His footsteps echoed like gunshots in the ocean of silent stones. The soldier stopped, blocked by a pile of rubble, and glanced at the facades of what was not so long ago a crowded shopping street. Punched with bullets, cracked open by mortar shells, flattened by airstrikes and blackened by flames, most of the buildings seem to have been meticulously slaughtered.

After four months of a Dantean battle between the Islamic State (IS) and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Raqqa is now mute. Then, suddenly, the call to prayer resounded between the hills of debris serving as tombs for the civilians who could never escape. As one moves away from the city center, the thunder of shovels fills up the cold, dry air of what was for more than three years the capital of the self-proclaimed caliphate.

On the second floor of a five-story building, a man leaned on the edge of his balcony to sweep the remains littering his apartment, making fall a river of dust as thick as snow. Some 50,000 civilians have now returned to the peripheral districts of Raqqa and its surrounding villages, according to Raqqa's Civil Council.

For 10 days now, every member of the Hamoud family has been busy trying to repair their household. Armed with a wheelbarrow, Hassan, 39, ran toward the pavement to discharge the debris he collected. The father of four, a former mechanic, wants to believe the family home will be ready in two months.