Syrian boy’s letter of hope to the

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AS A SCHOOL counsellor in Malmo, Sweden, Pooja Sharafi has heard more than his fair share of suffering. Roughly one quarter of his kids at Sofielundsskolan are “new arrivals”, meaning they came to Sweden in the past four years. Many of them fled wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya or Afghanistan. Many have gone through hell to get here.

Earlier this month, however, Sharafi heard something he had never encountered from one of his students: a request for the king’s address.

It was made by a 12-year-old Syrian immigrant named Ahmed, a charming, quick-witted kid who had arrived in Sweden four months earlier with his parents and little brother. When Sharafi asked Ahmed why he wanted to contact the king, the boy answered simply: “I want to tell him my story.” And what a story it is. In a letter he showed to Sharafi a few days later, Ahmed laid out his harrowing journey from Aleppo, where his teacher was killed in front of his eyes, across the choppy Mediterranean Sea and through Europe.

“I read his letter to the king and I started to cry,” Sharafi said.

The school counsellor is far from the only one to be moved to tears by Ahmed’s tale of fleeing fire and death in Aleppo. With Sharafi’s help, Ahmed has taken his letter to the radio stations with the hopes of meeting King Carl Gustaf.

Sharafi knows first-hand how immigrants are helping Sweden. With parents from Iran, his identity as a first-generation Swede helps the 29- year- old counsellor talk to recently arrived immigrants.

Ahmed asked Sharafi to help him send his letter to the king. But he also suggested taking Ahmed’s cam- paign to social media. The two set up a Facebook page called Brev till kungen, or “Letter to the king”.

“My name is Pooja Sharafi and I work as a school counsellor at Sofielundsskolan in Malmo,” Sharafi wrote.

“One of our students, Ahmed, 12, came to see me two weeks ago and needed to talk about his journey from Syria to Sweden and about the feelings that have arisen during the trip. Ahmed also told about a desire to send a letter to King Carl Gustav and meet his majesty to tell his story. I asked Ahmed to finish writing the letter in Arabic (his mother tongue). The letter was translated and is now complete. The letter touched me to tears. Help me to share the post so that the letter arrives at his majesty.”

In an interview Ahmed said writing the letter was painful, but he was proud.

“It was hard to write it,” he said in clipped but courteous English, his third language.

“It was difficult because I wrote about my journey from Syria to Sweden.”

“My father said, ‘Are you the writer?’” Ahmed said with a chuckle. “Nobody helped me. I wrote it. Only me.”

Ahmed said he misses Syria and worries about family members still there. But he is fond of his adopted country, too. “I like it very much,” he said. “The people here in Sweden smile to my face all the time.”

Sharafi said the letter hadn’t yet led to a meeting with the king, but the counsellor still held out hope.

Even if the meeting doesn’t happen, however, he believes Ahmed’s story is opening eyes about asylum seekers.

“He has a gleam in his eye,” Sharafi said of his student. “He’s ambitious, really goal- oriented, really driven in what he wants to do.

“We need to hear these stories,” he said. “And we need to really see these kids for who they are.” – Washington Post

TELLING HIS STORY: Ahmed, 12, posts his letter to the Swedish king.