Everyone is celebrating; it is time for family and friends, going back to sweet memories, or setting up plans for next year. For Syrians, during the last few years, things have been quite different. Actually, this time of the year is nearly the worst to go through.
A Syrian friend decided that we should try to be happy and together in the last day of the year. She launched an event on Facebook few hours before midnight, the idea was to celebrate together (at least virtually) and to share our wishes and feelings especially as most of us are spending this day far from home and family.
Can we celebrate?
Our event started, we exchanged salutations, wishes for a happy new year, love, prosperity and joy, and all the traditional words. Then a friend who recently left to Sweden, wrote to us: "Why can't we be happy and celebrate like others? God, we are killing each other, being bombed by our enemies and friends, what I really wish is to go out and shout loudly, Stop this war."
Then others decided to express their real feelings; their wishes were simply heartbreaking:
"I want to feel happy again, since I left Syria nothing really matters." "I will not celebrate until the war is over." "I wish I can go home, but it is totally destroyed." "I forgot to bring my photos; I wish I remembered to bring them with me." "I am starting a new life and new career in Berlin, I keep myself busy the whole day, but I am sad from the inside, my family is besieged in Homs.""Cheers guys, we should not let the war defeat us.""Things are so complicated here, people are so racist, I don't think I can take it anymore, I just wish people have some mercy!""My brother is in prison since 2012, I just want to know if he is alive or not." "I just wish that this daily killing stops, I don't want anything else.""Would you please stop complaining, we don't even have food here once; I wish I had a nice meal like the one mum used to prepare. ""I can practice medicine here, last year my little nephew died as no medical treatment was available; he died because of his wounds, I just wish if I were there and rescued him." "Those fireworks are driving me crazy, my daughter is so scared, she remembers the bombings in Aleppo, I just wish she can forget what she saw there."
Can we be normal people after the betrayal by the civilized world?
Their words gave me the feeling that we can't be normal people anymore, as long as this war is going on, as long as our wounds don't heal, we are bleeding, daily, whether inside Syria or outside.
After about five years, there is a deep feeling of betrayal by the civilized world. There is no solution arising in the horizon. Even worse, Syria became the land of extremists, the promised land of the Islamic Khalifa. The called Islamic-state is fed by injustice, rejection, ignorance and of course, oil wells, which give them the needed finance. This terrifying monster are expanding even outside Syria and Iraq. What happened in France was a clear message.
On the other hand, a few days ago, the anti-Islamic state Naji Jerf was shot in the head in Turkey, he tried to film their abuses in Aleppo and Raqqa. Jerf is not the first and unfortunately will not be the last. Injustice is the cry
In all this mess happening in Syria, 'injustice' is one of the most dangerous realities, as Martin Luther King says: ''Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". That is why the Syrian crises are not only humanitarian crises but also a threat to people's safety in other countries. For the next year and the years to come, it is fundamental that justice prevails, that those war criminals get what they deserve, and this suffering stops, not only because it is fair, but because it is the guarantee for a better future to us, All of us. Happy and Safe New Year.
"Graduated from Panthéon-Assas & Damascus Universities, Lubana Abdo has a Master's Degree in International Business Law. I could not convince Columbia Law School to offer her an LLM as she was planning to flee.Lubana worked in several positions in Syria, Lawyer till 2008, Legal Director at Damascus Securities Exchange till 2014, she was amongst the establishing team of the exchange. After leaving to France, she worked as a Senior legal Counsel at Oxygen+ law firm, and recently moved to Adisseo".