A day before media channels published a report by the Guardian about a massacre that took place in Daaboul Street, in Tadamon neighbourhood in Damascus, which claimed the lives of 41 civilians, I was on a trip to the neighbourhood. From my car window I gazed out at the dilapidated architecture of Zahra street, then the Al-Furn roundabout, then the misery of Daf al-Shouq, then Tadamon, an area distinct primarily for its poverty and marginalisation. Nothing had changed there since I lived there in 1992; no new buildings, the streets were still filthy, and the appearance of the residents in their…