Samer became paralysed, Bakri had a leg amputated and Rukaia fled to France: a decade of civil war in Syria has devastated millions of lives.
As the conflict enters its 11th year this month, 10 Syrians shared with AFP pictures of themselves before the start of the 2011 war, and recounted how their lives have been changed by the fighting.
Speaking from across fragmented Syria or even abroad, they give a personal account of a war that has killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions from their homes.
In the capital Damascus, 33-year-old Samer Sawwan holds up a picture of himself standing on a beach in the coastal resort of Latakia.
That was before a bullet shot through his car while he was driving in 2011, sending the vehicle into a barrel roll that paralysed him forever.
“I passed out with two legs, and woke up in a wheelchair,” he says. “My ambitions and dreams have changed.”
At least 1.5 million Syrians have suffered a disability as a result of the war, the United Nations says.
In the last major rebel bastion of Idlib, 29-year-old Bakri al-Debs rests on stone steps with one leg amputated above the knee, his artificial leg resting beside him.
The former medic holds a picture of himself in a similar position at university a decade ago in Latakia where he studied sociology, before he was maimed in what he says was a government barrel bomb strike.
In Idlib city, former rebel fighter 28-year-old Mohammed al-Hamid leans on crutches, holding a large picture showing him before the war in a military uniform and holding a weapon.
He says he was wounded in a 2016 battle against government forces in Latakia, where his brother also died in his arms.
That same year, he learnt that three other siblings had died in prison.
In 2017, warplanes bombarded his home in Idlib, killing his daughter.
Also in Idlib, Abu Anas, 26, holds an image of himself when he was 16 years old.
A native of the Damascus countryside, Abu Anas was displaced to Idlib in 2018 where artillery shelling two years later caused him to lose his eyesight.
In the northern city of Aleppo, retaken by government forces from rebels in late 2018, Ahmad Nashawi posed in front of his destroyed house.
The man in his fifties, once one of the city’s most popular fishmongers, said his home and shop were obliterated in clashes between rebels and pro-government fighters in 2015.
The war has also flung journalists into exile.
Rukaia Alabadi, 32, arrived in Paris as a refugee in 2018 after escaping threats over her reporting about the reality of life in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor under the Islamic State jihadist group.
Before that, the young woman had been jailed for months by the regime and accused of being a media activist.
The picture she shares with AFP shows her wearing a chador and a face veil in 2011 when she was studying economics at university.
Anas Ali, 27, has lived in France as a refugee since 2019.
Before that he was in the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on the doorstep of Damascus until government forces seized it in early 2018 following years of bombardment and a devastating siege.
A citizen journalist, Anas covered fighting between both sides and in 2013 was wounded, sustaining face injuries, according to the picture he showed AFP.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, Dima al-Kaed, 29, clutched a memento of her graduation, one of the few belongings she kept after her family moved from Damascus and sold their home.
“I dreamt of changing the world, but instead the war changed mine,” she said.
Life in exile has at times been tough.
Fahad al-Routayban, 30, works as a building concierge in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.
On his smartphone, he pulled up an image showing him in uniform during his military service in 2010.
In the ravaged Palestinian neighbourhood of Yarmouk south of Damascus, 70-year-old Palestinian painter Mohammed al-Rakouia stood on top of the ruins of his gutted studio.
“Nothing can make up for my losses,” he said.
“My studio has been destroyed, my paintings have been stolen, and my colours have been scattered all over the place.”
Farmer who lost wife, 13 sons to war still thankful to God for everything
Abdel Razzak al-Khatoun was a well-to-do farmer in Syria’s rural Hama province. Ten years after the civil war began, he is penniless, homeless and living in a tent in northern Idlib.
Far worse, he said he had lost 13 sons in the conflict, the oldest aged 27 and the youngest 13. Some were fighters opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad who were killed in the fighting.
His wife also died when a rocket hit their home in Hama as they were about to have their morning tea. After the missile struck, he managed to climb his way out of the rubble and found her remains.
Khatoun’s account of the civil war, which Reuters could not independently verify, is not uncommon. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting which began with protests that quickly turned violent in 2011.
Millions more, like Khatoun, have fled their homes for safer areas within Syria or as refugees abroad.
Assad has survived the insurgency, and now holds sway over many parts of the country, helped by Russia’s military and other militias. He is set to maintain power after a presidential election later this year.
Despite the adversity, Khatoun remains defiant.
“Anyone with a brain will conclude that they have to oppose the (Assad) regime,” he told Reuters in his tent, located in a large camp for internally displaced Syrians. “I gave up my martyrs and I have no regrets.”
When protests broke out in March 2011, Khatoun, now 84, and his sons were quick to join. Three of them were killed during the first year.
As the demonstrations turned into full-fledged conflict and some of them took up arms, he lost more.
Wearing a red headscarf and shedding tears as he spoke, Khatoun recalled coming across a video on his phone which he said showed the grisly execution of one of his sons.
Such footage was circulated regularly by pro-Assad forces early on in the conflict to intimidate the opposition, activists said.
“I was looking through the phone the other day and I came across the clip... My tears just started to fall, they were in the flower of youth and yet I’ve lost all of them. What more can I say?”
After escaping to Idlib, Khatoun’s war was not over.
Idlib was the last fighter bastion in the northwest of the country, and Syrian and Russian forces pounded the area between April, 2019 and March last year, killing hundreds of people and forcing more than a million people to flee.
During that assault, Khatoun was at a local rest house in Sarakeb when a missile struck, killing seven family members.
Granddaughter Fatima survived, however, and is one of 12 grandchildren who now live with the wives of his dead sons in the same camp.
“I used to be a farmer, a top one,” he said, surrounded by the children who clambered on him affectionately. “Now I have nothing, penniless. But I still thank God for everything.”
Dima al-Kaed, a 29-year-old Syrian journalist and refugee, poses for a picture in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region, while holding in her hand a photo of herself dating from 2013 as a media graduate from Damascus University. (AFP)
