"He was one person out of thousands, but he was the man I was going to marry"

"'I will marry you one day.'
I remember his big green eyes and his beautiful, black hair that were so unusual for Iraqis...He was a year older than me but, by chance, we were sat next to each other during our fifth and sixth grade final exams. I was extremely nervous sitting next to a boy like that; my heart was beating so fast and my palms started sweating and as my mind rambled with self criticisms, he opened his mouth and told me that I was beautiful and that one day, he was going to marry me. For that one minute, I was engulfed with joy and had a smile plastered on my face; I totally forgot about the exam. We afterwards ended up spending a lot of time together. This was a year before the war began
Little did I know that the time we casually smiled at each other and said "see you tomorrow" would be the last time that I would ever see him.
I had gone to Syria during the war. My dad promised me that we would go back as soon as things settled down and became "less dangerous", and eventually we did six months later. When we went back, everything had changed...The people, the streets, the houses, even the air smelt different.
I had some exams left to do which is why I never could go look for him since at this time there were neither cellphones nor land lines. Then one day, my mum was telling me just "another tragic story" about this young man in our neighborhood who was shot in the pack of his parent's car. He was sitting in the back and all of a sudden his parents noticed he was very quiet...They turned their heads and saw their son bleeding all over the car seat. If they had noticed earlier he may have survived... When I asked who it was, she described him as a boy with black curly hair and big green eyes, then I broke down.
That was the first time I lost someone in war and it was definitely one of the biggest and most devastating shocks I have had, and this is coming from an Iraqi who lived in Baghdad during its worst times. There hasn't been a day that I don't regret looking for him.
I want people to pause and think about those innocent lives that were randomly taken because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. They never get mentioned in the news. They die everyday and no body even knows about them. These people had lives, futures, ahead of them. They never even had a chance. They are just considered collateral damage of this pointless war.
He was one person out of thousands, but he was the man I was going to marry." -Female, 22

"A Footnote on the Complicated Pages of the Middle East"

"Being a Palestinian means you have no set identity. You are just a footnote on the complicated pages of conflict in the Middle East. Being Palestinian also means you have no set homeland. Yoou are raised to love a land you have never taken a breath in, but you live in a land you are taught to never assimilate in. My discovery of being a Palestinian began in 1948, decades before I was born.
My grandmother lived in a house by the sea, in the bride of all cities, Jaffa. She saw first hand the Hagana terrorists who bombed the city constantly in an attempt to epel the native people. To this day she can remember the sight of people throwing their children off of boats into the sea out of fear the Zionists would catch them, they believed that maybe there would be a chance they could flee to Egypt. At the young age of three, she and her family walked on foot from Jaffa to Cairo (252 miles). Halfway through, her father had a heart attack; he was in disbelief that he was being forced to leave his land.
At the same time my grandmother was being exiled from her home, my father's family was being forced off their land in Ramleh. Hagana terrorists shot a young man, who would've been my great uncle, in the chest infront of his parents on the night before his wedding. The day after, 5 chidren were killed when Hagana terrorists threw a grenade into a home. This terrorism forceed that entire village to leave, and to this day the village stands untouched in a closed military zone. The villagers were displaced 7 times internally, until 1967 when they were exiled permanently to Jordan. To this day, they remain in the ragged refugee camps, Al Baqaa and Wihdat.
I am a daughter of Jaffa and Ramleh, raised in America by pure luck, and exiled from Palestine by pure misfortune. It is strange that all though I have never stepped on its soil or breathed in its sweet air, my love for Palestine i as great, if not greater, than the llove for Palestine my grandmother has. My family continues to see misfortune in their host countries today, and maybe that is why the hope to return to Palestine is so prevalent for all of us." -Anonymous 

"“That’s it, as soon as I see the light of day, were going to Lebanon"

