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    Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace
    Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace
    Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace
    Ebook178 pages3 hours

    Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace

    By Bana Alabed

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    “A story of love and courage amid brutality and terror, this is the testimony of a child who has endured the unthinkable.” —J.K. Rowling

    “I’m very afraid I will die tonight.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 2, 2016
    “Stop killing us.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 6, 2016
    “I just want to live without fear.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 12, 2016

    When seven-year-old Bana Alabed took to Twitter to describe the horrors she and her family were experiencing in war-torn Syria, her heartrending messages touched the world and gave a voice to millions of innocent children.

    Bana’s happy childhood was abruptly upended by civil war when she was only three years old. Over the next four years, she knew nothing but bombing, destruction, and fear. Her harrowing ordeal culminated in a brutal siege where she, her parents, and two younger brothers were trapped in Aleppo, with little access to food, water, medicine, or other necessities.

    Facing death as bombs relentlessly fell around them—one of which completely destroyed their home—Bana and her family embarked on a perilous escape to Turkey.

    In Bana’s own words, and featuring short, affecting chapters by her mother, Fatemah, Dear World is not just a gripping account of a family endangered by war; it offers a uniquely intimate, child’s perspective on one of the biggest humanitarian crises in history. Bana has lost her best friend, her school, her home, and her homeland. But she has not lost her hope—for herself and for other children around the world who are victims and refugees of war and deserve better lives.

    Dear World is a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit, the unconquerable courage of a child, and the abiding power of hope. It is a story that will leave you changed.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9781501178467
    Author

    Bana Alabed

    Bana Alabed, born in 2009 in Aleppo, Syria, is known worldwide for her tweets during the siege of the city in 2016 and for her subsequent calls for peace and an end to all global conflict. Her tweets have earned her legions of admirers around the world by giving a remarkable insight into the daily horrors of life in the city, including airstrikes, hunger, and the prospect of her family’s death. In December 2016, Bana and her family were safely evacuated from Aleppo to Turkey. When she grows up, Bana would like to become a teacher, like her mother. Her father is a lawyer, and she has two younger brothers, Noor and Mohamed. She wrote Dear World and My Name Is Bana.

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    • 5/5
      Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace, Bana Alabed, author, Lameece Issaq, narratorThis is a very brief account of Syria’s Assad’s war against his own people. it is unusual because it is written by a seven year old at the time it begins, who turns eight years old by the time it concludes. Bana Alabed’s courageous message will resonate in the hearts and minds of every one who absorbs it. Who else but a child could so clearly see the pain and waste of war? Who else but a child could simplistically describe the brutality and violence, the fear, the danger, the cruelty, the loss, and the implicit stupidity of war, as succinctly?Bana Alabed was born to parents of the Muslim faith. Their marriage was arranged, but they came to love each other. Their life in Aleppo, Syria, was one they loved. Their first child, Bana, was happy and also loved Aleppo and the friends she made. Precocious, she learned to read at 3 and this gift of intelligence gave her a maturity beyond her youth. As the war broke out, and she spent many years living under the threat of death and destruction, she always questioned the reason and never fully understood why their own country was constantly attacking its own people.The book alternates between messages from Bana and her mother. The terror they faced, the kidnappings, the ransom, the deaths, the destruction, and their eventual desperate escape, are all vividly expressed in their words, but in the words of Bana, they are like arrows which enter directly into the reader’s soul. At seven, this child has more common sense and a greater ability to analyze the futility of conflict, than any adult around her. She grows obsessed with the desire to tell the world about the tragedy of what the Syrian regime was and still is doing, the crimes it is committing against its own citizens, and her voice, asking the world to help, asking the people everywhere to pray for peace, to help the victims, rings out loud and clear. Her effort has placed her in danger. It is hard to imagine that a vicious regime and leader would target the voice of a child, but this child has become an enemy because she is a voice for freedom and not the yoke of the tyrannical rule of the Syrian dictator. Her mother is aware of the danger her child is in, but she believes she has a greater purpose she must serve and will not stop her voice from ringing out and reaching others with her message of hope and peace.In her innocence she is eloquent as she describes the waste of life and limb, the unspeakable pain of loss, of the death of relatives and friends, the destruction of buildings whose inhabitants have no chance of surviving and no place to run, of schools blown up that could have been filled with innocent children, of people being hunted as they simply try to hide to escape from the violence. There was no way out; there was no place to go, however, Bana, a mere child, is trying to do what others have failed to accomplish. She is trying to give them an escape route. It is very heartbreaking to hear this plain truth as it is expressed in the voice of a young child. It is heartbreaking in its innocence, and horrifying to think of her as a potential target because she does not really have freedom of speech. Her message speaks volumes more than that of any scholar. Hope and peace are the simplest of requests, and she implores everyone to work toward those goals.
    • 5/5
      “I’m very afraid I will die tonight.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 2, 2016At the time that Yugoslavia collapsed, and Sarajevo was under siege, we were dependent on journalists to inform the world of the atrocities being carried out. These days, with Facebook, Twitter and the gamut of social media, we really have no excuse to claim that we are ignorant. It leaves me shamed and speechless to realise that it took a seven year old girl to alert the world to the recent situation in Aleppo.Bana Alabed has written a revealing account of life in Aleppo, starting before the siege and then detailing the awful situation her family found themselves in. Inserts from her mother (an English teacher), provide another view-point and some background to supplement Bana's narrative.Her family was reasonably well off, so they had the luxury of solar panels to power Ipads and telephones and Bana was able to send out Tweets, alerting her followers, of the building tensions and destruction surrounding her and her family. Eventually the authorities became wise to her activities and she, herself, became a target for the regime.In spite of defamatory trolls and on-line rebuttals, denying the source of the Tweets, it has been proven that she was in the places she claims and in a position to send out the messages. A seven year old was truly keeping the world informed.

