“I want to go to school but not like this,” Amina Ismael says. The 14-year-old Syrian girl is among the countless child victims of the ongoing conflict in her home country. In the seven years since a bomb tore apart her family home and left her covered in scars, the young girl has undergone 40 surgeries, courtesy of Turkish doctors. However, she still requires more surgery to return to the way she once looked.
Amina was at home when the bomb exploded and says the only thing remembers from the aftermath is opening her eyes hours later in a hospital in Turkey. It would take another four months before she could see her family again as she remained in intensive care while undergoing surgeries.
“I forgot all the burns in my body when I saw my father again,” she recounted to Anadolu Agency (AA) in her family's new home in the Turkish capital Ankara’s Kahramankazan district where they settled. “I want to go to school, go out with my friends but only after surgeries and my pains are over."
For Amina and her family, the war was always close to home. They were in Idlib, living with their relatives, after fleeing war in Aleppo. But Idlib was also a hot spot of violence and was where Ismael and her mother were injured in the bombing. Her mother survived with injuries but life had drastically changed for Amina. Both were taken to Turkey for treatment and Turkish doctors volunteered to perform the surgeries.
An Ankara-based charity, mainly operated by health care staff, is behind the surgeries. What started as a disorganized group of volunteers evolved into an association when they decided to expand the scope of their work after helping the Syrian girl. The charity has helped 400 children who were injured in conflicts around the world receive treatment and surgery.
Its chairperson Ayşegül Aksu told AA that she was first introduced to the little girl by fellow volunteers on a visit to the family's home. “I had brought toys as a gift for her but she did not care about them. Instead, she saw the photo of a girl on the cellphone of her father. I thought it was a sister or a friend but she told me it was her before the explosion. She told me she wanted to 'blink' her eyes again, to 'breathe' through her nose and open and shut her mouth like she did before. Her eyes and nose were severely injured. She had no hair and eyebrows. I decided to help her and we came a long way in seven years,” she recalled.
Amina can now open and close her eyes and can eat on her own, though she will need more surgeries for a complete recovery. “She also remembers the trauma she was subject to less now. I am grateful to all the doctors who enabled this. You appreciate how valuable it is to be able to blink your eyes, something so simple, when you see children like Amina,” she said.
The charity now aims to help 400 more children in need of surgery, to start with, after employing the aid of more surgeons specialized in reconstructive surgery.