"For my whole life I've been seen as a tourist in my own country, and spending basically my whole entire life living outside of Syria has never affected me as much as it had these past 3 years. Not until I first heard of the first bloodshed in Syria have I ever felt so connected, emotionally, to my homeland, to the land where my mother and father were born and grew up in, the land where I spent countless summers and winters and springs meeting with my enormous family and learning more and more about my heritage, culture and history. I've been restricted from visiting my country for over 2 years now, and as each day passes, I only feel a stronger sense of nostalgia for the days where I would wake up every morning in my grandmothers old, worn down, ancient Damascus home listening to the sound of birds and the salesmen eager to make a few liras to buy food for their families, and the smell of Turkish coffee and foul on a Friday morning. “Wake up teta! (grandchild) your Khalto (aunt) Hanna Salam and Basela, and Khalo (uncle) Khaled, Amin, Ammar, Jihad and Majd will be arriving soon!” Every Friday morning, I would wake up to the sound of my grandmother eagerly cleaning and cooking for the traditional family breakfast, with the crowd of 15+ people squished in the 50m-squared living room where they all spent their childhoods. Regardless of the noise, the mess, and the constant screaming and squabbling of children, they were family, and those were the moments I cherish forever. But now, its been 2 years, 2 summers wasted without being in Syria, 6 months of wasted family time, 24 Fridays that I wouldn't have breakfast with my enormous, Shami family. And what scares me? That there will be yet many Friday-less families yet to come.
Now, my Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and every single day of the week are filled with the constant stress and the hope that safety will fall upon my family, and that I would never hear of the bad news that any of them lost their homes, or their lives.
During the Spring/Summer of 2012, my family and I had been forced to stay in Syria for 6 months. Although it wasn't safe, I will forever thank God and be grateful that I had experienced what I hope no one I love and care about will ever experience in their lives.
The constant fear and terror before you sleep, that you may have a chance of not waking up, was always engraved into my heart. I witnessed Damascus turn from the peaceful, beautiful place into a war-stricken zone. I started waking up to the sound of bombs and gunshots instead of the sounds of birds, I would see tanks and military trucks instead the daily morning trucks filled with fruit and milk to deliver to those in their homes. I will never forget, one night I spent in terror with my mother, and my then 9-year-old sister, where there were tanks circling our homes at 4 in the morning and we were forced to hide in the bathroom, in fear that the windows would shatter from the noise pressure and any of us would get hurt. However, ironically, I saw this as a joke and I screamed out of my window: “could you please do this at a time other than 4 am? I want to sleep!” and that’s the beauty of the Syrian people today, they have seen this whole war now as a joke, they are trying to turn this travesty into a comedy movie in which it will hopefully end, and the normal Syria will return.
However, one other night, was the night where it changed my thoughts on the war forever, and I realized how my life was seriously at stake.
One night, at 5 in the morning, the electricity in the whole of Damascus went out. And there were bombs. And helicopters. And gunshots. That’s where my mother said; “That’s it, as soon as I see the light of day, were going to Lebanon this all dies down.” I left to Lebanon the next day for 10 days, but only to return back to Syria, my heart missed home. There's one thing that the media is completely wrong about, and that’s the Syrian Army, the one powered by Bashar Al-Assad. They are described as the terrorists, the murderers, the ones causing all the bloodshed, however, one of my experiences show otherwise.
One night, after a day out with my mother and sister visiting the family, my mom was driving back home only for us to find a bunch of checkpoints and soldiers aiming at a building. We asked what was going on, and there was a Free Syrian Army soldier armed within that building, hiding from the Syrian army soldiers. One of the SA soldiers told us to park our car right at the checkpoint (about 50m from our house) and walk the rest of the way home, just so the FSA soldier wont use our car as a target. MY mother then explained how we had groceries, and we couldn't carry them all, and so the soldier had kindly come into the car with us, and directed my mom to turn off the headlights to ensure we were safe. He helped us with out groceries and made sure we were home safe and sound, and asked us if we needed anything, since he noticed my father wasn't around, and it was only 3 women in the house. He also kindly moved some of his men to guard our building, since we were the only ones living in it, to ensure we were safe, and he always checked up on us to make sure we ever needed anything.
I hope my story will change the opinions of those that think all Syrian Army soldiers are terrorists. There will be forever good and bad people, even if they all work for the same cause. There are good FSA soldiers, and bad, and good SA soldiers and bad. Our world is filled with bad, and that is what causes war and violence, and our only hope to fill this world with peace is to over populate the bad with good." -A.I, 17

*These views do not represent the website's political views, we are just the messengers :)*

Just Pretend They're Fireworks

"We were never able to live in Iraq. It always seemed like there was something going on there; whether it was a war, the advancement of terrorism, a dictatorship, or now ISIS... So we were forced to live abroad, and my parents were forced to watch the slow but sure destruction of their home take place in the name of what many people in the West called 'good', from a distance and not be able to do anything about it.

