There are 19.5 million refugees on the planet. Nearly 4.2 million are Syrian and 1.9 of them are living in Turkey. This is a story of 1 brave young woman named Noor, as reported by Refinery 29.
Noor is a Syrian refugee. She has been living in Turkey for the past two years.
5 years ago Noor was inspired, with the rest of the nation,
by images of a 26-year-old Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, setting
himself on fire in protest of the generations-long authoritarian rule. So many
Arabic countries are still ruled by leaders who inherit their leadership by
blood, and not just Arab nations, but everyone was frustrated and ready to rise
up.
In 2011, popular movements made up of students like Noor
were toppling the region’s longest-standing leaders, from Zine al-Abidine Ben
Ali in Tunisia to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Syrians including Noor were hopeful
that Syria was next and that the throne of President Bashar al-Assad's, whose
family have ruled for the past 40 years, would be toppled. When the uprising
hit her hometown of Aleppo in April, Noor took the streets with her fellow
classmates and protested.
"It was the first time in my life I felt I could say
anything I wanted,” Noor says. “As girls, we felt so good. In our culture,
girls aren’t to raise their voices. In the protests, we were shouting.”
By May, the military put a frightening end the the protests
and when it became too risky to take to the streets, Noor and her classmates
moved underground. The Free Syrian Army had taken over parts of Aleppo and
Assad’s forces responded by cutting off funding for city institutions,
including schools, to put pressure on the people.
“We felt responsible for starting the movement, so we had to
do something for the children inside the city of Aleppo, for their education,
and for the teachers whose salaries were cut,”
“We managed to pay the
teachers, and we also worked for the children’s psychological support. We
created activities for them, using whatever would distract them from the
bombings.”
Noor helped organize an exhibit of the children’s artwork
which included scenes of violence, bombings, and the flag of the Free Syrian
Army. Then, on September 14, 2013, soldiers raided her house, seized her laptop
with the children’s drawings on it, and arrested Noor along with her father.
Nor spent 50 days in prison in a 10x11 foot cell that housed
up to 30 people. At least 20 of those days she spent staring silently at the
wall. During her imprisonment, she was interrogated every day and forced to
sign false statements admitting she was terrorist.
“So many times I wished I were dead, only so I don’t have to
be there. The only thing that kept me alive is the wish that my mom could see
me again,” Noor says. When Noor was arrested, her mother, kitchen knife in
hand, told the soldiers that she would kill herself if they took her daughter.
Noor promised her mother she would be back.
Then one night, she and other prisoners were ordered to
board a bus who took them to the Lebanese border as part of a prisoner swap.
Those, which included Noor, who were not exchanged were released on the streets
of Damascus in the middle of the night.
Noor knew at that point she would have to leave her hometown
for good, but not before seeing her mother again. She made her way back to
Aleppo to see her parents, then fled Syria with her brother.
Noor used a friend’s passport to cross into Turkey, and her
brother made his way over barbed wire fences with the help of smugglers. They
eventually settled in Gaziantep along with their parents who came to join them.
Today, she works with an international aid organization, coordinating supplies
of water, food and health kits for people still living in Syria. Her work,
although from afar, makes her feel she is supporting Free Syria.
“I don’t want to lose what I worked for, regardless of the
reason. A few weeks ago, my family was suggesting to me that I get engaged to a
man who lives in Denmark,” Noor says. “But I said no...Maybe my life would be
better off in Denmark, as a refugee with a salary, but I don’t want to leave
everything behind me and go. I want to be able to work for Syria, no matter
what the job is, as long as it has to do with the Syrian people inside.”
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