When they eventually got out during a rare cease-fire, led away by their aunt who now cares for them, they ate food they hadn't tasted for more than a year. And then they vomited. It was too much for their swollen, malnourished stomachs. When they drank water with sugar, they got diarrhea.Most of all they just want to play. Rajib says, "I miss my father," but the others keep quiet. I felt they were children who had terrible experiences locked up inside them. They had clearly seen things no child should see, but they couldn't or wouldn't talk about them.I'm not qualified to call them traumatized. But they have lived amid the most brutal kind of warfare, a siege aimed at shelling and starving a civilian population to the point of surrender. They have no parents, but they are alive. They have each other. And sometimes in Syria that is enough.
Around them, and encouraging them to do whatever they want, are volunteers not much older than the children. In any country, especially those torn apart by war, the volunteers of the Red Cross or Red Crescent are angels of mercy. In Syria, the angels have been murdered.Thirty four Red Crescent workers have been killed trying to help Syria's children, its wounded, its besieged, the victims of its savage war. But hundreds of young people continue to sign up to help their people and their country. They do their best to help children on both sides, those in rebel areas and in government-held districts. Often they die at the front line.
This week Amnesty International estimated that 128 people have died of starvation in Yarmouk since Syria's army tightened the siege of the district last July. Access to food and medicine was cut. Amnesty says that more than 200 people have died of hunger-related illnesses.The organization accuses the Syrian government of crimes against humanity. There is no question the army is blockading the area to force those inside to surrender or starve. So far there has been no surrender, only starvation.It's not just the children of El Buzum school who are exiles, who fled their homes in terror. It's most of the teachers, too. So they understand each other and draw strength from each other.