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Kobani native Nashaat Ammi came back to his hometown after 13 years in the spring of 2015. It was just a few months after its liberation on Jan. 26, 2015 and the city was a dump of destroyed vehicles and rocket shells. To the 34-year-old artist who had worked for years in Lebanon making metal decorations, the metal bits in the rubble were waiting to become works of art.
Ammi was born in the eastern Kobani village of Sharran. He dropped out of school when he was in the ninth grade and traveled to Damascus in 2002 to become a blacksmith before moving on to Lebanon. In his first weeks back in Kobani, he walked down the streets of the destroyed city, picking up the remnants of the weapons the Islamic State used in 2014.
