This is Aida, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee. Rosianna and I met her at the Azraq camp in northern Jordan, where she and her family had just arrived after more than four months at the Syrian border.
The situation at the border is a catastrophe–Aida told us she’d watched some of the friends she made at the border die at the border of exposure and thirst. She thought she would die, too. (One of her sisters was killed in the war.)
Aida is bright and funny and constantly cuddled by her younger brothers. When I asked her what she wanted most now that she was finally at Azraq, she said, “I want to go to school.” She’d never been in school–the war started when she was 5. She wanted to know when school started in the camp. “Can I go today?” she asked me through the translator.
The UN Refugee agency is critically underfunded, and the quality of schools suffers as a result. Kids go to school only for half a day, and classes are huge–sometimes as many as 100 kids per room. Dropout rates are extremely high, because kids are needed for chores and work.
Aida will be safe at Azraq. But because of funding shortfalls, she will not receive enough food assistance or the quality of education she deserves.
In the coming days and weeks, Rosianna and I will share more stories of the refugees we met in Jordan. As one mother told me when I asked how Americans can help, “Listening helps. Knowing you are listening helps.” Of course, donating also helps, as does voting against leaders who demonize refugees.
In the U.S. right now, our political discourse is driven by the lionizing of some vague Us and the villainizing and dehumanizing of a supposed Other. But when we talk about decreasing aid to assist refugees, or not allowing refugees to resettle in the United States, we are not talking about some distant and menacing Other. We are talking about Aida.
