Bassel would take me into Damascus’ side streets and alleys to “secret” restaurants and shops selling the best pies, sweets and shawarma. I would never have tasted them otherwise. He was arrested in 2013 and never heard from again. Until I saw him on YouTube…
She was a stranger with a strange appearance and a strange request. “I’m not a beggar,” she told my mother. “I just want some old clothes or rags that you no longer need. I need them as a pad for my paralyzed daughter.”
The same government that subjugated its nation still reigns. That very same government that is slowly being rehabilitated back onto the international stage, with its vast catalogue of human rights violations being conveniently forgotten. A government that made our children orphans and abandoned them to the streets.
“When the soldier was about halfway, at a height of some fifty meters, fear paralyzed his feet and made him cling onto the ladder. Embracing the ladder, he hung there, as if frozen in mid-air.”
What governs our relationships with our nations? Are they based on sentiments of belonging and love, or are they based on what our nations can provide for us? What if misery is all that it can provide? Could love alone sustain our relationship with it?
I’ve almost made peace with the idea that everyone I know is going to die soon, I started to calculate: would I rather die with my parents in Syria? Or would I rather die with my partner and friends here? What if my parents die? Would I rather be there or hear about it from here?
The COVID-19 Pandemic has cast its dark shadow on Mariam Hammado’s life, a Syrian woman who is extremely concerned that one of her four siblings might get infected with the virus. All of her siblings suffer from a mental disability, which causes them to be unable to figure out what’s going on.
