SYRIA UPDATES
A MESSAGE FROM WAAD
DECEMBER 2024
Hello everyone,
The past couple of days have been very emotional for me. I have so much to say, but at the same time, I find it hard to express myself.
In 2016, around this time eight years ago, we didn’t know if we would survive. We were in the last hospital in Aleppo after six months of siege by Assad, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah militias. Sama was about to turn one year old, and I was pregnant with my second daughter, Taima.
It was clear we had lost Aleppo and that we were going to be forcibly displaced. But despite everything, we held onto hope that something might change. The situation was so horrible that people started fleeing toward regime-held areas. Sadly, some of our friends were detained and tortured to death, while others survived by some miracle.
Before we left, we said goodbye to everything. We left our hearts there and moved forward, terrified that we might not make it. We survived, but the loss of Aleppo remains a wound in all of us.
Aleppo became a distant dream I held onto with all my being. I sleep and wake up obsessing over it. People who know me often say they see it in my eyes, in my cooking, in the details of my home, and in the stories I tell.
The greatest heartbreak of my life is that I can’t take my daughters to live in, or even visit, the place they should belong to—the place where they should grow up.
I made for Sama film and started the Action for Sama campaign to not give up on that dream, to promise myself, my daughters that I will never forget Aleppo.
Eight years on, Aleppo is still a deep, unhealed scar. As Syrians, we were abandoned, betrayed, and crushed. We carry a pain bigger than this world. Because of our trauma, we don’t know how to celebrate, and we can’t believe that tomorrow might hold something better.
Today, there’s a new chance to go back, to have hope again.
