Rama. She is 19 years old. I met her in the International Rescue Committee’s women’s safe space at Idomeni. She was manning the music. Rama’s playlist and it was a beautiful mix. She studied English at Damascus University but she is from Dara’a. She loves to dance. Middle eastern dance. She danced for all of us sitting there knitting in the tent. Her movements full of grace. Elegance in an inelegant place. She showed me some videos of her dancing. Another place another time, a friend’s wedding in Syria. All of the women together and her dancing with the bride. Beautiful. Wearing a vibrant red hijab. She is hoping to get to Germany because that is where her brother is. She is traveling with her mother, her sister and maybe one other.  

Her father is still in Damascus.  

“I miss my Dad so much,” she said, as she flipped through photographs of the life she used to live. “Here, this is me with my grandfather,” she said, to a photo of her with a character-filled face of a man who’s lived long, wearing a keffiyeh. There were other photos. Her with her family at a picnic in Syria. Another of Syria in the snow. One more of her father’s house – a beautiful house. “This was before the war,” she said.  

And then she flipped to one of her brother standing in a room somewhere in Germany. A basic room, nothing grand. And then a photo of him – a close-up. His face has been distorted. “But the bomb…” she said and pointed out that now her brother has a glass eye. His lips are swollen, one side of his lower mouth scarred forever. Just like that. Nonchalantly. Flipping through some photos on a smart phone, listening to some music, totally chilling, and a photo of her brother brings us right back to the reality that surrounds us.  

March 2016