ALEPPO, Syria — Umm Ahmed, 50, sat on the grass with her daughter in a garden in Sukkari, an Aleppo neighborhood. She sipped tea and talked with some of the other women in the garden as her grandchildren played around them on this sunny day. The atmosphere was comfortable and calm. The cease-fire agreement between the opposition and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has allowed life to return to many areas, including Aleppo and Idlib, that had long ago grown weary of the civil war.

Under the agreement, sponsored by Russia and the United States, fighting between opposition and regime forces was to be brought to a halt, as the agreement put it, in a cessation of hostilities. Airstrikes on Aleppo decreased significantly after the truce went into effect Feb. 26. Incredibly, the sounds of shooting and shells, to which people had grown accustomed during four years of fighting, stopped.

Before the truce, the Sukkari garden was almost completely deserted. One found few people there. These days, however, it has become a lively space, with hundreds of people looking to relax.

Umm Ahmed told Al-Monitor, “We feel much safer after the truce. We now go out on the streets and live our lives normally, without worrying. In the past, we could not trust letting our children out of the house. No one knew when an aircraft would pass over and bomb [us].”