Run! Or You Will Die! – Part 1 of 3
Millions of Syrians have been displaced since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in July of 2011. One family from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, lost everything: their house, their prized possessions, and their precious city, to a bomb in September of 2015. This is their story. This is their perspective.
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Mohammed
“We have to go. Today!” Mohammed sternly tells his wife over the phone. Run now, or you and your family will die, is the thought going through his mind.
“Why? We aren’t ready yet…” Ameera, Mohammed’s wife, responds frantically out of confusion.
“It’s gone,” Mohammed says, still trying to believe it himself and still reeling from the sight of his house, everything he worked for, gone. “The house is gone. They dropped a bomb on the neighborhood this morning. Everything is dust and rubble. We have to go now!” Mohammed animately explains.
Ameera
Ameera has nothing to say. They had lived in that house for so many years…she can’t imagine living anywhere else. Not only do they have to leave their lives and house, but their entire culture. Aleppo, Syria is everything to them. It is their home. In shock, she turns to her daughters who had just been finishing up some errands in town. They were all about to head back to the house when Mohammed called. Keep it together. Your daughters need you now. “We can’t go back home. We have to leave Aleppo now,” Ameera explains to her four girls, Nour, Roma, Bahea, and Heavine. Nour is the youngest of the girls, at the age of 16.
Roma
No words. Our home is gone? We can’t go back? What will we do? What will happen to us? Questions are running through her mind as their plight begins to sink in. What about Issa? We are engaged to be married. She instantly takes out her phone and calls him.
After Roma frantically tells Issa what happened, he ensures her, “I’m coming back for you. I won’t leave you. I promise.”
Issa, living and working in Turkey, drops everything and comes back for his future bride in Syria. Issa meets the family in Aleppo before starting their long and arduous journey. (Over 75% of the city has been destroyed by 100 different factions warring in Syria.) The family walks for two hours and arrives in the city of Tarsus, Syria. They are very thankful that they had some money saved up for this journey, not as much as they had hoped, but it is going to have to work. Mohammed heard that Germany said they would take as many refugees as would come, so he leads his family out of Aleppo and begins the journey to Germany.
After arriving in Tarsus, the family takes a bus to Lebanon while Issa has to separate from them and run on foot across the border into Turkey. Once in Lebanon, the family travels on another boat to Turkey in order to re-unite.
Issa
Shvoom! Shvoom! Head down and legs moving like the wind, bullets wiz by Issa as he runs across the border to Turkey. Some are so close he can hear them whistling by and feel the movement of air around the bullets. Am I almost there?, he thinks to himself after running for 20 minutes. Every stride he takes, he is cheating death, hoping he makes it all the way so he can be with his love, Roma. With absolute determination, he picks up his speed for the last leg of this deadly trip across the border. After forty-five minutes of running, he is finally safe inside the border of Turkey. He stops to rest and looks down at his clothes. In awe, he discovers bullet holes that cut through the fabric of his clothes, but to his astonishment, not one scathed him. Breathing heavily from the adrenaline of running for his life and the exhaustion that comes with running for forty-five minutes, he sits down to collect his thoughts. Instantly, he thinks of Roma. I have to find her. With resolve, he stands up and travels through Turkey and finds his future bride and the rest of her family.
Mohammed
Sitting in silence around the living room fireplace in a small hotel room, everyone looks downward, no one speaking a word. There are no words.
Floors creaking and shoes rocking with each step, Mohammed paces back and forth on the old wooden planks as he thinks through the next several road blocks in their way, the main one being entry into Europe. As hours tick by one by one, only one other sound is heard, the crackling of the fire. It taunts and haunts them as it destroys each piece of wood, one section at a time, leaving only char at the end of each spark. Hours pass by in this silent torture until…Mohammed stops pacing. He stands in the center of the room, facing his family, and addresses them saying.
“Listen to me and hear what I say.” He knows he has their attention, but needs them to understand the severity of the words to follow. “I am going to take Bahea and Heavine with me to Germany. I will keep in touch with you as I can and map out the pathway for the rest of you to follow. I need to take the two oldest girls now. The quicker we get to Germany, the better. Since they are old enough to be considered adults, the European government may want to separate them from us. If I travel with them, I will make sure that does not happen. It may take longer to travel with the entire family, so the quicker I make it to Germany, the better the chances we will all be re-united. Do you understand?” He looks around the room as each head nods slightly in agreement, as they try to repress the fear that he can see in their eyes.
Mohammed turns to look Issa directly in the eye and says…
