Living on the front-line saves me from being bombed, says Syrian women

Zahra is a sixty years old and her origin goes back to the countryside of Aleppo governorate. She married when in the age of fifteen and moved with her husband to Alsukari neighborhood in the city of Aleppo to live there. She bore four daughters and spent all her time to upbringing them in the best way she could. They lived together as a happy family for fifteen years till her husband die thirty years ago.  

"Before my husband died I was not responsible for anything just the education of the girls, he was going out to work in the morning and came back in the evening carrying home accessories and meanwhile my daughters were going to school."

After his death, Zahra found herself in front of the responsibility to find a financial income to secure her daughters’ life. So she started to work in one plastic factory in Alhaidariah neighborhood. It was 26-years ago when she was still young.

"Every morning I got out of my house at eight and reached my work at nine, then working till the seven in the evening, and spending another hour to reach my home. There I was preparing the next day food and sitting with my daughters for a while and then going to sleep. I was happy for the wage, I got at my work. It was enough for us to live lives of dignity."

Zahra is non-educated women, she can’t read or write, so she force her daughters to educate at least until the high school. They could not go at the university, because she wasn’t able to pay for it.

Living on the front-line

During the war in Aleppo city, which has been going for two and half years, their house was bombed, which led to injury of her father. The rest of the family miraculously survived. After that, she moved with her family to the front line where bombardment does not occur.

"Anyone who lives in Aleppo knows that the front line with government forces is not included in the bombardment maps. Government would not throw barrels there, because its forces are so close to it, it can be less than 200 meters from where we live."

After we talked, she invited us to her house, which was not furnished at all, missing all basic necessities, no refrigerator to keep the food save, even no tap water, so they need to transport water using jerry cans from wells in the street.

"Here we live – me, four daughters, my handicapped dad and my mom. It has been four months since we did not have electricity in our house, we have no fans or heating system, we are used to summer hotness and winter coldness. Months ago some young guys from People in Need office came and inspected our situation. Eventually, they give us free bread every day and a large boxes of food every month,” Zahra said. “It is the first time that we got aid. You can see it by yourself, we are living in out of human area, no one living is living here, only few fighters from the opposition.”

In such crazy warlike Aleppo, people have been displaced from one place to another. Large part of the city's families moved to the countryside or to Turkey, while Zahra insists on staying here in this city between the rubble, because her brothers left her when she needed them the most.

"I do not have a breadwinner and it is me, who works every day ten hours to get 12,000 pounds (approximately 80 $) each month, which is very small amount of money to survive. I have to walk every day to work which makes me so tired. There is no kind of transportation between home and the factory. Me and my parents, we need the medicine, from which large part is not available here,” Zahra was explaining while crying.

“We are living alone in this world.”

We met her in the free bread distribution center for people in need in the early morning. She was there to pick up her bread and deliver it to home before going to work.

"Every day at seven in the morning I come here to take this bread that supports my family, I take it home and walk to my work, I do not know how long I will be able to continue working, but I feel like I am already old and tired. All I want is to end this war before I die so I am reassured that my daughters will not die under the rubble or due to starvation.”

Before we left Zahra, we asked her about general situation in the city from her side, especially because she is one of very few families who decided to stay close to the front line in the most dangerous part of the city.

“Few months ago it was crowded city, full of everything; now it’s ghosts one. Whatever you want you will not find it, no water, electricity, transportation, and no medicines, what only we have are barrels dropped daily over our houses and ISIS with government forces are coming to cut our heads”

At the end of our speech Zahra discouraged us to write an article about her, because she thought that it would not change anything.

“Nobody will read what you write, and if they do they will feel sad for a moment and then forget us. We, as a Syrians, are living alone in this world.”