On a shopping street close to the famous Homs Clock Tower, a small, elderly man is peering at socks hanging in a window, decorated with misshapen faces of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad and his ...

Protesters created their own makeshift version of the Homs Clock Tower here and Abdul Baset al-Sarout – known as the “singer of the revolution” – performed, Daher remembers.

Home to a mix of ethnic groups, it became a symbol of resistance to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2011, when activists gathered around the clock tower that stands at its centre before the dictator ...