The Boys

Salaam aleikum va rahmatu Llahi va barakatuh.
In this story, I wish to tell you a little bit about the boys that were in the camp for women and children in Syria. If my calculations are correct, when I arrived in the camp, it had already been functional for approximately 8 years. From the very beginning the camp was a „sort of home”, for a long time, to Muslim women and children who, not really live, but merely survive there. When you are inside the camp, it seems as if time moves extremely slowly, barely passing. As a mother, you wake up each morning and go to sleep each night fearing for the safety, health and life of your children.
Ever since the camp was created there were all sorts of incidents and clashes between the boys inside de camp and the soldiers. From the onset, the guards disliked our little men, simply because they were representatives of the male gender and were perceived as a potential threat, regardless of the fact that they were, actually, small children, not future terrorists. Boys are, usually, full of life and energy, they want to run, to play actively, but inside the camp they are always enclosed and monitored. The entire surface of the camp is surrounded by a fence and on each pillar of the fence there are security cameras. For the guards, the mere fact of the boys chasing each other or playing „Tag, you’re it” is enough reason to intervene and try to forcefully separate them in order to “calm them down”. Usually, this results in all the boys with the age of 12 and above being rounded up, thrown into a vehicle and taken outside the camp. Some of them are brought back to the camp after a while, but others disappear without a trace, never to be seen again. I believe that the boys are beaten after they are taken away by the guards, I am 80% sure that this is what happens when the boys disappear and why only some of them come back.
Whenever one of the boys inside the camp was detained by the soldiers, it was clear signal that he was already considered an adult, viewed and treated as a grown man. In some of these cases, the boys were sent to closed circuit Kurdish schools, set in place especially for the boys in the refugee camp. For their mothers, this was practically the end, because they were never given another chance to see their boys again. From what the soldiers and guards were talking, the boys that were taken from the camp and brought to these Kurdish schools were meant to be trained as fighters, with the purpose of later being sent out to fight along the Kurds.
The grieving mothers would continuously kick at the gates of the camp, guarded by the Kurdish soldiers, requesting them to free their children, while the guards would simply ignore them and look away without a care. Moreover, the desperate Muslim women beg the soldiers to at least allow them to send their children some personal items or to write them letters. But, unfortunately, the cases in which the Kurdish guards actually accept to take and deliver a package are few and the instances in which the soldiers give them to the children are even fewer and constitute a rare exception, almost a miracle of Allah’s Mercy.
It is awfully cruel and horrible to raise your child, not knowing when your paths will separate never to cross again, and fearing each day that you might lose him. It is extremely sad to see the tears, the darkness and the void that fills the eyes of the mothers whose boys have been taken away by the soldiers. Even the mere thought of going through such a painful trauma gives and acute feeling of panic and fear… just the idea of not being able to see your child ever again, not having the possibility to talk to him, to ask him how he is, how he is feeling, if he is eating enough, if he is in good health or if he is ill, gives me cold shivers down my spine.
May Allah free each woman and each child from the places where they are forcefully being detained. May the Almighty unite in this dunya every mother that is separated and kept away from her child. May Allah the Merciful protect the soul of each Muslim and guide the to the gardens of Heaven.
Asira