We Don't Need No Education - We Need Bricks For Our Walls
“I didn’t want to come today,” Ahmad says. “I wanted to stay home.” He kept looking at his phone, flicking through blurred images and videos. “I talked to my mum at 6am this morning. A bomber came to my town two days ago. They threw bombs at the market. Here,” he shows me an image of a wounded baby covered in dust. And one of a completely destroyed house. And one of a bleeding man. “Do you know these people?” “Yes, yes I know them.” His family home was destroyed. His brother and his mother are sleeping outside in the garden now, under a tree. His brother got injured at his leg, but apart from that his family is unharmed. More than 200 people died, he says, but they still don’t know what kind of airplane it was. They are trying to organize trucks and buses now to move people to the Turkish border – the only strip that is safe from bomb attacks.
He remembers it was 1998 when he started school. He was six years old. On his first day he immediately ran out of the classroom when the teacher came in. He ran to his friend’s house to play marbles until the afternoon, so his mother wouldn’t know he didn’t go to school. He didn’t know that his teacher, Mariam, lived in the same street as he did and that she knew his mother. “I did not like the other kids,” he tells me. "They were beating each other up, stealing each other’s pencils. I was thinking ‘What is this?’ and then I ran out. But my mum said to me I am good and handsome and everything will be ok,” he laughs. His father would always help him with his school work, explain everything to him before class and practice reading with him, so that when he was asked at school to read something out loud he would be very good. “I was a very strong reader. People clapped,” he tells me with a cheeky smile.
At some point he made friends with Ali, whose mother was from America and whose brother is a famous football player now. “He was Christian,” he tells me. Ahmad went to a mixed school, where boys and girls and Christians and Muslims were taught together. Ali also had a snake, an albino mouse, a cat and a dog, and sometimes Ali would put the snake around Ahmad’s neck. “I was scared, but he said it was no problem.”
He enjoyed going to a mixed school. With a wide grin on his face, giggling, he says “I had love.” His first love was called Ranem. “She was very rich,” he tells me. They would always meet during breaks and after school before they went home, and he would tell her ‘I love you’ and kiss her. When other boys tried to talk to her he would fight with them and say ‘she is mine now!’ That was in 3rd grade, they were ten years old. The following year he moved away to Aleppo and was very sad to leave her behind. When he returned for a visit one year later and met her again, she just looked at him and said ‘I don’t know you.’ ‘But it’s me, Ahmad!’ She turned around and ran to her mother. She did not want to talk to him. He has not seen her ever since. “When my wife reads this, she will be jealous!” he laughs.
Like in all schools in Syria, they had to wear school uniforms. The uniforms were not unique to the individual schools, but were stipulated by the government. “It was like an army,” Ahmad says. And the government made a lot of money from it. At some point they changed the colour of the uniforms so that people would have to buy new ones, he explains to me. Now, in his town, nobody is wearing the uniforms anymore, because people do not want to support Assad. But also children are not going to school anymore. The army at some point took over the school building of his and his sister’s old school. They needed a place for the soldiers to sleep. It is an old, French building with a basement. He points out this detail because the basement at some point became very important. A few years ago, his sister was 13, bombs were dropped right beside the school. All the children had to hide in the basement until the attack was over. When he heard the bombs, he ran to get his sister. She was ok, but six children and one teacher had died during the two attacks.
His sister is 17 now and got married six months ago. Her husband is 22, they are very much in love. They only had a very small wedding, because there are not many people around anymore. And people are sad. To Ahmad’s wedding, not many people came either. He told me that usually at a wedding people would shoot in the air with guns, but because only one day before his wedding day many people had died during an attack, he did not want to do it. “I usually like the shooting,“ he says. For his brother’s wedding, which was 10 years ago, they killed ten lambs and had a big barbecue. But on his wedding, his friend had just lost a friend and it was too sad. And now, today, people cry for the people in Ghouta.
When Ahmad first came to Ireland, he was very hopeful to go back to university and finish his studies. But nothing has happened since he came here over a year ago. His status still has not changed; he still lives under Direct Provision; he and his family still don’t have their own home. At some point he realized that if he were to go back to university now, he’d be 32 by the time he finishes. “It takes too long; I cannot go back to study.” Instead, he would like to have his own business. He has different ideas as to what it could look like. 1. Make Arabic sweets. 2. Export and import of goods from Syria. 3. Laundry service. “I talked to my wife about it. I can make very good Arabic sweets,” he tells me. “But I cannot eat it, I have broken teeth,” he laughs.
Thank you, Ahmad, for laughing with me today, despite everything.
