The will of survival!

Syria is not just Black or White as it seems in the stereotype in media, it is not either the Syrian regime or fighters.

There are also civilians who stuck in the middle, suffering silently the effects of this heinous war. There are children and youth who have hopes, goals, and dreams to rebuild their own future, humans who impacted by this war and still struggling to survive its horrors.

In the war, thousands of stories are being forgotten, everything is about the stereotype which is summed up in pictures of the bombing, destruction, and death.

On the other hand, there is also another face of that war, this face is those people who still doing their best to resist the bitterness of this dreadful war.

Um Mohammed, 62 years old, she is originally from Aleppo but she lives with her husband in Eastern Ghouta for more than 30 years, she is a very special person who has a very sweet heart.

Um Mohammed’s tale began with the siege that prevented her from seeing her children who live outside Eastern Ghouta, to her attempt to bring bread to her grandson from the nearby checkpoints that belong to the Syrian regime when the siege intensified in 2014, where she was shot in the abdomen by the Syrian government's Sniper, which was forced a tight siege that banned people from getting out or into the area, in addition to blocking the entry of the simplest items of life such as food, water, medication, fuel.

Two years after her injury, Um Mohammed started to recover, but as soon as her health began to improve, her husband got injured in an airstrike which led to losing his ability to walk normally. Here, Um Mohammed started a new chapter of her life, where she has to perform rehabilitation exercises to her injured husband alongside with shouldering the responsibility to provide the house’s needs, that destroyed house which lacks to the minimum ingredients to be called a house.

Despite all that, she did not give up to those tough circumstances, but she dedicated a room at her house and started farming chickens as a source of food and income.

In spite of her age, Um Mohammed attends a literacy class to learn reading and writing Arabic with a group of other women who are trying to overcome that harsh situation. Even, the teaching center got shelled many times too.

During my inherent to Um Mohammed which intermittently extended for almost a month, I saw her as a good example of the sincere wife, she was paying a close attention to look after her husband despite the difficulty of getting his health requirements in such a situation, she truly loves him.

I still remember what Abu Mohammed told me once describing the sincerity of his wife:

The resistance of Um Mohammed and her devotion, determination, and desire to live and learn represents the real Syrians from my perspective.