| A Syrian Boy |
| Text and photo by Hsiao Yiu-hwa Translated by Wu Hsiao-ting |
If it weren’t for the civil war in his mother country, this Syrian child wouldn’t have come to Turkey. If Tzu Chi weren’t holding aid distributions for Syrian refugees in Turkey, I wouldn’t have shown up in Istanbul at this time either. Both of us were foreigners in Turkey, but karmic affinities led to our encounter. We met at a learning facility for Syrian refugee children near the end of 2014. The facility had been set up in Istanbul by a handful of Syrians worried about the education of Syrian children displaced by the civil war. The makeshift school was located in a building space provided without charge by kind-hearted people. The Syrians who had established the facility hoped to bring a ray of hope to refugee children from their own country by providing them with a free education. The boy, still very young, probably didn’t understand the worries of the adults and the effort they had expended to set up the school and keep it afloat. What was happening in his home country was likewise beyond his comprehension. With an innocent expression, he looked out into the world with big, lucid eyes. I wonder if I’ll ever meet him again. If we do, I hope it won’t be in Turkey, but in Syria, his own motherland.
|
|