I remember in 2003 when my grandmother came to visit us. We were all sitting on the fancy guests' dining table and the television was on in the background. We weren't very close to our grandmother, or most of our family because they were still living in Iraq, so this opportunity for us to bond with a member of our family was truly a gift and a blessing for all of us. We were all sitting at the table, talking about our days and what we had done at our new school and what we were planning to do on the weekend. All of a sudden, the atmosphere was demolished completely, as we heard the words 'the offensive against Iraq has begun and the Americans have reached Baghdad' come from the TV. I remember my mother, God bless her, jump up from her seat and run to the TV and start weeping because that's where her family was located. She and my father were going through the shock of their lives; they did not know what to do or think. We kept asking what was wrong but they would not answer us, we were sent to our rooms and away from the TV, confused, afraid and worried. I would not wish the situation upon anybody, not even my worst enemy.

The next thing I could hear from my room, everybody was on the phone trying to contact anybody they knew in Iraq just to make sure they were still alive and breathing. I remember hearing the question 'kolhom 3aisheen?' meaning 'are all of them alive?' and holding my breath for the answer. I could not help but think, if it was so hard for us, imagine what it must be like for them. My mother and father wanted us to talk to our families on the phone but it was so hard to convince myself to take the phone and ask them that one question, 'how bad is it today?'. I felt horrible. We all did. But I think most of all, we felt guilty. We felt guilty that we got out and our family didn't. Guilty that while we were having our dinner, people were battling for their lives over a fight that had begun and will end with political incentives that disregarded the very value and essence of human life in the region.

A few years after the war began we visited Iraq; I believe it was in 2010. This was the first time we visited since before the war was even anticipated. Everything changed. I remember riding from the airport in the taxi and seeing a never-ending wall adjacent to the airport highway and my dad asking 'hay shinoo?' (what is that?) and the taxi driver explaining how the terrorists hid behind among the trees and shot people with snipers, so they built a wall in between the trees and the highway to prevent the incident from happening anymore. That's when I realized how terrified I was to be in Baghdad, the war torn city of the Middle East. The city that was dubbed too far gone to be saved.

When we got to my aunt's house, which was where we were staying, my family explained to me the norms of the country, or what they had begun to consider the norms. This included staying clear of windows, taking a flashlight with you to the bathroom (you never know when the electricity would be cut off), always locking the gate and the door, only going out during the day etc... Finally, we were told that if we were to 'hear explosions its completely normal, just pretend they're fireworks, we find out how bad they are in the morning'. This is no way for people to live, whether it was for a week or for years, its enough to make a person go mad. I still can't be around fireworks without getting a mini-heart attack, and I was only there for 4 days. Imagine the trauma someone who has been there for longer has gone through or is still going through." - Female, 18

Numbers With Stories

Ever since the rise of conflict in the Middle East began, we have been hearing the same jargon being repeated over and over again by the media, by the politicians, by the desensitized public; "terrorism", "casualties", "collateral damage", "statistics", "percentages"etc... the list can go on for days. But it is very rarely that we hear from the actual effected civilians themselves; so rarely that at times we go as far as to forget these numbers actually account for people. We spend so much time equating an entire life, something so valuable, so precious and so beautiful to sound bites and statistics, that we forget that it easily could have been us, or own our families, or own our friends. This has desensitized us to the fact that these atrocities we see daily on the news happens to people just like you or me, making it harder for us to relate or sometimes even impossible for us to care. We may sometimes glance at the TV or the news, utter a quick "that's a real shame" or "how horrible", just to make ourselves feel less ignorant and a little more humane, but the truth is; we don't know what these people are feeling, or what they have gone through, or how they are going to be effected by it for the rest of their lives. We usually get carried away with the blame game and forget that as we are arguing, these people are paying the price with their own lives. Innocent children, women and men are being massacred, traumatized and scarred for life, while we sit here tracing history and wondering where we went wrong. The numbers and statistics, which the news channels seem to love to bring up, have reached an all time high. Each one of those numbers, has a story, a dream, an experience that they would love to share with the world; and although I will never be able to publish every single number's story, we all have to start somewhere right?

That is why I have started this blog. Here, you will be able to read experiences, stories, and views from people who have been victimized by the atrocities of war; whether its through direct experience (injuries, traumas, experiences and the like), or through loss of identity, expulsion from their home or longing for peace.