For most Americans it’s hard to imagine what Aleppines — the residents of Aleppo, Syria — have been through; we typically wage war on foreign shores, which minimizes civilian casualties and destruction of our homes, 9/11 being a dramatic exception. Continuously occupied for thousands of years, Aleppo is one of the world’s oldest cities, one of the original seats of civilization. Over millennia, it has survived much turmoil and many different regimes. It will survive this war. But it will take decades to repair the urban fabric and make the city livable again. In the meantime, the United States should welcome Syrian refugees.

Most Americans were unaware of Aleppo until recent catastrophic events made it a household term here. Not me: I’ve had an interest in Aleppo since I was a boy. That’s because my father, William Griffith Couser, traveled 5,000 miles from his home in New Hampshire to teach at Aleppo College (a secondary school) in 1930.

His three years there proved formative for him and, indirectly, for me. Our home décor featured souvenirs of his time there — antique opalescent tear bottles (used by mourners), Oriental rugs, and other exotic objects — but the most significant reminder of Aleppo was a circle of former students who had immigrated to the Boston area. When I was young, we visited back and forth with them on a regular basis.

Aleppo College was founded to serve Armenian refugees from the genocide during World War I, when a predecessor school in Turkey had been forced to close. Although Aleppo was within the Ottoman Empire, it had had a Christian quarter from antiquity, and the local pasha allowed the refugees to settle without persecution.

Aleppo and its history became more real to me when I examined letters I found in my father’s closet after his death; many, sent to his parents or friends from Aleppo, described his life and work there in considerable detail. These documents heightened my interest in Aleppo, and in March 2010 I traveled there with family members to see it for myself.

As it happened, our small hotel was run by brothers whose father had attended Aleppo College. Taki would come to the hotel every morning to have coffee and chat with guests. When I learned of his schooling, I showed him a hand-drawn map of the city that my father had sent home to his parents. After studying it briefly, Taki led us down the street about 100 yards to a stone building. “That,” he said, pointing, “is where your father taught.” This unexpected realization of my pilgrimage gave me a sense of a personal connection to this distant city.

Another trip highlight was getting to know a high school student who introduced himself as Mohammed. He approached us when we were visiting the Jewish Quarter on a school holiday. Fluent in English, he was eager to talk with Americans. We wound up following him around his neighborhood and eventually to his home, an Arab house that had been in his family for generations.

There we were led into a spacious living room, plied with tea, and eventually fed a full lunch. His parents stayed in the background, but his younger sisters joined us.

Mohammed shared some of the family’s history: Of Jewish descent, they had long since converted to Islam. Before that, their basement had served as a secret synagogue. Eventually, nearly all Syrian Jews converted or emigrated to Israel or the US.

Meeting Taki and Mohammed made our two weeks in Syria richly rewarding. But it has made it all the harder to observe the violence that has engulfed the city, destroying or damaging much of its urban fabric and killing, injuring, or displacing so many of its residents. This devastation would break my father’s heart, as it breaks mine.

G. Thomas Couser is emeritus professor of English and former director of Disability Studies at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. He lives in Quaker Hill.