Salem’s Story: Someday we'll return to build our country again, with love

So many of our colleagues and friends, who were such a big part of our lives, were also a big part of For Sama. We want to share some familiar faces from the film with you: where they are now, their memories of Aleppo and what they hope For Sama can share to the world about Syria. 

Here is Salem’s story.

Hello, I am Salem and I live in Gaziantep, Turkey.  

The point of the revolution for me is to love all people, to ease their pain, to try to fight oppression and to build a better future for us and for our children. It is also to show the difference between Assad’s rule with all the horror, fear, injustice, and between the revolution’s principles and putting the neglected community in charge of their responsibilities. 

I participated in the peaceful demonstrations in Aleppo in 2011 and I started working in the civil society around the middle of 2012. It was then that we started cleaning our city when the regime withdrew all kinds of civil services from the city. I participated in founding the local community council of Aleppo city. I worked in education and relief, and I put my previous work expertise in the civil registry to work by creating a similar system in Aleppo and its suburbs, to provide people with identification papers and such. I participated in all kinds of civil activities to support the people’s resistance, together with my lifetime companion, my wife Afraa. We shared joy and sadness with our children, with our friends Hamzah, Waad, Abd Al-Fattah, Milad, Mahmoud, and Abdoullah.

One time in Aleppo, when we had invited our friends over for dinner, a warplane dropped an exploding barrel right on the building directly adjacent to ours. The building turned to ruins and our house was partially damaged - the windows and doors got moved, a hole cracked through the wall. My wife came home horrified until she realized that it wasn’t our house that blew up. She was determined not to let fear control the atmosphere, so we cleaned up the debris and the dirt, we cooked the meal and then our friends showed up and it was a nice night. 

There is another moment that represents how we used to create happiness with our own hands during the siege and all the shelling, barrel bombs, missiles, and horror everywhere. Our friends, along with my wife and children, all gathered together in secret. They called me and told me to come hang out, so I knocked on the door and entered the room, then all of the sudden they turned all the lights off and everyone came into the room holding a cake, singing “Happy birthday to you”. I almost cried. This was the first time ever that I’d been thrown a surprise birthday party, especially the cake, which because of the siege, Waad had even managed to make without eggs.

For Sama is our message to the world to not to give up its responsibilities. The film captured an important part of our emotional swings such as between hope and desperation; between courage and fear. We laughed when we were supposed to cry, sometimes it was the other way around, but no matter what, we always loved our country, we loved its people, and we held onto it as much as we could. We still believe that someday we’ll thrive and we’ll return to build our country again with love, and only with love.