updated 6:36 AM EDT, Fri September 13, 2013
Abdel, 7, left his home in Syria four months ago for a refugee camp in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- CNN producer Danielle Dellorto spent a week at a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon
- 7-year-old Abdel's story dramatizes the pain, worry, alienation that refugees face
- Abdel left behind comforts of home; in a 10-by-10 tent, he's "the man of the house"
- He's painfully thin; he says his last meal, just rice, was a day ago
Editor's note: Danielle
Dellorto is a senior producer in CNN's Medical Unit. She and Dr. Sanjay
Gupta traveled to Lebanon this month to meet refugees who have been
forced from their homes in nearby Syria by the violence there. Here's
her look at how the trip affected her.
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon (CNN) -- I never imagined I
would find myself in Lebanon, on the outskirts of the brutal civil war
in Syria. As a 32-year-old woman from Chicago, I didn't know what to
expect.
When I got on the plane
last week, it seemed that U.S. or allied airstrikes on Syria were
imminent, and honestly, it was pretty scary.
But the fear I felt about
the possibility of airstrikes was put into perspective when I met
7-year-old Abdel in a Syrian refugee camp on the Lebanese border with
Syria.
I will never forget the
first time I looked into his eyes. The sadness and fear I saw there were
years beyond his age, reflecting the extreme violence and horror he has
witnessed -- sights and sounds of war that most of the world will only
see in the movies.
For the seven days I was
there, most of the kids in the camp followed us in a gaggle, circling us
at times, giggling and practicing their English -- "hello" and "thank
you."
They loved to see their images on my camera's display screen after I took their picture.
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Not Abdel. He stood off
to the side, only glancing occasionally at the other kids following our
crew around. He lingered nearby most of the day, but didn't talk to me
or anyone else.
When I sat down on a curb, I motioned for to him to join me. I think I saw him smirk.
We just sat at first. He
didn't talk. Then, via my translator sitting beside me, I asked Abdel
if he liked Tweety Bird -- the cartoon character on the T-shirt he was
wearing. He shrugged, saying he had never seen that cartoon.
They didn't have a
television in his two-bedroom home in Syria, he told me. And of course
there's not one in the 10-by-10-foot cement-floor refugee tent he shares
with his mom and two brothers in the camp.
In Syria, he went to school -- first grade, he proudly tells me -- and played outside with his friends for fun.
But that was before the
war. I asked Abdel if it still felt safe to play outside in Syria. He
shook his head no, and held out his misshapen right arm. He broke it
running from a gunfight, he said. It looks as though he didn't receive
any medical care for his injury -- the bones healed so out of place, he
can't bend his arm all the way or lay it out straight.
It wasn't Abdel's injury
that led his family to leave its home for an uncertain future, a life
as refugees. It was an explosion, just weeks later, that left his
4-year-old brother severely burned. Abdel's dad told them to flee. Get
to the border until the violence subsides, he said.
Abdel's father stayed behind to work and protect the family's modest home, a scenario common to many of the refugees I met.
That was four months
ago. Abdel now carries the title of "man of the house." The worry in his
eyes is constant. The weight he is carrying is so heavy I felt it just
sitting next to him.
Abdel, right, his mother and two younger brothers share a 10-by-10 tent at the camp.
Abdel now sleeps on the
cement floor of the family's tent, in a strange place with none of the
familiarity of home. He showed me the virtually empty living space,
containing a plastic chair, a few blankets, a bucket.
His baby brother is extremely malnourished. Abdel himself is painfully thin. His last meal was yesterday, he said. He ate rice.
Meeting Abdel and
hundreds of other refugees in just this one camp and hearing their
stories make me fear the effect that potential U.S. or allied airstrikes
would have. I worry that more fighting will only lead to more pain for
children like Abdel.
The numbers are already
horrific: More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed -- many of them
women and children. In the latest atrocity, as many as 1,400 died last
month in a chemical weapons attack, allegedly by the government.
I volunteered to travel
to the Syrian border to help CNN tell the stories of the people who've
been impacted by this wrenching conflict. The violence has pushed more than 6 million Syrians from their homes
to other cities inside Syria or out of the country -- and more than
half of the refugees, some 4 million, are under the age of 17.
When I met them, and
heard the horrors they've lived through, it made me see that the human
consequences of the war are compounding. Would outside military action
really stop that?
While limited airstrikes
might reduce the risk of another chemical attack, they might also spur
more fighting and violence within Syria. It could take what's left of
Abdel's home, and maybe even take away his dad.
But then again, the same could happen without international intervention.
I don't know what the solution is. But I know there has to be a way to help Abdel and the thousands of others like him.SOURCE: CNN
