Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
E bomb, a man pulled my friend Yasmin rubble... she was covered in blood and new I’d never get to play with her again
e bombs had stopped, Baba go up first alone and look to re safe. After a few minutes and said we could come up, sounded funny. got upstairs it was very, very d like someone had taken a our street and crushed it n pieces. The building next ompletely crushed up like it even been there. it had fallen on to our nd smashed the floor above cony had fallen down on to buried it. I guess we didn’t ymore, since there were not ds to drive on. uld hear people screaming g. All the neighbours called out to each other to figure out who was missing. All the families who are OK go to help everyone else.
If people are buried under the rubble, you have to move fast to get them out.
One person’s screams were louder than everyone else’s. It was Yasmin’s mum yelling, “No, no, no, no!” I got a funny feeling in my stomach. Yasmin lived in the building that wasn’t there any more.
Mummy and I ran over with the other neighbours. Yasmin’s mum’s black hair was completely white with dust. The only place she didn’t have dust was on her cheeks, where tears were running down.
The White Helmets were there now, just regular Syrians like us who wanted to help. Since we didn’t have any more ambulances or police to help us in East Aleppo, the volunteers helped when people were hurt or trapped after bombings. It was very dangerous for them. The regime didn’t like anyone helping people, so when the volunteers arrived the warplanes would sometimes come back again to bomb them too.
One of the men lifted a body out of the
We walked home quickly. A bomb could drop at any moment.
Before we got to our house there was a huge boom. The louder the boom, the closer the bomb. This was really close.
We ran so we could get to the basement. Mummy’s phone rang. rocks. It was Yasmin. She was floppy like she was asleep, and had a lot of blood and dust on her.
I couldn’t move or breathe because I was so scared seeing my friend like that.
They took her away in a truck they had turned into an ambulance. I prayed she would be OK. Mum hugged me tight and said, “Come on, let’s go home.” I couldn’t play the rest of the day – all I could do was see Yasmin and all the blood on her.
Later our street was filled with people taking bodies to the mosque to have prayers for them. They used to bury people
It was Baba, yelling: “Where are you? Are you OK?”
“We’re OK, Ghassan. We’re at home. What happened?”
Baba said: “They bombed the school!” He was at the market and everyone started telling him the school was bombed and they
had to run and help the kids. But we had all left. Baba kept saying thanks to Allah that we were alive.
But I felt sad. I would miss my school. Everything would be like before. No school, no work, no shopping, no going outside – just bombs, bombs, bombs. in the cemetery after the prayers, but with the war the cemeteries became full so they put dead people in the ground in the parks.
That night I saw Yasmin’s mummy crying in the street. The next day I saw her again, and she was still crying. “Yasmin isn’t here any more, Bana,” she said. I knew what she meant. Yasmin was dead. I wouldn’t get to play with her ever again.
Afterwards I was even more scared to die. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would feel like. I was also scared for my brothers or my parents to die. If we all died together, that would be best. Then no one would have to miss anyone.
Mummy says that if you are good and kind, you get to go to Heaven when you die. It is a good place, and you get to stay there forever. I hope Yasmin is happy there.
Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace, by Bana Alabed, published by Simon and Schuster, £10.99.