Joslyn Massad: Imagine hope for Syria's children
Imagine Joy, a shy 12-year-old girl from Tulsa, who is uprooted after her family’s house burns down. She and her mother, father, two older brothers and younger sister start their search for a safe haven but find none. They finally decide to begin the journey to her uncle’s house in Wichita, which has been unaffected by the fire.
Joy is grateful for her new home, albeit hardly adequate for a family of six. There, Joy is back in school, but her father struggles to make ends meet as an out-of-work house painter. She still wakes up to the distinct sounds and smells of combustion, the alarms, the dead bodies in the street, the blood, the screams, the fear. To her, it’s all still so real.
Joy misses home. She misses her friends, her school, her relatives, her things left behind. She expresses her feelings best through painting, whether it be fond memories of her grandfather’s house or dramatic scenes of destruction that continue to plague her nightmares. She hopes to one day be able to go back to Tulsa to open an art gallery. She believes her art can help people. Joy is inspiration.
Now imagine Joy is a Syrian girl, her struggles much more challenging, her reality much more devastating.
Although Joy isn’t real, Ibtihaj, which means Joy in Arabic, is. She is a shy, sweet girl from Homs, a city in western Syria, which has seen some of the worst fighting since the conflict began more than 4½ years ago. She lost her home, but it was a bomb, not a fire, that destroyed it. Her family did go from building to building and neighborhood to neighborhood in search of a safe shelter. However, there is little to shield Syria’s children from the horrors that face them. Her family fled to Ajloun in the north of Jordan, where she is now back in school after the violence in Syria prevented her from going to class for an entire year. Ibtihaj’s father is unemployed because it is almost impossible for the 1.3 million Syrian refugees in Jordan to work legally.
Like the story of Joy, Ibtihaj is nostalgic and traumatized. Images of home consume her thoughts and artistic expression. And also like the story of Joy, she is driven by her hopes of returning home and her dreams of making a difference in the world. Ibtihaj is inspiration.
Ibtihaj’s story is tragic, along with millions of other children affected by the conflict, including the more than 12,000 who have been killed. According to UNICEF, more than 8 million children inside and outside Syria need humanitarian assistance. To put that into perspective, imagine more than doubling the entire population of Oklahoma — that’s how many children need our help.
War affects the smallest of children in the biggest of ways: their presence so delicate, their innocence so real, their vulnerability so acute, their futures so uncertain. Yet despite the horrible tolls the conflict has inflicted on the Syrian children, they often speak of their longing for the homeland, their hopes for peace, and their dreams of a better tomorrow.
We can establish a moral link with them by tapping into our own childhood, our own innocence, our own dreams, our own pain, and ultimately, our own joy.
The future of Syria’s children is ours as well. We can no longer turn a blind eye to their suffering. Imagine if it were our children. Imagine if Ibtihaj really was from Tulsa.
Imagine if she was our daughter, our sister, our cousin, our friend. Imagine what it would be like to reconnect our senses of humanity and honor to the children of Syria to reward them for their strength rather than punish them for someone else’s weakness.
Imagine what it would mean for us as a people to shower their delicate little souls with compassion and warmth. Imagine the joy we can feel by being Syrian children’s ambassadors of love, light, hope and peace everywhere.
Imagine…
Joslyn Massad is a Tulsa-born Arab-American journalist and human rights activist who has covered the Middle East extensively, including the Syrian refugee crisis, after completing a Fulbright fellowship in Damascus. She is organizing a variety of fundraisers across Tulsa to support Save the Children’s efforts to alleviate the suffering of Syria’s children.
Source: www.tulsaworld.com