Imagine this

A missile hits your home when you are not there. The reason you are not there is because you are attending a funeral for a friend who was killed in a bomb blast. Your whole family though is there, and although they all survive, your children suffer in varying degrees of pain: Your 9-year-old daughter is burned over 25 percent of her body. 

Your 11- year-old son has severe burns up and down his right arm. 

Your 6-year-old son was so close to the flame that his hair turns yellow.  

When you try to bring your family for treatment that night the missile decimated your home, four hospitals turn you away and you have to wait until the morning.  

This is the way it is in Aleppo.  

Life.  

And this is the way it was for Abdullah Gasem and his family who have just arrived at Kara Tepe and are hoping that Europe will be kind to them. 

“My first thought the moment I arrived to Greece was that this is the first day of my life,” Abdullah said.  

We are sitting outside their shelter. He and his wife Na’hallah are here with their seven children, the youngest of whom is two months old. They want to go to either Germany or the United Kingdom because they have heard that this is where they can seek treatment for 9-year-old Amina’s burns.  

They want their kids to have a proper education in a place where they feel safe.  

“So they can make decisions about that they want to do with the rest of their lives,” Abdullah said.  

September 2016