So Bassam will save Aleppo
"Don't you recognize him?" I had just arrived at the Franciscan convent in Aleppo when a tall, young guy with big glasses, a garish shirt, and a smile that struck me, hugged me tightly. He was Riad Jallouf and I knew him. We had met years earlier with his wife Kinda Tauil. That long hug in Aleppo was the only "infraction" I made to the anti-Covid rules. I have not hugged anyone but my family members since last March.
When I had met them, Riad and Kinda still wore mourning, they were dressed in black, their house was dark, the only light illuminating a small, full-color photo of their only son killed by a sniper when he was only eight years old. I stood before a different man. "On Easter night we were reborn. We thought that our son from Heaven wanted us to continue living for him, for all the children in Aleppo. We have a son, we came back to life, and we owe it to Bassam and the Risen Lord." He said everything in haste as you do with a friend to whom you have to tell so many things in a few seconds. They had started to live again, this is also happening in Aleppo, Syria.
More than 24,000 boys and girls have been killed in Syria. During "the Battle of Aleppo," from July 19, 2012 to December 22, 2016, snipers hit them while they were going to school, while they were playing in oratories, while they were walking clear of walls with their parents. Bassam was killed while at the oratory and playing with his classmates. He was the only child of a young couple, who "saw love in him, life giving happiness in watching him grow." Bassam, like thousands of other boys and girls, killed, maimed, shot just because they were children. Killed to kill the future of the country. Now Bassam truly represents "the seed that falls into the ground and dies and bears fruit, much fruit." His dad and mom have resumed living and building a city where war is no more. The children have resumed going to school, not without difficulty because each has returned to his or her classroom but those who have suffered psychological or physical trauma are doing so with great difficulty. Those who have lived without touching a book and pen for years are in danger of missing years of school. The classes are too large and those who fall behind are being excluded. The Franciscans, with many volunteers, are also helping with school catch-up.
After the war ended, it was useless to try to play soccer with kids here in Aleppo. The kids thought that colorful thing rolling on the asphalt was a bomb, a device ready to explode, to kill. The colors, the music, the theater, the cinema was gone absorbed by the gunfire, the explosions, the missiles that hit everywhere: churches, mosques, houses and entire buildings. After two years, the play therapy is paying off. The Franciscan convent, of St. Anthony of Padua, is located in the center of the city, and the Franciscans have built there, in the large garden that surrounds it, soccer fields, basketball courts and, above all, a large swimming pool that, during the summer, is populated by thousands and thousands of girls and children of all ages. Muslims and Christians try to find a smile with two splashes of water and a snack made together: seventy thousand attended last summer, the second since the end of the war. It is a therapy involving many young people who through music, theater, painting, drawing, and sports have identified paths to recovery. They are led by a young Muslim doctor, Binan, together with abuna Firas Lutfi, regional minister of the St. Paul area that includes Lebanon, Syria and Jordan of the Custody of the Holy Land.
Renato Burigana