Nourhan, a Syrian refugee in Spain poses for the camera in her Barcelona flat after an interview. Nourhan is from Damascus, Syria, and lived in the war for 8 years. Everyone thought the war was not going to happen until one fine day in 2012 when she left her house to go to university as usual and found armed people in the street with balaclavas on their heads shouting that they were ISIS and that she could not leave her house until they give to her the permission to do so. She was locked in the corridor of her house with her family for a little over a month, they could not walk because it was
Nourhan, a Syrian refugee in Spain poses for the camera in her Barcelona flat after an interview. Nourhan is from Damascus, Syria, and lived in the war for 8 years. Everyone thought the war was not going to happen until one fine day in 2012 when she left her house to go to university as usual and found armed people in the street with balaclavas on their heads shouting that they were ISIS and that she could not leave her house until they give to her the permission to do so. She was locked in the corridor of her house with her family for a little over a month, they could not walk because it was too dangerous. They ate once a day and exchanged food quickly with neighbours from the bathroom and windows but only during the they made the decision that if ISIS entered the house, Nourhan would kill her whole family to prevent the terrorist group from kidnapping, raping or murdering them. After this period of captivity they went out to try to live a normal life. "In Syria you know when you go out but you don't know if you will come back," Nourhan said during the interview. She wanted to flee by boat across the Mediterranean but there was no place for her. Her friend told that on the next trip she could go. A few days later she found out that the boat where there was no place for her was shipwrecked at sea and all the passengers died, so Nourhan decided that she no longer wanted to leave Syria by boat. She tried to leave in every possible way until 7 years later when she found a job in Russia and managed to flee. It was while living in Moscow that she began to experience fear. "The war started when I was 22 so I only knew how to survive and do my own thing at the same timeî. As a result of all these worries and panic attacks, she developed a tumor in her brain. Finally, the young Syrian woman left Russia for health reasons and travelled alone to Barcelona. She is currently in the difficult process of overcoming the post-war trauma and learning to be happy and li.
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Photo credit: © SOPA Images / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: bombing, migrant, nourhan, refugee, survivor, syrian
