Baby born under rubble thriving with her adoptive family
It will be years before Syrian infant Afraa comprehends that she once attracted widespread attention in the news.
Afraa came into the world amid the wreckage of a building demolished in the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a year ago, resulting in extensive devastation in her northern hometown of Jandaris.
People worldwide extended support to her family, and aid agencies offered assistance.
Rescue workers in Jandaris, the hardest-hit Syrian area in the disaster, discovered Afraa a day after the February 6 earthquake.
Her umbilical cord was still connecting her with her mother, also called Afraa, who had died.
Her father and her four siblings were also killed.
She is one of many orphaned survivors of the earthquake.
“We will tell her about her story, slowly, as she grows up,” her uncle Khalil Sawadi tells The National.
After the earthquake Mr Sawadi and his wife, who have six children of their own, adopted Afraa.
They lived together for months in a tent before moving to a house.
Reports at the time of her discovery said she had lost an arm, but this turned out to be untrue.
“Her health is good,” says Mr Sawadi while holding Afraa, who turns one today.
She is on the verge of uttering her first word, he says.
Of the 60,000 people who died in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, 13 per cent were in Syria.
The impoverished areas outside the control of President Bashar Al Assad in the northwest of the country bore the heaviest brunt.
Video footage of Afraa being carried away from her destroyed home a year ago circulated on social media, causing widespread astonishment.
She was taken to a hospital in nearby Afrin. Both Jandaris and Afrin are part of the northern Syrian enclave near Turkey, which is controlled by Syrian rebels opposed to Mr Al Assad.
The baby arrived at the hospital with bumps and bruises.
She was cold and struggling to breathe. But she made it through the ordeal. Medical staff named her Aya, which means “miracle” in Arabic.
Her name was then changed in honour of her late mother.
Dozens of people from the Middle East and beyond reached out to help the Sawadis.
Some even offered to relocate them abroad so they could start a new life.
Mr Sawadi says he and his wife did not want to leave Syria, although he described the infrastructure as “so bad” in Jandaris.
The rubble has been cleared but the city remains “without reconstruction”, he says, although food, medicine and survival kits did eventually arrive, mainly from Turkey.
“People want housing, roads, water and a sewerage system – not mattresses,” Mr Sawadi says.
He hopes the situation will have changed by the time Afraa grows up.
“She is a gift from God, as dear as my kids. Maybe even dearer,” he says.