Girl chronicles Aleppo terror in ‘Myriam’s Diary’
PARIS: Her childhood shattered by “grownup stuff,” Myriam Rawick was only eight years old when she began recording her terrifying experiences during the siege of Aleppo, Syria’s second city.
“I woke up one morning to the sound of things breaking, people shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is greatest’ in Arabic),” Myriam wrote. “I was so afraid I wanted to throw up. I hugged my doll tight, saying ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, I’m here with you’.”
The gut-wrenching chronicle, translated from Arabic into French and published on Wednesday, recounts how Myriam’s working-class Christian family had to flee their neighborhood in Aleppo when militants ordered them to leave.
“When the war broke out, Mom encouraged me to keep a diary,” Myriam, now 13, told AFP in an interview. “I thought that this way one day I could remember what happened.”
It was French journalist Philippe Lobjois who learned of Myriam and her diary and realized it provided a window on the war from the inside.
“Le Journal de Myriam” (Myriam’s Diary), covering the period from November 2011 to December 2016, was the result.
“Aleppo was a paradise, it was our paradise,” Myriam wrote in the diary.
The girl fond of drawing and singing will never forget the dark days of March 2013 when “men dressed in black” forced her family to flee.
“I rushed to put my books in my backpack. I love books, I can’t do without them. I put on two anoraks, one on top of the other, to protect myself from stray bullets.”
The family reached the western part of the city, which was under regime control but still regularly targeted by rebel bombs.
“The missiles frightened me the most. One evening, I was going to bed when the sky turned red with a deafening noise. A missile had fallen in the street next to ours.
“My parents gave us sugar, saying it would help us be less afraid... but I found it didn’t change anything for me!“
The diary recalls how the family took refuge with a neighbor.
“My mattress was in front of a bay window and I was afraid of windowpanes, that they could be shattered. I’m pretty, I don’t want to be disfigured,” she joked to AFP.