ALEPPO, Syria — Its base comes from a tractor, two rusty poles and random pieces collected in a glassworks. To assemble this mortar, nothing has been wasted. It's been built by downloading instructions from Google. "For grenades, I used even the fertilizer of my wife's flowers," said Firas with a smile. He is 43, and in his previous life was a sales manager in a car dealership. Now he introduces himself as "the mortar manager."

This is Aleppo today. The war is so normal here, so familiar that garbage bins mark the front line of fighting on one side of a street, while on the other they’re used as goalposts for an improvised soccer match. Snipers have shifts. You can see them reaching their nest in the morning, coffee in hand, and parking in front of the main door as if they were going to work.

In Aleppo, nothing is as safe as the front line as the war changes course. Civilian casualties are no longer collateral damage, they are the target. "[Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad realized he cannot win on the ground, and is trying to bomb, or elsewhere to besiege and starve us into submission. It is no longer a war. You don't fight anymore, you simply die. It is murder," Firas told Al-Monitor.

Barrel bombs are so inaccurate, and rebels and loyalists so close to each other, that helicopters would hit both sides. And so Firas, like many others, moved what’s left of his family next to the front line. They were once 31 members, three brothers, with wives and children and grandchildren. Eight are dead, seven refugees and 16 internally displaced.