She may be around 5 or quite possibly older, but she is small. Her little hands are clutching four clear plastic bags. The top one is a goody bag with a handful of small local chocolates. Then there is a coloring book, sliding from between the goody bag and her elbow. Her left hand is working hard to prevent two more slippery bags containing warm clothes — most likely from benevolent donors — from falling. I do not know her name, but I know she is in Aleppo. I will call her Salma.
She is very elegant, wearing a tastefully assorted turtleneck and vest with tiny embroidered flowers. Her little skirt is hidden under the bags she is clutching, but we know she is dressed up by her clean white tights. If I can venture another guess, Salma has a creative mother or grandmother somewhere — someone taking care of her who has decided that she will be wearing something nice for a Christmas party this year, in shades of indigo and blue that go very well with her purple eyeglasses. Salma looks like a small tower of cute color and shiny plastic wrap, on top of which sit giant ear warmers, not exactly her size but justified by the snowman glued at the top, complete with his green hat and red bowtie. Unlike Salma, the snowman is wearing a giant grin.
She is posing for a picture, probably intended for the donors whose gifts generated the plastic objects tumbling between her tiny limbs. But Salma is not smiling. Take the color away and you might think the child is about to burst into tears. Her expressionless face can hardly conceal the reproaching stare in her eyes. “Why have you forgotten me?” I imagine her saying to the beholder. It is the sort of picture that says a million words.
Looking at it on my computer screen this Christmas Day, too many miles and light years of safety away, I am stirred by shame. Salma lives in Aleppo. She is not the only one unable to draw a smile for the camera on this occasion. Dozens of children around her are hugging goodies but barely any are able to smile. Even in this year of ominous global suffering, Salma's portrait strikes a chord. The pain this child’s eyes are sending to the world is unbearably condemning.
I scroll down to a post from Mufid, not his real name, who is a respected cardiologist in Damascus. The senior doctor’s social media postings are typically terse, formal and often scientific. His careful notes come across as non-partisan, encouraging, edifying and always respectful. This week, his Christmas greeting is a telling read: “In this blessed season, we — Syrians — will complain. To this world. To God.”
Mufid’s opening sentence gives way to a litany of one-line supplications, each starting with “ya Rabb” (oh Lord). English-speaking Christians would call this text a prayer of intercession. Muslims would use the Arabic word “Du’aa.” In either case, this prayer is a plea from the heart, the suffering heart.
“We are not well, oh Lord,” goes the doctor’s invocation. “We are bearing more than we can … We are living our present moment in fear and have almost lost hope in our future.” The prayer of a few lines is not short of inflictions: Pain, cold, hunger, thirst, darkness, illness, feeling abandoned and, worst of all, not knowing why. At its end, the prayer asks for one thing: Rest. A tall order in today’s Syria.
Mufid’s words, much like Salma’s eyes, are staring the world in the face with one plea: To see their pain, and to make it just that little bit less unbearable. This is the abandoned Syrian people’s wish for the holidays. May heaven’s mercies, and those of the earth, touch little Salma’s heart and reach the forgotten corners of Syrian pain.
• Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo.” She is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and associate fellow at Yale College.
Arab News
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