Today, a group of Syrian refugees who volunteer with CARE in Jordan and Lebanon will join CARE staff in running the ‘Dead to Red’ marathon. The group will run the 242 kilometres between the Dead Sea and Red Sea in a relay to raise awareness and funds for the ten million people affected by the crisis, which enters its third year this weekend. Among those taking part is Amal Al Basha, who explains why she’s running for her former pupils and all Syrian children.
I grew up in the Yarmouk Camp for Palestinian Refugees in Damascus and used to be an English teacher before I had to flee to Jordan. It’s been almost two years since I last stood in front of my class at Al Emleha School.
Sometimes I had to shout out my grammar lessons so that my voice could be heard over the thunder of bombs and the humming of tanks. The children panicked and so did I. But I knew I was the only one who could make them feel less afraid. Sometimes I made up stories. I told them there was a big celebration with fireworks. But the children were smart. One girl asked me: “Teacher, why are you lying to us? This is not a celebration, this is a bomb. We hear them every day, we know what they are”.
Here in Jordan, it breaks my heart when I register refugees in CARE’s urban refugee centre and parents tell me that their children are not going to school. They simply cannot afford to pay for the school bus, books or even pens. They are struggling to survive, to pay for rent, water, food and medication. Often, it is the children who have to contribute to the families’ earnings in order to make ends meet.
A few weeks ago, a father from Homs told me that his ten-year-old son used to be the best student in his class. But then the father, formerly an engineer in Syria, was shot in his back by a sniper and they were forced to flee to Jordan. Now his little boy, the eldest in the family, has to work in a restaurant from 8am to 8pm because his father can hardly move due to his injuries. He earns five Jordanian dinars ($7 AUD) a day. I could see this big man’s eyes fill up with tears. He kept saying: “My child should not work, he should learn. He should have a better future than this.”
I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was nine years old, and I hope that I can be a teacher in Syria again when the war is over. Some of my students, however, I will never see again. I saw on Facebook that one of my favourite students, Mohamed, was killed. He was on his way to the barber to get his hair cut when a splinter of grenade shrapnel hit him and went right to his heart. The doctors in Yarmouk could not do much for him; he needed oxygen, but the electricity had been down for days. They wanted to get him to a hospital, but there are no cars, buses or ambulances. His heart stopped beating in October 2012.
In November of that same year, we went back to Syria from Jordan for a few weeks because we thought the situation had improved and we missed our home. I love talking and I have always been good at finding the right words at the right time. I wanted to use these words to make Mohamed’s mother feel better, but when I knocked on her door to console her, for the first time in my life, I felt like someone had torn the tongue out of my mouth. My speech was simply inadequate when looking into the eyes of a mother who had lost her child. What was I supposed to tell her? What could I possibly say to ease her pain? So I just hugged her for a very long time and we cried together.
I have never been a big runner, but when I run through the desert it will be Mohamed who will keep me going. I will think of the sadness in his mother’s eyes and with every step I take I hope we will get closer to a world in which no Syrian mother ever has to lose her child again. I will run for the children of Syria whose right it is to go to school, to live peacefully, to learn, to live carefree and feel happiness and safety again.
But I am also running for myself. It may sound funny, but there is something stuck in my head that I think and worry about every day. I think about the day this crisis ends, the day Syria can start a new, peaceful chapter in its history. Millions of Syrians will leave Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to go home to Syria. What if all the buses and taxis are full? I will not want to wait a single day to see my homeland again. If I can run 242 kilometres through the desert, walking 176 kilometres from Amman to Damascus should be easy, right?
For more information on the Syrian refugee crisis, click here.