6-year-old Alex asks Obama if he can adopt Syrian refugee boy, Omran Daqneesh as his brother https://t.co/ZjsE8S8lOJ pic.twitter.com/3Cu7tvT37B
— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) September 22, 2016
A six-year-old boy may have written the most touching letter ever to be written to a head of state, and perhaps has "more humanity, love, and understanding" than most adults.
Alex from New York who wrote a letter to President Obama, asked him to bring Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy who made headlines after a video of him sitting dazed and shocked after an apparent air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo went viral, to his home.
"We will give him a family and he will be our brother," Alex's letter published by the White House reads.
"Dear President Obama, remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria?" he asks.
"Can you please go get him and bring him to our home... we'll be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother," Alex tells Obama in the letter.
"Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan," Alex writes from the bottom of his heart.
"Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won't bring toys and doesn't have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math. And he [can] smell Catherine's lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn't let anyone touch it," the letter continues.
"Thank you very much! I can't wait for you to come!" says Alex before signing off his letter.
Alex was praised by Obama after asking his help to offer the Syrian refugee boy a home.
In a Facebook post accompanying a White House video with Alex reading the letter out loud, Obama wrote : "We should all be more like Alex. Imagine what the world would look like if we were. Imagine the suffering we could ease and the lives we could save."
Obama said that Alex was "a young child who hasn't learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful".
The president also quoted Alex's words at a United Nations summit on the refugee crisis this week.
Alex wrote the letter after seeing the photo of little Omran Daqneesh, the stunned and weary-looking Syrian boy, sitting in an orange chair inside an ambulance, covered in dust and with blood on his face.
Haggard and covered in blood, little Omran's blank stare had shook the world.
The footage of the shell-shocked four-year-old made headlines around the world and was dubbed by Washington "the real face" of Syria's five-year war.
The bombing in an opposition-held area of Aleppo had sparked outrage across the world and intensified calls for an immediate ceasefire.
In reality, across war-torn Syria, thousands of children like Omran are traumatized by daily life under bombs and siege.
