INSIDE THE UNDERGROUND PLAYGROUNDS OF ALEPPO
For the children of Syria, parks and gardens are simply too dangerous to play in. Instead, as the bombs fall relentlessly outside, their only haven is below ground, in Aleppo’s newly created subterranean playgrounds. Lizzie Porter reports
IN THE SPACE OF HOPE centre in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, children are using colouring pencils to finish small works of art. On the mint green walls, bookshelves sprout from branches of tree murals.
But suddenly the gut-wrenching rumble of warplanes roars overhead and the missiles begin to shower down from above with deafening thuds.
Staff at this basement play centre have become horribly used to dealing with this. They gather the children together and take them into the ‘safe room’. They play music and start rounds of familiar songs, asking the children for their favourites. They do their best to bring smiles to the group of bewildered faces, and to drown out the drone of death above. Subterranean playgrounds such as this one offer something resembling childhood to the young residents of one of the world’s most dangerous cities. It’s a haven that is desperately needed.
Batool, eight, has not seen her father for two years. Like many thousands of people in Syria, he has simply disappeared. ‘We don’t know anything about where he is. I miss him a lot,’ she says.
Batool’s lifeline is the centre, which serves as an underground classroom, theatre, sports pitch and computer lab for the 300 children who attend. ‘I love it because there is everything for playing here, including chess, which my mummy taught me. It is my favourite game.’
Raghad, Batool’s 10-year-old sister, is old enough to remember Aleppo’s outdoor parks before war broke out five years ago. ‘I’d like to play outside, like children in other countries, but we cannot, because of the planes.’
But she is more scared that her school will be bombed, and she will not be able to return to lessons once the summer holidays are over.
Across Syria, up to 2.4 million children – nearly half of those eligible – are not attending school, according to a report by the New York-based Global Coalition To Protect Education From Attack.
Six-year-old Ayman has seen violence up close: he narrowly escaped injury when his neighbour’s house was hit by an airstrike. ‘The glass from the windows was everywhere and everything was destroyed,’ he says.
Football takes his mind off the war. It is his favourite pastime at the centre, played on the underground ‘pitch’ – a 6m x 10m room that also doubles as a badminton and a basketball court.
But Ayman looks baffled when asked if he would like to play in a normal playground. ‘There are no bombs here and even if there weren’t any outside, I would prefer it inside,’ he says. Other children echo his wish to stay in their small underground space: they say that even if the war ended, they would prefer to remain in the centre.
Space of Hope’s teachers and therapists recognise the problem. ‘For lots of the children, war is normal,’ says the centre’s Ahmad Hadad. ‘They don’t know what life is like without it.’
Teacher Tahany, 33, sees the children’s fears reveal themselves in their drawings. ‘When I ask them to create whatever they want, some draw blood and massacres,’ she explains. ‘Others have had problems with their families because of the stress of the war and they draw themselves running away from their homes.’
As for Batool, she wishes she could see her father, to make one of Syria’s thousands of broken families whole again. For now, when she’s not helping her mother, she finds solace in this underground space.
‘I just want to sleep,’ she says, ‘and then wake up and come to the centre. I wish I could stay here all night.’ For more information, visit unicef.uk/syria