    Book preview

    Dear World - Bana Alabed

    I was born with a smile on my face.

    My mummy told me I was born with a smile on my face. She says that I was always happy, even though I never wanted to sleep because I didn’t want to miss anything.

    I had many reasons to be happy when I was little. My baba always took me swimming at Alrabea Pool, which was my favorite thing to do. Going to the swings was my second favorite thing to do. I would also go to the market with my uncles to get Jell-O. (Always red, because that is the best flavor.) My family would go to eat at restaurants, and I would get to talk to many different people. Or we would eat dinner all together many nights at Grandma Alabed’s house, and there were always a lot of people there because I have so many aunts and uncles and four grandparents and two great-grandmothers. I had many books I loved to read, especially my favorite, Snow White. I love all stories about princesses.

    And another big reason to be happy: my baby brother. I prayed that Mummy would have a girl, because I wanted a sister very badly. But my brother was tiny and cute, with thick black hair that was soft like a doll’s—so it wasn’t so bad that he was a boy. When Mummy was pregnant, I picked out a name for a sister: Warda, which means flower, because another thing I love is flowers. But you can’t call a boy Warda. Instead the name we gave him is Liath (which means Lion) Mohamed. We call him Mohamed.

    I was only three when Mohamed was born, but I took care of him. I would bring Mummy nappies when she needed to change him, share my toys with him, and say Shush, shush when he was crying.

    At night I got to hold Mohamed in my lap, and Mum would sit next to us on the sofa in the living room and read to us. Baba would come in and sit in his favorite chair and listen to Mummy read too. When she was done with the story, I would go over and climb into Baba’s lap while Mummy put Mohamed to bed. Mum would tell Baba that he should take me to bed too, but we both liked it better when I fell asleep on his chest. He would tell me stories from when he was little and some that he made up. My favorite was the one about a mummy sheep who leaves her babies at home and tells them not to open the door for anyone unless they know the secret word, and then a wolf comes and tricks the babies into thinking he is their mother. They open the door, and the wolf eats the sheep! I hate that part. But the mummy gets the sheep out of the wolf’s stomach and puts rocks in there instead.

    I could feel Baba’s voice through his chest as he told me the stories, and it would make me feel warm inside. The best place to be was in Baba’s lap.

    So, not many bad things happened to my family. Mummy would say that we are blessed. I thought my family would always be happy.

    I wanted to live in Syria always.

    I wanted to live in Syria always because it is a special place. It is a very, very old country, and my family has lived there forever. Grandpa Malek says that it is important to understand where you come from because that makes you who you are. He says we should be proud to be Syrians, because Syrians are kind and honest. You can leave a million pounds in your house and no one will steal it. We always share whatever we have with our neighbors and take care of our families, because family is the most important thing to us. We know that we should always be generous and loyal and true to Allah. We pray a lot so that God will help us be good. We want a simple life. This is what is important to us.

    When Grandpa was a little boy, he lived in the countryside. When he grew up he married Nana Samar, who grew up in Aleppo, so they moved there even though Grandpa always said he liked the country better because it is more quiet and there is fresh air. Mummy and all her brothers and sisters were born in Aleppo. And Baba and his brothers and sister were too. I was born in Aleppo also, just like them. When I grew up, I was going to live down the street from my best friends, Yasmin and Fatemah, and from Mummy and Baba, just like they live down the street from their parents. My family and I could eat dinner together all the time and go for walks at the Citadel of Aleppo and make each other laugh. Everyone in my family liked to laugh, so that was easy. I was going to become a teacher and teach Syrian children how to speak English.

    Those were my dreams.

    Nothing helped us to forget Baba wasn’t there.

    Then the bad times started. First they came to take Baba away. Mummy, Mohamed, and I were at Grandma Alabed’s house. Baba and his brothers were down the street sitting in front of the market like usual. They were there almost every evening, sitting in folding chairs, drinking apple tea, and laughing about funny memories or arguing about who was better at PlayStation or who was smarter and more successful using loud voices, even though nobody was actually mad. Baba and all his brothers grew up in our neighborhood, so all their friends would come around too. Mummy said they liked to pretend they were still teenagers. Sometimes I got to sit with them, and they would tease me about how I thought I was all grown up even though I was little.

    This day, Uncle Nezar came running to Grandma Alabed’s house, where Mummy, Grandma, and I were making dinner, and told us they took Baba away. They is the Mukhābarāt, the secret police who work for the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

    I asked Mum why Baba wasn’t coming home and where Baba went and when he would be back.

    He’ll be home soon, Bon Bon, she said, and gave me a hug. Some people just need to ask him some questions. Everything will be fine.

    But I didn’t know whether that was true, because everyone seemed very worried. No one even wanted to eat the dinner we made. All the uncles stayed in the living room talking about how the police took Baba because the regime thinks everyone is a spy—especially the men. They have to question people to find out who is loyal. My baba was not a spy, he was a lawyer; it was his job to help people and to make sure things were fair.

    We stayed over at Grandma’s house that night because it was too sad to go home without Baba. It was better to all be at Grandma’s and worry about Baba together. All the next day, Baba still did not come back. We didn’t know where he was. We tried to sing songs. We tried to color. We tried to read, but nothing helped us forget that Baba was not there. Mohamed kept crying for Baba, because Baba had never been gone before. I kept telling him what Mummy had told me: He’ll be home soon. That night Mummy prayed with me. We asked if God would please make it so that Baba could return

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