Together with her mother, two brothers and an older sister, Maryam fled from her home town of Dara'a in Syria three years ago. Now, the family lives in a small one bedroom apartment in the city of Irbid, in the north of Jordan.
Whether their father is dead or alive, the family does not know. They have not seen him since they left Syria. It was their father who decided the family would flee to Jordan. Here they would be safe until the situation in their home country improved.
Lost schooling
Maryam attends school right next to the house they are living in. The school receives aid from The Norwegian Refuge Council (NRC), who among other things is building new classrooms and bathrooms in the school building, expanding the school's playground, and providing furniture for the new classrooms. The school has both Syrian and Jordanian pupils. Maryam lost two years of schooling due to the war, and is therefore attending fifth grade instead of seventh.
Maryam is dedicated to her schoolwork, and wants to become an artist. She hopes to learn to play a musical instrument one day, and loves to draw and paint.
On a large canvas, she is drawing the family home in Syria. They had a back yard with a swing set. Maryam says that she used to swing with her brothers and sister. Around the house, they had planted different kinds of trees and flowers.
“We had flowers of many different colours, and we used to pick them and put them in a vase in the living room,” she says.
A splinter to the stomach
Maryam tells us about the day she and her family had to seek shelter in a school during an aerial attack in their home town. Maryam was hurt when a splinter hit her in the stomach.
“The bomb hit the school, and there were many children there. We were placed on stretchers and brought by an ambulance to the hospital,” the 12-year-old says. Thirty children died in the attack.
Maryam now has scars on her stomach and on her fingers. Her younger brother was also hit, and has a scar between his nose and his left eyebrow.
“After the attack, we decided it was time to leave,” Maryam's mother says.
Maryam hopes they will see their father again soon
“He made sure we were safe. Now I don't know where he is,” she says.
