This is a love letter, in a bad english. Mine.
This is a long love letter to Aleppo. She, the rebel Aleppo, is still alive.
Dear Aleppo’s sweet guys, you are Aleppo. So this letter is for you, rebels. I want to thank you, tell you that I love you, and apologize to you for many things.
Let’s start…
Thank you.
Thanks to those with whom I spoke sometimes, to those I simple followed on social networks, even to those with whom I do not speak anymore: i love you the same. Thanks to those who died, and only after this I started to love them.
So, thank you, Shamel. My pain, my obsession towards Aleppo and Syria started with your death, I don’t know why. I didn’t know anything about you, only your smile in the photos posted by your friends.
Thank you Mohammed: you know I’m speaking with you: you are the first Mohammed I’ve known. Two years ago, on twitter, you were the best journalist I could have found in that moment. My first great light on Syria. The first and one of the most honest ones
Then thanks to all the many Mohammed and Mohammad. Thanks, kind Rami, brave Abdo (and all your artistic and heroic family), great Abdufaki, sweet Modar Masso, creative Monther, Khaled, Hozaifa, Fadi, Hassan, Hassn, Waad, Zaher, Ahmad,Thaer, Emad, Afraa, Abd, Ismail, Hazma, Alaa, Nour, Sarah, Mahmoud, Motaz, Khalid, Ammar, Abdullah Ahmed, Aref, Aya, Radi, Kareem, Mira, Fareed, Mojahed, Lina, Youssuf, Fareed, Yasser, Alaa, Zakaria, Hamid, Mazen, Soulemain, Mojahed, Salih Abo Qusay and Marwa Taleb…Each one of you should deserve a film about him, not only an adjective. So, imagine it.
Thanks to all the reporters and media activists, thanks to all the simple civilians who allowed me to look with their own eyes. Thanks also to those civilians with a weapon in hand, o with a white helmet on their head, to help, to defend their family, themselves, their friends and their fellow citizens. Thanks also to those who dressed a uniform. Thanks, rebels.
Thank you all, because you trusted me and you let me feel what you were feeling, without censorship, to see your life, your thoughts, to enter into your stories. Thank you for your friendship, for your answers, even in the most critical moments, last year, when the world was falling on/ around, inside you.
Thanks for letting me get attached to each of you, a little or a lot.
Each of you is an extraordinary man or woman in my heart and eyes.
I know what happened to your Aleppo. We know it.
Even what you did not tell us who followed your stories, maybe we understood it. We want to believe it.
And there was no need for words. Not even of the translator.
Wondefully, you moved us deeply, inside.
So thanks, again. This has been a precious gift. It had never happened to me to be touched by something that happened in such a distant place
SORRY
Excuse me if so many times I called you heroes, while you keep thinking of being simple guys, and I have embarrassed you,
Excuse me: while Assad, not only Putin, not only the Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists were terrorizing you and killing syrians in the East Aleppo, the “free” World was betraying you, and I’m part of the world.
Please, forgive me, because I could have done something to help you, first. I could have tried to change my country. Better yet: to change myself, to follow my talents…I would have been better in telling what I was seeing happening…
Sorry for the silences. It was discretion. Sorry also for too much confidence, sometimes.
Sorry for every time I was wrong about you and your Aleppo, for every time I misunderstood your words, your photos, understimate your pain.
Sorry for those times that I shared what you wanted to keep for close friends.
Sorry for what I didn’t share. Too many things, I know this.
Sorry for interrupted chats, for suspended posts – many -.still in my mind. For the suspended projects…
Sorry if I have not been strong like you, in my life.
Sorry if I also wandered for the social regime, for those of the extremists, looking for a foothold to justify and understand the Russian propaganda and that of Assad, without finding it.
Finally, sorry. Maybe, this is a letter for me also: I needed to write it.
Thank, again, because I know You have understood it.
I LOVE YOU, ALEPPO.
https://twitter.com/Mojahedaboaljod/status/941615434733948929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
