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Thursday, 28 March 2024

Meet the Syrian father turning the sound of war into a game

Duration: 01:41s 0 shares 6 views

Meet the Syrian father turning the sound of war into a game
Meet the Syrian father turning the sound of war into a game

Syrian video journalist Abdallah al-Muhammad has turned the experience of air strikes and shelling near his home in northwest Syria's Idlib into a game for his three-year old daughter to help her cope with the trauma.

Emer McCarthy reports.

It's the lighthearted video that's gone viral on one of the world's darkest topics -- the war in Syria.

(UPSOT FROM VIDEO) Syrian video journalist Abdallah al-Muhammad turned the experience of air strikes and shelling into a game for his three-year-old daughter Salwa to help her cope with the trauma.

(SOUNDBITE): (Arabic) VIDEO JOURNALIST FROM SYRIA'S SARAQIB, ABDALLAH MOHAMMAD, SAYING: "I started using this method with her all the time, but she was younger than this.

And now she is older, she knows what jets and missiles are and so on.

But when she sees me keeping it together, she does too and laughs.

When I know that there will be air-strikes, I immediately take out my phone and say come on, let's take photos and so on.

I turn it into a game so that she won't be afraid, because if she was alone, and saw that her mother is afraid, and her father is afraid, then she will definitely be afraid." Syrian troops supported by Russian warplanes have been advancing since December against the last rebel bastions in Idlib and Aleppo in what could be one of the final chapters of the nearly decade-long civil war.

Muhammad told Reuters that two years ago, Salwa would become startled and scared when she heard loud noises.

So he decided to ask children playing nearby to light a fire-cracker to show that the noise was just for fun.

And his method has worked ever since.

(SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) SYRIAN GIRL, SALWA, SAYING: "It's not scary, it's funny."

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