'I really want to know how all of my friends are doing, because I was not able to say goodbye to them.' 

I come from East Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus where I lived with my family on the ground floor of an apartment building. Because I like to be alone I had a bedroom for myself. When my cousin comes to play we sat on my bed and draw.

But it became very scary in the street. Our building was close to the Al Fateh hospital and was under fire every day by the army. Hospitals are a target anyway. Everything in our neighbourhood was destroyed. Including our building. We fled from the house and had no time to take anything along. 

In the chaos we tried to get cars to stop which could take us a little further. Sometimes there were eight people propped into one car. A little ways further and then we had to get out and look for a new car which was headed in the right direction to help us. We were in a lot of cars. I was so afraid that I had to cry the whole time. 

Thanks to my Uncle Ahmad, who is the leader at a small camp in Lebanon, we could go there. Otherwise we would now be living on the street. 

We gave our Facebook-friends    the opportunity to be part of our conversations by posting questions. Baraa answers the question of Mies: Do children get any form of education? And she shows her own school. (42 sec)

When I had gotten a bit used to things here in the camp I noticed that all of the little children were playing all day long. But because there was no school they were not learning anything. Then my friend Nijameh and I got the idea to start our own school. The rocks became chairs and a piece of cardboard became the blackboard. And we were the teachers. 

In the mornings there is school and we take turns giving math and language classes. And in the afternoon we are busy with the preparations for the next day’s lessons. The children really like coming to our school. But what I really miss is not being able to go to school myself, because there is not a real school. As a teacher I need to have some more knowledge of my own.

What I would like most of all is to go back to our neighbourhood in Damascus, even though they say that everything is destroyed. But I really want to know how all of my friends are doing, because I was not able to say goodbye to them. Sometimes I think that they are all dead.  Maybe they think that about me too.

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