black.
The drama student was going to her classes that bright Sunday morning when a mortar shell fired from
rebel positions on the outskirts of the Syrian capital struck the pavement inside the complex yard, next
to an entrance door used by performers.
“Suddenly at 8:15, a mortar hit five meters (yards) from me,” the petite 24-year-old with chestnut eyes
said. “I was injured and fell to the ground unconscious, bleeding. I didn’t feel any pain.”
Flying shrapnel from the shell pierced into her right leg. Five other of her classmates were also
wounded, and two others died in the explosion, which shattered windows on the building and broke glass
on a board that advertised a Chopin piano concert that was to be held that day, April 6.
Mortar attacks have become daily occurrence in the Syrian capital of some two million, often killing more
people than this attack. But the strike last month against the opera house resonated much more loudly
through the Damascus community. It was a direct hit against the Assad family’s cherished creation.
Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria for three decades with an iron fist, was only a few years in power in 1970
when he laid the foundation stone of the Assad House for Culture and Arts.
Hard economic times and the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war stalled construction. The opera was
scheduled to open in 1999, but was again delayed by an electrical fire that gutted the main hall.
After Hafez Assad’s death in 2000, it fell on his son and successor, Bashar, to finish the job. In 2004,
he opened the opera house with his British-born wife, Asma, amid great fanfare and fireworks.
The sprawling complex includes a large opera hall, two smaller theaters and acting, singing and ballet
schools, offering classical concerts and works by Arab playwrights. Built with a mix of Western and Arab
architecture and decorated with paintings and sculptures by Syrian artists, it expresses the Assad
family’s vision of Damascus as the Arab capital of culture and politics, with them at the helm as
visionaries and reformers.
The efforts paid off. Damascus was chosen the cultural capital of the Arab world in 2008, hosting a
year-long series of theatrical and musical events with much celebration and pride.
But the outbreak of the uprising in 2011 — now