"Maybe there is hope for Christians, but don't expect them to join the party now," said the analyst John L. Allen Jr. this Sunday morning shortly after the fall of Damascus and the flight of Assad became known amid rumours that the plane in which he escaped had been swallowed up by the sky (we later learned that he was safe in Russia with his family, thanks to Putin's hospitality.). They had not joined the party because they were terrified. It has not even been ten years since Syria's new master - Abu Mohammad al-Jolani - told Al Jazeera that in the Syria that the Salafis of Hay'at Tahrir Al Sham wanted to build, there was no place for Alawites or Christians. Although it is a well-known fact that al-Jolani has learned from the Taliban and has been repeating for ten days that he will take care of minorities, Christians have well-founded suspicions that whatever comes next will be inspired by Sharia law.

In Aleppo, Christians have been under HTS rule for more than a week now and have still not recovered from the trauma. "People stayed in their homes for the first two days after the attack and then began to go out, little by little, cautiously, to ensure their daily needs," the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Holeb (Aleppo), Boutros Kassis, told us on Thursday. Almost immediately after hearing the news that the city had been occupied by Islamists last Saturday, Kassis issued a statement saying that he would stay with his clerics to be with the faithful who had not wanted or been able to escape the city. And that is exactly what he has done, as has almost the entire community he shepherds.

The truth is that the arrival of the Salafists and their lightning conquest of Syria's second city last Saturday took most Christians in Aleppo by surprise, so much so that they did not even have time to pack some clothes in their suitcases and leave for the coastal territories controlled by the Assad regime or for the area governed by the Kurds in the northeast of the country. If they had had time and the ability to react, it is very likely that the bulk of them would have escaped, but the pincers closed so quickly around the city that by the time they heard of the Islamist invasion, they already had them patrolling the streets of their neighbourhoods.

In the hours following the arrival of the Salafists, Christians assumed that a horde of bearded and ruthless jihadists would establish Sharia law and begin to preferentially target them, the Kurds and the Alawites. And no one knew better than Archbishop Kassis what they were risking by staying in the city. His election to the ecclesiastical post by the synod was confirmed just over two years ago by the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, or Jacobite Church, Ignatius Ephrem II, replacing Yohanna Ibrahim, who was kidnapped on April 22, 2013 -- together with the Greek Orthodox archbishop Boulos Yaziji -- while returning from Turkey to Syria.

Were the same episodes that followed the conquest of Syria by Daesh about to be repeated? A week ago, no one assumed otherwise. On the one hand, from Afrin in the north, they were attacked by Syrian National Army (SNA) a conglomerate of paramilitary organizations controlled by Turkey and made up mainly of Arabs and Turkmens. And on the other hand, from Idlib in the west, the Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) advanced towards them. HTS is the latest version of what was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. They too are under the influence of Erdogan.

At the head of this coalition of forces is a 42-year-old Islamist named Abu Mohammed Al Jolani. In their ranks there are many foreign mercenaries. Almost immediately, terrifying warnings about the bloodthirsty threats looming over them began to spread on the networks, along with completely unconfirmed reports of attacks on Christians that spread panic among Armenians, Catholics, Assyrians, Maronites and Greek and Syriac Orthodox. A video showing a Salafist cutting down a Christmas tree seemed to confirm that what had already happened in Mosul and in the Assyrian cities was going to happen again.The same thing happened in the Nineveh Plains ten years ago. In fact, the parallel between what happened in Iraq and the occupation of Aleppo and Damascus was somewhat striking. In both cases, the Islamists attacked by surprise and in both cases, they occupied the cities without encountering any resistance from government troops who literally ran away, leaving behind some of their weapons.

Everyone was stunned. How could the city have surrendered so quickly? The Assad regime had needed months of long military campaigns supported by incessant bombing by the Russian army and ground offensives involving thousands of fighters from the Lebanese and Iraqi militias to expel the opposition forces from the eastern half of Aleppo in 2016. And now all its defenses had collapsed like a house of cards in just a few hours. Hardly anyone doubted by then that what was to follow was a bloodbath.

However, Al Jolani began to suggest that he had different plans. The leader of the Islamists had spent twelve years breaking all ties with the Al Qaeda matrix or, as the Rojava Information Center (RIC) claims, learning to smile at the West. As soon as he took control of the city and continued his advance towards Hama, the media under his orbit began to repeat incessantly that his militia has nothing to do with ISIS; that the Kurdish, Christian and Alawite minorities are safe and that their only enemy is Bashar Al Assad. At the same time, Syriac TV and Levant 24 were broadcasting interviews on repeat next to decorated and illuminated Christmas trees where Christians approached on the street repeated with a serious face that they were being treated kindly and that there was no shortage of food in the markets. The first of these channels is based in Istanbul and the other, in Idlib. They are the voices of their Turkish masters.

