Tarek is a cook. The 27 May of 2012, once the hotel school is over, starts for the three-year leverage.
After the first training he is assigned to a room department near Aleppo.
The phone calls at home are those of any boy in uniform to the family.
With the autumn the situation around the barracks begins to get complicated. The terrorists make themselves heard. Every 15 days there is an ambush. When it's okay someone is hurt ...
The situation worsens in step with the season. The barracks are increasingly isolated until supplies are interrupted. Food is rationed and helicopters are needed to bring supplies and evacuate the wounded.
Tarek's father hears his son regularly on the phone. He does not want to alarm the family and uses reassuring tones. But the father understands: the voice betrays anxiety and worry.
It is an escalation. Things go from bad to worse. Throughout the country, street protests, orchestrated properly, become open war. There are many weapons and strange people around Central Asia and other Arab countries around.
The news that comes to the family through friends and social networks are alarming. The December 13, dad speaks clearly "My son, I know how brave you are, but please! If they enter do not Mike Tyson, the ugly climb over the wall and get to safety! Think of mum!"
It's the last time the father hears Tarek on the phone.
14 December 2012, 06.00 hours. The sentinels on guard fall one after the other. The actual garrison 220s are hired by terrorists and in a few hours 80 of them remain on the ground. They are inside, they are too many, they have modern weapons and they can use them. Any further resistance is useless.
Tarek goes to a wall and with a group of comrades he climbs over to Ez Zerbe, a residential area considered safe. However, the area is no longer free. The rebels affiliated with Al Nusra are masters and capture everyone. Tarek is in a group of 14 prisoners.
Time passes. The Free Syrian Army also arrive. The loot is divided into equal parts: seven prisoners on one side and seven on the other. Anxiety becomes fear. Your life, a city, a whole country, the world ... everything seems to suddenly collapse. The anguish of a quiet boy becomes dark.
Those who end up in the hands of the FSA can aspire to redemption and save themselves. The ethics of the so-called rebels, inspired by many Western desk idealists, ends there.
Tarek unfortunately is in the hands of Al Nusra. No news arrives of him. Not even from YouTube, where the crippled videos of the Islamists are filmed. Nothing at all.
Anguish and despair are at home in a family that lives hundreds of miles away. The nights are endless. As the wait gets longer, hope is shortened. Tarek's two younger siblings cling to the tortured mother. The father understands that after his son, he risks losing his wife too.
After an exact year, the mother receives a call from a stranger. "Your son is fine. It's with us".
A dream and a torch of love are rekindled. Life, despite the war, seems to be reborn. A light can be seen in the darkness.
Today, Tarek's mother is still waiting for her return. "I feel my son is still alive"He says, so as not to leave the step to despair. The husband comforts her: when the terrorists are driven out of the city where they kidnapped Tarek, he will go looking for him again.
Mother and father have light skin. Like many Syrians, to see them, they could be Westerners. Their faces from ordinary people have become a stone shield, beyond which stops the pain that has devoured them. It is a pain unknown to the world: it is the drama of an ordinary family destroyed by a cold and distant evil.
The father watches over his wife with the support of the other two children. She, every day more silent, needs help. He needs to believe in order to continue living.
For her, the anonymous victim of a shameful war, husband and children would do anything. To give them hope they would be willing to do anything ...
(Photo: Online Defense)
