Syria Still Learning and Loving Despite War, Syrian Journalist Says
Syria has been left wounded and bleeding by war and violence, but a new surge of hope seems to be rising among the ruins as children strive to obtain proper education and people still "fall in love," despite the crisis that the country is faced with.
Journalist Zaina Erhaim is a Syrian who was able to get proper education outside her country. She left Aleppo, now a war-torn area where Russian jets, black flags, and bombed apartments are signs of the ongoing crisis that has forced many residents to leave with hope for a better life in Europe.
Erhaim acknowledges that she is and always will be a Syrian and she believes she can use her education to help alleviate her people from their pain in some way. She is now the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Syria Project Coordinator.
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In her account of how people continue to live life amid all the fighting and bloodshed, she said, "People are still trying to survive. They are still getting in love, they're still getting their children to schools...although now the schools are in basements, although the field hospitals are in basements."
On the other hand, she admitted that "things are [now] different" compared to the years when parents allowed their children to attend schools and people roamed the busy streets and shops.
Aleppo, once a budding town of small businesses and shops, has now succumbed to the battle of control between the Islamic State forces, other rebel groups, Islamists, and the government militia. Erhaim said she has been talking to residents in the town where she came from and their stories broke her heart.
During her interview with CNN, she recalled a discussion with a school headmaster, who is also a mother, where she asked how the mother kept her children from getting scared of the sounds of war, particularly in the night when massive bombings occurred. "She told me that she gives them sleeping pills so they won't be scared," she said.
While people living in the ravaged town are trying to live life despite the decision of others to leave for Europe, Erhaim said her purpose for coming back to her town is to encourage her people who decided to stay in their hometown to keep living.
She has trained about 100 local journalists to "spread the word" of life so her people can "learn how to appreciate every single moment because that might be [the] last."
