Syrian girl takes up role of teacher in absence of school in refugee camp

AFRIN, Syria (AA) – A 10-year-old girl is teaching her peers how to read and write, math, and Quranic recitation inside a tent-cum-classroom in northern Syria.

Meryem Ahmed along with her mother had to take refuge in the Rahmet Camp in the central city of Afrin after losing her father in a 2017 attack by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime in Idlib.

At the Rahmet camp, there was no teacher or school where children can continue their education. So Meryem turned one of the tents into a classroom where she teaches 20 children whatever she learned at the school in Idlib.

Meryem, who wants to be a teacher when she grows up, shared that her father was killed in an airstrike when he was on his way to pick her from school.

“My school completely disappeared before my eyes. I can never forget that day,” she said, talking about an airstrike on her school. “Here, I turned this tent into a school and I support my friends.”

She said her education was interrupted after her school was bombed and she does not want her friends to lag behind in education because of their circumstances.

According to Meryem, her students at the camp had never gone to school. In her makeshift classroom, Meryem says she tries to give her friends “the joy of school.”

“I told myself: ‘I will teach my friends everything I know’,” she added.

One of Meryem’s students, 11-year-old Muhammed Aslan said that regime forces also targeted his school in Idlib.

“We moved to Afrin with my family. There is no school in this camp,” he said. “Later, I learned that there is a teacher here.”

Muhammed was expecting an older teacher, he said. “I was surprised when I saw that the teacher was almost my age. Teacher Meryem is supporting us.

“We don’t have any desk in the classroom or any equipment. But I want to be a doctor when I grow up,” he said.