In case anyone had any doubts about his supposed desire for fraternisation, Al Jolani sent several trucks loaded with bread to the doors of the churches. There was only one problem: the local population is not unaware of who this character is or of the crimes that the HTS have committed in the territories they control in Idlib. And the SNA had not been much more lenient with the Kurds in Afrin, where human rights violations have been systematic and terrifying. Christians smile at the cameras of reporters paid by Istanbul and Idlib as one would smile at someone pointing a gun at them.

"People live in fear and are apprehensive about an unknown future," Archbishop Boutros Kassis tells us. "It is still too early for the picture to be completely clear. Before the recent events, we estimated that the number of Christians in Aleppo does not exceed 25,000 faithful, a figure that we have obtained from the relief lists. The number of Syriac Orthodox believers is approximately 7,000 people. Most of our people live in the neighbourhoods of Sulaymaniyah, Midan, Vilat, Aziziyah, Syrian, Qadim, Jadida, Jala'a and in smaller numbers in other areas."

In the same cautious tone, Kassis admits that "some have left Aleppo, but the exact number is unknown. They have gone to Homs, Damascus, the coastal cities of Syria and the Jazeera area." There are also several hundred Christians who sought refuge in Kurdish neighbourhoods outside the control of the Salafists and who are now protected by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the Kurds of Rojava.

Unlike these, Armenians, Assyrians and Orthodox do not have militias to look after them, so they are entirely dependent on the will of the new occupants. "Some people [Islamist leaders] have given us verbal assurances [that the Christian community is safe]," says the archbishop. "There have been no clashes, but there have been some incidents of robberies in homes and public institutions. Among them is the first school in Bani Taghlib, which belongs to our Church. No buildings have been destroyed, although some buildings have been damaged by the bombing [by Russian air forces in Assad's service]." Everything said about Aleppo now applies to Damascus.

One of Al Jolani's priorities after taking control of the city has been to show its inhabitants that they can govern Syria's second city more efficiently than the dictatorship officials they have ousted. And he is not lying when he says that they have been able to restore the water supply in just a few hours and that most of the small shops are still open in Christian neighborhoods like Suleimaniyeh (admittedly, many are already out of stock).

"The situation in Suleimaniyeh is calm," confirms the head of a Syrian Bible society called George Andrea. "I don't live in that neighborhood, but we have a Bible store there and there are several churches in the area that are functioning. Of course, there are many people who are cautious and prefer to stay at home."

Andrea was born in the Turkish city of Antioch 67 years ago. He, his wife and son have remained in Aleppo and are therefore exceptional Christian witnesses of what is happening. "So far, we have not heard of any murders. If something like this were to happen, people here would retreat to their homes. Remember that rumours travel fast and there is a lot of confusing information circulating. Most of this gossip is extremely evil and puts fear into every pore of your body. We have been through this trauma for years and the earthquakes of last year will not be easily forgotten. No one can believe that anything good will come of it anymore. On the contrary, we have experienced many times how our fears become reality. Our past experiences have been so horrendous that you cannot blame someone for seeing only one colour: black."

As far as George knows, "mostly university students have left the city, some of them Christians. Immediately after a missile killed or wounded several students, their families urged them to leave Aleppo. Some have gone to Kamisli and others to government-controlled towns. We have heard that many are sleeping in their cars. As for the rest of the people, I would say that they were too traumatized [when the Islamists came] to make a decision and run away. Now all the exits are closed and even people with extreme medical emergencies cannot leave the city."

We asked him If there had been any looting of Christian homes, as claimed on social media within hours of the invasion. George answers that with another question. "Isn't the collection of ransoms -- that is, looting -- part of a military coup? What we have all been told is that we are safe and no one will touch us. We hope for the best. As Christians, we should always do unto others what we expect them to do unto us. We pray, we don't talk. We just live!"

"On the other hand, we have all seen the video of a person trying to overpower a Christmas tree," he continues (referring to the above-mentioned images of an Islamist trying to tear down a Christmas tree). "It seems that this really happened because the authorities asked those who did it to come back and make amends. The main question is whether people will feel like celebrating Christmas this year. Will we be able to mobilize enough joy to even think about the Good News of Christmas? They talk about a temple destroyed in Hama, but we have not been able to confirm it (a few days later it was confirmed that a group of jihadists had indeed desecrated a Greek Orthodox church.). It has been all over the news that the monastery of the Holy Land was hit by a missile on the first day and we have all seen photos of the damage. But so far I have not heard of any other destruction of religious buildings."

Visibly dismayed, George confesses that "the streets are safe but panic has taken root in the heart of everyone." The fall of Damascus has only served to spread fear even further. The fact that the leader of the HTS guarantees their safety is by no means enough, since, as Fadi Hallisso, another Christian from Aleppo, says in a report published by New Lines Magazine, "their main concerns are not the possibility of going to church every Sunday, nor the obligation to wear the hijab, but the possible return to the Ottoman millet system, whereby Christians would not be considered as people with full rights, but second-class citizens