A chance meeting that changed everything...
I first met Areej by complete chance. It was 2015, we were both waiting around for our delayed luggage in an airport in Turkey. At the time I didn’t realise we would end up at the same Syrian mental health conference, let alone be working together for the same cause today. We jokingly reminisced together about Damascus airport (before the war); how frequently luggage went missing, the stark white neon lights and the countless nervous-looking boys dreading their name being called at passport control on the off-chance they were to be enlisted in military duty. We laughed at the comforting memory, but then we paused in sadness. I remembered the common Syrian saying, “often what makes us laugh, can make us cry”. Now, the reality is that people are living in unimaginable circumstances but still we wished to have a chance to fly back ‘home’ regardless of circumstances. She told me she was a psychotherapist, a Syrian expat, she had set-up her own Syrian organisation called Insa
