Turkish attack shatters families’ heart for losing two children in NE Syria
Grave of Ahmad and Aheng in Qamishli- North Press
QAMISHLI, Syrian (North Press) – Fayezah Faraman cannot comprehend the idea that she lost a beloved. She passes her day snaring at a photo of her son hanged on a wall or another saved on her mobile phone. She asks him to speak, as if he is still alive; however, to no use.
Some few meters from her, in the same room, the father who is bereaved too, tries uselessly to condole his wife and to alleviate her pains though he previously knows he will fail in his endeavors. Accepting that his 17-year-old son Ahmad Shibi is no longer alive is not easy.
Three weeks have lapsed to the death of Ahmad and his 15-year-old cousin Aheng Shibi, still the two mothers are missing them untenably. They are dressed in black and they are shedding tears.
On August 6, Aheng and Ahmad were helping the latter’s father in a workshop for selling and maintaining spare parts of generators in the industrial zone in the city of Qamishli.
As they were providing a client with spare parts, a Turkish drone struck a car close to their shop.
Those present there then knew what happened and that civilian casualties were reported, including children, but nobody dared to tell the two mothers of the biter news.
Bad omen
Upon the hearing of the bombing, Faraman dialed both her son and husband but none of them answered the phone.
She says “I got out and headed to al-Sinaa to check on Ahmad and his father… His friends told me that they were slightly injured.”
“I did not believe them because they were not answering me,” she added.
After much insistence, she was told her husband was in the al-Rahma Hospital in the city, he was being transferred from one part to another due to the severity of injuries he incurred.
Just comprehending the situation of her husband, whose body was full of shrapnel, she received a blow that Ahmad passed away.
The drone strike claimed five lives, including Ahmad and Aheng. They were laid to rest in the city’s cemetery. Their photos were laid at their graves.
Faraman tries to uphold herself while narrating her tale after her bereavement, demanding that God avenges oppressors.
She went on, as her tears were dropping, after some seconds of silence, and wondering what was their fault of the two innocent children to be killed as they were helping the father.
Looking at her husband Alaa al-Din Shibi, whose legs have some 33 pieces of shrapnel stuck to arteries that doctors could not remove; she told North Press that Ahmad used to accompany his father wherever he went.
Innocent children
Two days after the attack, thousands attended the funeral procession in Qamishli. Alaa al-Din was still in the hospital left with a photo of his son. He was in a medical situation could not enable him to hold the coffin of his son as it is the case. He cried alone until the procession came to an end.
The bereaved father said that when he saw his injury “I was in pain, my intestines were hurt, I felt that I would die.”
“I did not faint…I looked at Ahmad and I knew that he died,” he added.
At this moment the father wanted help but people were afraid to approach due to the severity of his injury.
He did not imagine that one day he would face such a biter reality. His son used to accompany him to work. He use to wake up in the early morning, he was energetic. He used to ignite the car preparing for a new day.
Ahmad and Aheng were not the sole victims of Turkish airstrikes.
On August 16, a child lost his life and four others were injured in a Turkish shelling on Kobani and its countryside.
Aheng, who decided to assist his uncle in the school summer break, had an ambition of becoming a goal keeper. He was preparing to enter the secondary school in the new academic year, however, all was lost.
His father, Akram Shibi, said, “We did not fight anyone, we are on our land. They are children and have nothing to do with war.”
Aheng’s mother, 40-year-old Mahfotha Omar, sits close to a photo of her son, weeping at his untimely departure, “What is the fault of these children?”
“May God avenge them and take revenge of this enemy,” she added in a tone shows the extent of her bereavement.