“I want my mother not to get tired, so I do all of the housework to help,” says Lamees, with a shy smile on her face, from the tailoring workshop she works at in Aleppo, northwest Syria.
The thirteen-year-old have had to mature much earlier than any child must. During a decade of conflict in Syria, not only has she witnessed violence, death and loss, but also, she has had to find enough strength to be able to support her mother and siblings
More than seven years ago, Bustan Alqasr neighbourhood of Aleppo, where the family lives, became an area locked between conflict lines in the city of Aleppo. “Every night, I trembled because of the loud fighting sounds outside of the house, so I would crawl into mom’s lap for shelter and ask her whether or not this night would be our last one alive,” says Lamees, remembering the times they sheltered from violence escalations in the area.
Only at the age of six, she lost both her father and uncle, who passed away when on their way to the local market to buy food. “An explosion took place right down the street from our home,” she says. Lamees, her mother and her three other siblings were shocked by the loss of their father. “I like to remember laughing hard when my dad and I used to play together,” she says. The family lost their supporter and the only breadwinner, so they were on their own amid a time of distress.
Thinking they had no place else to go to, the family stayed in their home in Bustan Alqasr. Until, one day, when fighting intensified and violence neared. Lamees’s mother took her children and fled for safety. What Lamees recalls from the day of displacement still aches her. “My mother tried to cover my eyes, but I saw it all. There were dead people on the street, and I heard screaming everywhere.” The family took shelter, with relatives, in a small house near their neighbourhood. And as violence subsided, in 2017, they returned to Bustan Alqasr.
