Love and deprivation  

I am an unknown city that looks like my own city. It takes years to discover what I hold inside me.

I fell in love with the youth of the days that grew in the valleys of my home country. I saw my dreams growing, just like a green bud in its mother’s embrace.

Then came the nightmare of war that stole away the beauty of the bud. The roads disappeared and my dreams made me despair; the war ruined by childhood and took everything I loved, including the house I grew up in, where I used to find love and warmth. The war also took away a part of my soul, my brother, a victim of the injustice and sectarianism that exists between religions.

When my family was forced to part, the only thing left to hope for was that one day we would be reunited and go back to those days full of love. Yet, I fear that this dream of mine will not come true because the distance between us keeps growing.

28/3/2015

On that terrible day, I and so many other children from Syria were displaced by the heavy bombing of my city Idlib. We never got the chance to realise our dreams because our future and that of generations to come was shattered.

Today is the day I leave my homeland, with no fixed date of return. I will bury my birthplace together with my dreams in a wooden boat that will cross the seas towards a new future. There I will start a new life, like a newborn baby.

The war ripped out the windows of our childhood and closed the eyes of our dreams. This is what happened to the majority of children in Syria. It was as if a hand holding the scythe of oppression stretched out and unearthed our roots from the soil of our homeland. That same hand slit the throats of our happiness and took us far away from everything we loved.

If we do go back, who will bring back our companions? If we do regain our rights, how will we regain those years of love and deprivation?