The militarization of the uprising took its toll on Syrian children in particular. It was them who lost their childhood, their education and ended up homeless, weary orphans dying on the cold streets. Many Syrian activists took interest in the plight of the children. These groups sought to spare children this fate by trying to establish schools in refugee countries, give them presents and toys and launch campaigns to provide school supplies and psychological support. Others, on the other hand, with nothing in hand but a camera, attempted to document the children's suffering and agony.
One of these documentaries is a movie titled “Shower”, produced by the Street Media and Development Organization. The scenes of the movie seem as if they were inspired by a chapter of Dante's Inferno, where thousands of children grow up surrounded by nothing but violence, poverty and need. The tragedy is aptly reflected in the eyes of a Syrian child collecting garbage for warmth and a living. The movie presents a frightening prophecy of our collective future, as Syrians, if the war continues.
The 26-years-old filmmaker, Ahmad Khalil Ismael, and producer Alia Khashook started posing these questions in a collection of silent movies titled: “I want to grow up”. The series was an attempt shed a light on the “lost childhood of Syrian kids.” To that end, Ismael headed to the city of Manbij in the countryside of Aleppo, looking for stories. "I heard that many children go to al-Hal souq, they collect food and vegetables that fall off cars and share them with their families,” as he recalls in an interview with Syrian Untold.
One cold day in 2012, Ismael found himself in Manbi, a city swimming in darkness for lack of gas and electricity. Ismael, who had devoted himself to photography and filmmaking since the outbreak of the uprising, headed to the al-Hal souq. He captured the horrific scenes of kids scouring the streets for a stray fruit or vegetable to feast on with their poor families. But it was one kid, going through the plastic rubble, who particularly caught his attention and was to become the protagonist of his movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NGFK68WTZU
“The kid was looking in the trash. I noticed him looking for plastics and combustible materials, which is normal when people are looking for anything to keep warm. But what prompted me to talk to him was when he picked up a dead chicken off the street and shoved it in his bag.” Ismael was overtaken by the story of Muhammed, a 9-year-old who used to put his own life in danger to buy bread from bakeries and sell it, with some profit, to feed his family. When the Free Syrian Army forbade him from continuing with his small business he started looking for food in landfill sites to feed his family including his father and uncle who were injured in the war.
Ismael, who filmed “Freedom Torch” for Alarabiya channel, decided to make this movie, which was aired on France 24, a little bit longer in order to document every aspect of children lives in the city. But “between 3-4pm, Manbij was bombed by an interstitial missile, and 24 people were killed. The city was painted pitch black and I couldn't go through with my shooting.” says Ismael.
Ismael who had been working on a new film in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, is now stuck in Turkey waiting for the heated battle between Kurds and the ISIS to end, because “the regime as well as some armed groups are targeting reporters and journalists, which puts my life on the line.” Ismael is now hoping for the day he could return to Syria to finish his film and tell the story of Syrian sufferings. Because, according to the filmmaker, “Mohammad's story isn't the only, nor will it be the last one.”
