By Mousab, Syrian Refugee and Volunteer for CARE in Amman
I am a father of three children. My sons are five and six years old, my daughter is eight. I used to work as a graphic designer in Homs. We had a nice house there and enjoyed our life as a family. When the war in Syria started, I did not want to leave at first. It’s not a decision you take easily, leaving everything you worked hard for in your life behind you: your home, your memories, all of your belongings, some of your friends and family members. It’s something you think about and that you discuss with your wife, but you don’t leave until you absolutely must.
We were trapped in our house in Homs for a week. Bullet holes riddled all of the walls of our house. I used a screw driver and took all of our closets and cupboards apart. I built shields for my family out of them. I would have probably lost my mind if anything hadhappen to my family. We fled to Jordan as soon as we could. How do you tell your children why they have to leave? How do you explain to them that life as they knew it has ceased to exist? I still don’t know. But I do know that I want them to feel proud of their father despite the fact that I have lost my job and that I cannot take care of them without assistance anymore. I want them to feel hope. This was one of the reasons why I joined CARE’s “CARE for Syria” team which will run from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea on the three year anniversary of the Syria Crisis.
I told my children: “I am running for you, I am running for our country. We cannot lose hope and we cannot forget where we came from.” They are proud of me and told all of their friends in school. In their Jordanian school, students admire them for their “cool” father now. I volunteer for CARE’s “Safe Space” centre in Amman, where women, men and children from Syria can come every weekday, attend psychosocial activities and try to process what they went through during the war. Last week I held a session for Syrian women on proverbs. The Arab language has an abundance of proverbs and a lot of them are very helpful to the women as they start to talk not only about their suffering, but also about ways to deal with the new situation.
My children also come to our centre from time to time. They play and feel like children again. The other day, my daughter painted a picture of a woman leaving her house. Red and blue tears fall from her eyes. She wrote “Bye-bye, Syria” next to it. It’s these wounds you cannot see that I want to heal. When I run from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea I will think about this picture. I will run as far and fast as I can so my daughter will never have to paint anything like this ever again.
Click here to read about CARE's participation in the Dead to Red Marathon, and here to find out more about CARE's response to the Syria crisis.