We are celebrating your life.
That...
you were alive.
At first I was...
I was so mad.
I was furious.
It makes me feel very proud.
And you know it does.
Fawzi. Hey Fawzi.
What? Did you just wake up?
Yes.
When we first came, we landed over there.
And you, where did you land?
I did not land over here.
I came from behind that mountain and we landed by that beach.
Three hours after we landed,
the Greeks started calling complaining about us,
then the police came and took us.
Once we ran out of gas in the middle of the sea,
then we managed to go back.
You guys tried to come by sea once or twice?
No three times.
Do you understand? If there was a kid who is weak in something,
a Greek boy who is scared of something,
you can help him. You tell him,
"My name is Fawzi and I am from Syria.
I survived a war and was able to cross a sea after three tries
in a perilous journey on a small boat."
You should never forget this one thing.
You are the heroes who crossed the sea.
This is something that is very important.
So today we will find it.
So I am going to place cards of things.
You choose what you feel from the card,
select that right away.
The card that made you remember
a good memory that happened to you.
Remember things that were at that moment,
like sounds and smells.
memories, names.
Anything.
Ok, let us put the cards in front of us.
Take one sheet of paper each.
Stick the card anywhere you want on the paper.
Then you start drawing around it
things you feel complete these memories.
What did you choose? What is it you drew?
Tell us about it. Who wants to start?
When I was registered in the kindergarten,
they used to walk us to the amusement park.
They would give us juice and biscuits.
Fawzi?
I remember when I was in Syria playing chess with my cousins,
aunts, and mother, laughing and happy.
What makes us different is that we have
the good and the bad right?
There is joy inside of us and there is sadness as well.
And we have to control them.
We have to kick sadness away and keep happiness.
Correct.
To kick it out, we have to talk about it.
Like embers sitting inside of us
and we do not know how to extinguish them.
We have to bring it all out, all of it
until it is out completely.
So we could pour some cold water on it.
As you see, we are going to put cards
that will remind you
of difficult things that happened in your lives.
Things that hurt, things that are sad, horrible things.
Things that we want to extinguish.
[person] So when one of you sees a card that reminds him
of the difficult things he went through.
Fawzi, look at the drawing,
then imagine your body and tell us how you feel?
I was feeling sad when I was in Syria
seeing the airplanes bombing Idlib.
Once an airplane bombed... it caused our window to fall.
Stop and take a deep breath.
Is this the most difficult memory you can remember?
The most difficult time was the last explosion.
Most people died from the shelling
starting every half an hour.
Who died that you know?
My brother died when they hit the playground with explosives.
And my aunt died as well.
May Allah have mercy on her.
What is the thing that Fawzi
is scared the most to talk about?
The thing that I am scared to talk about
is when my brother died.
Do you want us to talk alone later?
I am not going to be able to talk because, if I do,
I will begin to cry.
That is not bad at all.
When you were telling us your story, I was crying.
I feel that you are about to cry.
Nothing will happen to us if we cry.
Come tomorrow, we will talk.
Perfect.
Dear Fawzi, do not be afraid.
Yalla, Aboud, you hero.
Do not forget that, like they had a safe space, we have one.
A long day is ahead of us, as well as many other errands,
so it is very important that we digest it.
What is the thing that you feel now?
What is the thing that you feel that is sitting inside of you?
Maybe we should stop working.
You know we can't stop it.
Essam, we know we can't stop it, this work.
If we do not do this work, who else is going to do it?
Do you imagine that these boys have safe spots in their lives?
We also have them.
I'm trying to find my own.
Where do we sit?
Same as yesterday.
Would you like to sit here?
Here.
Ok, are you with me?
Yes.
Or you are with me a little bit?
No.
Are you afraid?
Not that much.
Are you afraid that we are going to talk
about something you're scared to talk about?
The only thing I do not like to talk about is the bombing.
That is why we have to defeat it.
You have lots and lots of happiness.
You are always smiling, so we could defeat everything.
Here it is.
You did not want to talk about your brother
when we talked about when you got bombed, right?
Because I am afraid of that story.
What is the story, what do you remember from it?
I am terrified of that story
because when my brother was killed,
I did not see his head.
He was blown into pieces.
Did you go to where he was?
Were you with him at the playground?
No.
When he was blown away,
his friends who were playing ball with him told us.
So I ran to him, but I did not see his body.
I saw nothing left of him.
How sad are you if zero is less sad
and ten is the most sadness?
Seven out of ten, seven.
One more time, breathe and then look at it.
Take a very good deep breath.
Is there a scene or a picture that you may say to yourself
that you never saw?
I am trying to forget my brother but I cannot.
What do you mean when you say,
"I am trying not to remember my brother?"
When I say, "I am not trying to remember my brother,"
it's because, when I do, I cry and become sad.
Can we take this picture away? Because I am about to cry.
What?
Now I am about to cry.
Why not?
What did you see when you went to the playground
after the bombing with your mother?
Me? Inside of me, it felt like my heart stopped.
My mother cried till she became crippled,
unable to move her leg.
Do not be afraid to talk or cry.
Inside of you there is a war.
There is a war between the good memories versus the bad ones.
What is going to determine who Fawzi is going to be next year,
ten or twenty years from now,
is the winner of this battle.
Therefore, in order for you to win, you have to fight them.
Correct.
Do you want to try and do something exciting?
Yes.
This is you.
No, for real, this is how I see you.
I want you to draw or color the hero that is Fawzi.
Because Fawzi is a hero.
You are stronger than Superman and Spiderman.
You are Super Fawzi.
Super Fawzi does not dress like the rest.
Which do you think are your qualities that make you a hero?
For me, courage is the only thing
that provides me with power.
My brain and my thoughts.
I am going to call him Super Fawzi.
I want to bring out any feeling
that is deep inside us.
What else do I want to get out?
I want to get anger from inside of me.