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A picture by AFP photographer Joseph Eid of 70-year-old Syrian Mohammad Mohiedine Anis sitting in the ruins of his home has been widely shared on social media.

This is Mohammad Mohiedine Anis. He’s a 70-year-old Syrian who lives in the al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo.

This powerful image of Anis, sitting in the rubble-strewn ruins of his family home, smoking his pipe, and listening to his vinyl records in a city ravaged by years of civil war, was taken by AFP photographer Joseph Eid.

It has been shared thousands of times on social media in the last couple of days. Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor posted it on his Twitter account on Monday, and since then his tweet alone has been retweeted 6,000 times.

Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images

Anis — also known as Abu Omar — is a classic car enthusiast who stayed in the city through years of war and months of intense aerial bombardment.

In his early life, he lived abroad, having studied medicine in Zaragoza, Spain, in the 1970s, before moving to Turin, Italy to translate a Fiat car manual into Arabic, AFP reported.

When he moved back to Aleppo, he started a cosmetics factory.

Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images

His passion, however, is vintage cars — an interest he inherited from his father who was a wealthy businessman working in the textile industry. He drove a 1950 Pontiac, which Anis still owns today.

Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images

Anis used to own 30 vintage vehicles. However, his collection has been reduced to twenty during the intense bombing of the eastern part of the city last year, during which many of them were destroyed or stolen.

Thirteen of his cars are still parked outside his home and in his garden, but seven were impounded by police because they blocked the road.

Joseph Eid / AFP / Getty Images

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