Experiences from Syria

"I went for a walk with my colleagues across the city that has been razed to the ground by ISIS airstrikes. There was an old man that insisted that we take his picture and told us he was an engineer before the war and he lost his son and became a carpenter after.

There was a Kurdish sign in his stop that said “i cut down trees for wood, but please don’t cut down my hope in god". While our own structural engineer obsessed over the puppies we found in the rubble and danced and played with the clamorous kids nearby. People came up to me and asked me if i was Kurdish. `Our only Arabic speaker laughed and jokes with the people we met. The clairvoyant among us told us about how she senses a great sadness among these ruins. Later we went to a coffee shop and over sheesha talked about how what we saw that day filled our hearts, a once proud city who holds its spirit intact in spite of there being only rubble left of it, what mysteries may lie within the broken down buildings, what unspoken dreams, what celebrated eccentricities.

As i walked back arm in arm with them to the house I couldn’t shake off the feeling that this gig is more than a job to me, these people I snuggle up to movies and make smoke sheesha with are starting to feel a lot like family, this broken incandescent place a lot like home, any my understandable passion for my cool adventurous job in Syria, a lot like love.

I hope we always remain how we were that day that- Cawa, always sassy and abrasive, that Jenny never loses her sense of empathy and Ben never loses his good heart. I hope we never get old or sick or jaded. I hope we always walk arm in arm across deserted streets on chilly afternoons letting them touch us, affect us and destroy us a little.