Michel Boutros is a 90-year-old Christian in Syria’s Idlib who has turned into an icon of steadfastness despite the bloodshed of the war that has been plaguing his country for 10 years now.

Boutros is the only Christian who insisted on staying in the city of Idlib in northern Syria. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Boutros said he was born in 1931 and can barely read the Bible. The walls of his house are decorated with crosses and Christian religious images in a city devoid of Christians.

“I do not have children, and I am not even married,” Boutros said. “My children are the flocks of pigeons that I raise in my house, with which I sometimes engage in conversations.”

He continued, “My family is from Idlib city. My family and I used to live here in this house, which became a part of me, and I shall not leave it, come what may. My brothers moved to live in Aleppo while my father, his wife and I chose to stay”.

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His mother bore three boys and one girl, but “I unfortunately never knew her, as she died when I was a baby, and my aunt, my stepmother, was the one who raised me,” he said. “My father subsequently married another woman … who gave birth to two sons. He then died, and a little later my aunt died”.

Boutros, who has not left his house for the past 10 years, said, “We witnessed battles and all kinds of calamities, but we did not leave Idlib during the clashes between the Syrian regime and the opposition in the city in 2015. I stayed here in this house, and I was very happy, relaxed and reassured — all things considered. At the time, my neighborhood was surrounded with cluster bombs, missiles and weapons, but I never ran away”.