Children of the borders of despair

 You awake as a seven-year-old to the sound of your two younger sisters crying and screeching in despair. You look over to them kicking and clawing on the rags they lay on. Then you look over to your mother to see her caring for your disabled father, who was left helpless following a bomb fragment that embedded itself into his spinal cord. One of the first feelings you experience is immense hunger, a feeling most suitably described as a long-clawed monster gouging and twisting your insides probably since you have not had any real food hit the bottom of your stomach in a while. You are then met with a difficult but somewhat obvious choice. You either attend school and get some education in a tent crowded with children living in the same misery as you or work. Mainly selling flowers or cleaning windshields at traffic lights – earning barely enough money to buy a loaf of bread hoping to quench the hunger eating up your and your family’s insides. You will most likely go with the latter. You suddenly wake up confused in a comfortable bed, give a big sigh of relief, realizing this was all just a bad dream. You walk yourself to your mother, who had already prepared breakfast, and you to speak to her of the crazy nightmare you had just awoken from. It seemed oh so terrible, but that nightmare is the living story of many Syrian refugees, and quite a positive one relative to the terror people live through, abandoned and alone on these borders of despair. 

These children are deprived of all their rights, the simplest of which is security. They were involved in no fight, raised no arms, killed no being, and hated nobody, and still, they were through the consequences of a war they did not want to be a part of; a cause they do not comprehend, and a ruthless tyrant that hates them while spoiling his children with the fruit robbed from them. Shackles were put on their dreams. They could have dreamed of reaching the sky and flying further beyond were no eyes had ever laid, and no mind had ever fantasized, but all they could dream of today is to sleep, not worrying about whether there will be a tomorrow. The children of the borders of despair had carved themselves an agonizing corner into my intellect. I think about them every day, and I wonder how to change that reality. As neither they nor their elders have any power to change it themselves. We, however, can. At the very least, we can offer them the minimum needed for a secure living – creating a turning point where they can stop worrying about their survival and begin dreaming about their futures.

One key factor that can turn their lives around is education. Being offered the opportunity to be in a safe environment suitable enough for a school will help them break through the shackles placed on them and begin the unstoppable machine of creativity, empowered through learning – providing them with hope for a brighter tomorrow. An entire generation will be lost if we do not band together and take the actions necessary to aid their kids. Unfortunately, despite how much we desire, we are all understandably engulfed in our lives and dreams and cannot take a trip to Syria and help these kids. There are, however, trusted non-profit organizations with qualified groups of volunteers, such as Molhams team, who are active in that area and are working day and night to provide for these kids. To do our part, all that needs to be done is to facilitate these organizations and provide them with the support and funds necessary to continue on their honorable mission and expand upon it further.