{"id":176207,"date":"2022-05-06T11:38:04","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T09:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proterrasancta.org\/a-mum-in-syria-the-story-of-jameela\/"},"modified":"2022-05-06T17:07:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T15:07:46","slug":"a-mum-in-syria-the-story-of-jameela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preprod.proterrasancta.org\/en\/a-mum-in-syria-the-story-of-jameela\/","title":{"rendered":"A mum in Syria: the story of Jameela"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jameela is a Syrian woman<\/strong>; she just turned 35 and she lives in Damascus. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.proterrasancta.org\/it\/la-siria-oggi-cosa-sta-succedendo-come-si-e-arrivati-a-tanto\/\">In 2011, when the war started<\/a>, she was 24 years-old and already mother of two children.<\/strong> Without a job, she devoted herself on home and children care, as many women did. Her husband <strong>Simon<\/strong>provided for his family with occasional jobs. . \u201cWe were not rich at all, but it was not bad\u201d. <strong>Until the beginning of the war<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-daily-life-under-never-ending-bombings\">Daily life under never-ending bombings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>She remembers very well those days of intense, never-ending bombs, spent with her husband and the two little sons, George and Louay, aged three and five. \u201cI was worried about what was happening, but at first I wasn\u2019t thinking about such tragedy\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As much as she can, she tries to educate her children and keep them active even when the school is closed because of the war<\/strong>. Then life at home becomes more monotonous, <strong>the children often find themselves playing on the balcony of the house<\/strong>, because going downstairs could be too dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jameela lives in a simple and humble house, with two rooms and a small courtyard to play in. A house like many others, close to St. Thomas gate, at the entrance of the Old City of Damascus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a warm Saturday morning at the end of April, the two kids went early downstairs to play football. \u201cI still had in my mind the loud explosion of the night, but I didn\u2019t give it much credit. <strong>It was quite normal<\/strong>. I wasn\u2019t worried that anything else would happen&#8221;. And thus, she decides to go to the market to buy some vegetables, while she tells her children to wait in the house for their father to return home. George and Louay reach the terrace to keep playing football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-greatest-desperation\">The greatest desperation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJust near the market, close to the big Mosque, <strong>I heard a loud explosion<\/strong> <strong>and had a strange hunch<\/strong>\u201d. Jameela quickly returned home, dropping what she had bought on the ground and increasingly speeding up. As she began to catch a glimpse of her house in the distance, she realised what had really happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A mortar shell had destroyed the balcony of her house, killing her children while playing.<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019ve been told I was left paralyzed from the shock. I could not speak for days. I couldn\u2019t even see the bodies of my sons. <strong>I was petrified<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the funeral, she starts crying out her desperation. <strong>Simon struggles to hold her, while Jameela tries to open the little coffins to give one last kiss to her babies.<\/strong> Nobody had the courage to tell her that only pieces of her children\u2019s bodies were found, which were then placed inside those little wooden boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cToday I almost smile at that naive gesture on my part. <strong>It was the hardest challenge of our life, mine, and my husband\u2019s<\/strong>\u201d. For several months, Jameela does not want to see anyone. \u201c<strong>I was angry with God for what He did to me<\/strong>. If He is good, how could He allow such thing? It seemed unjust and I vented all my anger against Him\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-unexpected-miracle\">The unexpected miracle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Some more months pass, and she becomes pregnant. No way, <strong>this time she did not want to keep the baby<\/strong> that had just started to grow in her belly. \u201c<strong>I could not bear to give birth to another baby that could somehow be taken away from me<\/strong>. Never again would I take such risk. I did not have the courage. No, I told Simon I wanted to have an abortion\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Then, what she calls \u201cthe miracle\u201d happened<\/strong>. She met some people from the parish, where we have opened a reception centre in recent years, who began to stay with her. <strong>To simply keep her company.<\/strong> This company begins to raise questions. \u201cWhy were these people happy? What made them capable of love? Well, the more time I spent with them, the more I realised I wanted to be like them, capable of that smile, capable of being happy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Those friendships turned into a daily support<\/strong>. So much that Jameela\u2019s heart slowly gained the strength to try to forgive and accept another child. That child still living in her belly. One night, she tells her husband Simon her choice. \u201c<strong>Simon, I want to keep this child<\/strong>\u201d. And so, she carries the pregnancy to term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-angel-that-god-sent-to-us\">The Angel that God sent to us<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A few months later, a new son was born, whom they decided to name <strong>Angelo<\/strong>. \u201c<strong>The Angel that sent the Lord to us \u2013 she says as she takes him in her arms \u2013 when we thought we had lost everything<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the story of Jameela, <strong>a story of pain and hope,<\/strong> that only the countries like Syria were able to give us in these years of war. We are telling it today, <strong>just a few days before Mother\u2019s Day<\/strong>, <strong>to remember and celebrate the courage of so many mothers<\/strong> who have raised their children in its victim and martyr country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jameela is a Syrian woman; she just turned 35 and she lives in Damascus. In 2011, when the war started, she was 24 years-old and already mother of two children. Without a job, she devoted herself on home and children care, as many women did. Her husband Simonprovided for his family with occasional jobs. . [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":176228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9742],"tags":[10211,10213,10212,736,10028],"campaign_code":[],"class_list":["post-176207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","tag-jameela","tag-jameela-en","tag-mothers-day","tag-syria","tag-syria-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v17.7 (Yoast SEO v19.14) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A mum in Syria: the story of Jameela | Pro Terra Sancta<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jameela is a 35 years old mum, she lives in Syria, and since 2011 she witnesses the war that took away from ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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