Samar Joukhadar, a Syrian mother from Daraya, along with her three children, became a refugee in her own country, and then embarked on a long and arduous journey to escape Assad’s barrel bombs. This trek, which Samar calls “the journey of death,” not only represented a flight from Assad’s violence, but also constituted an odyssey to discover a place that offered “life” to her family, and especially to her youngest child, a daughter born with a life-threatening heart condition (a hole in the septum between the heart's two lower chambers). Treating the infant would, according to an Al Jazeera report, require access to advanced and specialized hospitals, a factor that helped to determine Samar’s decision to make a dangerous voyage to the Greek-Macedonian borders.
During her journey, Samar met merchants of death, Syrian smugglers who robbed her of $12,000 and tossed the young mother onto a street corner. She knew these smugglers, her tormentors, whose photos and telephone numbers she claims to still possess. Since that $12,000 represented everything she owned, Samar pleaded with the men to return the money, and even appealed to their “patriotism,” asking how they could do this to a fellow Syrian, stranded with three children. The smugglers never returned one penny, according to the Al Jazeera report. Following this ordeal, Samar realized that her only hope now lay in a perilous sea voyage. She recited an old Syrian song which expressed the agony of this decision, and brought tears to eyes already red from weeping:
Take me to any country
Then leave me and forget
Throw me into the ocean and do not ask
Since I have no other way
--Elie Chalala
Copyright 2015 AL JADID MAGAZINE©
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