Life after: the child who spoke for Aleppo
A year after her Twitter account became a heart-wrenching insight into the lives of thousands, Lisa Harvey meets Bana Alabed, now eight, to find out how her life has changed
when a seven-year-old girl tweets she’s scared of dying in a bomb strike, the world takes notice. At least, that’s what Time magazine said in June this year, when they named Bana Alabed one the 25 most influential people on the internet.
Today, I’m in New York to meet Bana. The little girl – whose life the world feared for in the siege of Aleppo a year ago – is wearing sequinned leggings and a Zara parka, boasting about watching The Lion King and ready to discuss her book, Dear World.
Bana’s story began in September last year, when her devastating descriptions, images and videos of war-ravaged Aleppo amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. On 13 December 2016, Bana sent a despairing tweet and brought the horrendous realities home to the world. ‘My name is Bana, I’m 7 years old,’ she wrote. ‘I am talking to the world now live from East #Aleppo. This is my last moment to either live or die.’
Despite critics dismissing her account as antigovernment propaganda, Bana became a symbol of the Syrian conflict. ‘ The power of Twitter kept me strong,’ she says. ‘I was so excited when my followers were going up, and people were supporting the hashtag [#Standwithaleppo]. It felt like I had a million friends. I’d read their messages when we had to hide in the basement as the bombs were falling like rain. People said they loved me and it gave me hope.’
Her mother Fatemah, a former teacher, set up the account last September and helped Bana tweet in English, but the idea came from the youngster. ‘I asked Mummy if people knew what was happening to us,’ she says. ‘I wanted to tell them how my friend Yasmin had died and how my school had been bombed. I thought if people knew how many people were dying, they would help us.’
In November, government forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-assad retook more than a third of the rebel-held east of the city, and Bana’s house was destroyed. Tweeting on 27 November she said, ‘ Tonight we have no house, it’s bombed & I got in rubble. I saw deaths and I almost died.’ Her family, including her parents and younger brothers, Mohamed and Noor, survived the blast but had to keep moving further away from the army pursuing them.
‘I don’t like to think about what I saw outside,’ Bana says. ‘Hundreds of people who were hurt and bleeding lying all over the ground. Many were crying and moaning. And a lot of people had their eyes closed, who I hoped were sleeping. The air smelled very bad – worse than when the tyres were burning. It is a smell I will never forget.’
Fears for their safety peaked when the account shut down for a day and #whereisbana trended worldwide. ‘ We had become a target so I took us off Twitter until I felt it was OK again,’ explains Fatemah now.
During that time, they found a building at the end of east Aleppo where they lived on one cup of water
Tonight we have no house , it’s bombed and i almost died
and one small meal a day. ‘All I could do was lie down because I was so tired,’ says Bana. By midDecember, her family was trapped in the worst bombardment yet. In one awful moment in the book, Fatemah remembers a night from that time, saying, ‘After all we had endured it had come to this. “It’s over,” I think I said out loud... Perhaps death was the only way to have peace.’
It was then that Bana and her mother tweeted the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu: ‘Please save us now.’
Çavuşoğlu had been in talks with the Syrian government for a ceasefire so families could be evacuated to safety via buses. ‘ The children saw the buses as their freedom, but there were lots of people waiting and it was very dangerous,’ explains Fatemah. ‘ We suddenly heard screaming. They were shooting at people trying to get on them, so we had to go back.’ Two days later, they made it on to a bus. ‘ When I saw the buses, I started crying and grabbed Mummy’s hand and we all ran towards them,’ Bana recalls.
But the buses didn’t move. ‘ We couldn’t get off. We waited and waited. Everyone was going to the toilet, the babies were crying and we were scared a bomb would fall on us,’ says Bana. ‘It was a disaster because the regime was surrounding us and I kept thinking, “No, please, please, not now,”’ adds Fatemah. After 19 hours without food or water, they were finally driven 20 minutes to the countryside village of Idlib in west Aleppo. ‘ When we got off, I drank so much water and I had so much fruit. It was like we were in paradise,’ recalls Bana.
But the family was still a target, because of Bana’s profile, so they were flown to Turkey. ‘ When we got there, my brother heard a car go fast and he was so scared, he started running,’ says Bana. ‘I stopped him and said, “It’s not a bomb, we are safe now.”’
Within days of arriving in Turkey, Bana was invited to meet President Erdoğan at his palace and the family started adjusting to their new life, living in a hotel. ‘I liked everything there,’ Bana remembers. ‘I could play with my brothers in the garden and I made new friends, but I had bad dreams where I was searching for my mummy and daddy, and I could not find them. When I woke up, I was crying. It made me think of the children in Syria and how I wanted to help them. I don’t want them to feel scared.’ The family now lives in an apartment in Turkey, Bana started school in September and her parents work for a relief agency, liaising between Syrian refugees and the Turkish government.
Bana and her mother continue to use Twitter for activism and she regularly calls on world leaders to help.
But her online presence comes at a price. Bana has received death threats and trolling from people who claim her story is fabricated. ‘I wanted to show that we are a normal family,’ says Fatemah in their defence. ‘I took pictures to show this is the life children in Syria live every day. Our story is for all of Syria and we have a lot of support and great people backing us.’ That’s why they decided to write the book, says Bana. ‘It was sad to remember the bombs for the book, but I wanted to tell people about my life, about the hunger and the bombs.’
How does she feel about her life – and her fame – now? ‘It makes me happy,’ she says. Some people have already compared her to Pakistani activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, who wrote about life under Taliban rule and was shot in the head by militants for going to school. ‘She is doing amazing things and I would like to do that, too,’ says Bana. ‘I would also like to go back home to build our houses and our school. My dream is to become a teacher and teach Syrian children how to speak English, like my mum did. But what I want more than anything is for the world to stand together and be one so that we can stop the war.’ ‘ Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story Of War And Plea For Peace’ (£10.99, Simon & Schuster) is out now