Aleppo - The Last Farewell
Surrounded by the regime’s forces, we remained on board for hours, waiting for the buses to move. There was a deafening silence, broken from time to time by a woman weeping or a baby crying. Out of fear, a pregnant woman went into labour and gave birth on the bus in the freezing cold of winter. We were left totally cut off from the outside world. As night fell and it continued to snow, the cold grew more ferocious. The next day at first light, the buses were finally given the green light. We stared out of the windows with a combination of fear and hope. By noon, I was in my parents’ house in an opposition-held area west of the city. It had been years since I had last seen them. My mother cried as she touched my head: “Oh my God… Amro, you are here; you are alive. Please do not leave. Stay here with us, son.” I was speechless. In the mirror I saw my face, dusty and pale. I felt conflicted: the joy of survival and reuniting with my family; and the agony of saying farewell to Aleppo.
The horrors in Aleppo are indescribable. They can be understood only by those who lived them. For more than three years, I have covered the events there. A daily nightmare of shelling, killing and forcible displacement. I told the story of a people’s hope for freedom and dignity. By documenting the daily events in Syria, Al Jazeera kept Aleppo from becoming a second Hama. “What is the use of what you are doing? No one cares about us,” people always asked me. I almost gave up. Yet, when I see what Al Jazeera, the only international news outlet inside Aleppo, has done, I realise it’s worth all the sacrifice. We made records for our posterity. Before being a profession, journalism is a noble mission.
306
307
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter