‘It’s destroying me’: Syrian Americans haunted by earthquake devastation plea for world’s help

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

Every time Abdulrahman Al-Dahhan closes his eyes at night, he hears the screams of friends and family in Syria pleading for help.

The voice messages he’s received chronicling their pain make it impossible to sleep, he says. Haunted by their cries, he lies awake tormented by guilt. He worries that each moment he rests, thousands back home in Syria are still buried alive under rubble.

More than 33,000 people have died across Turkey and Syria since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region on February 6. Nearly a week later, a lucky few are still being pulled alive from the rubble but hopes of finding additional survivors dwindle amid freezing temperatures.

“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. “When it happened, I was receiving constant voice messages, jumping from number to number on WhatsApp, each one is someone crying, telling me they are seeing people dying around them. I can’t stop hearing them.”

Al-Dahhan, a Syrian-American aid worker for Mercy-USA, a Michigan-based non-profit working in communities across the globe, has spent the past week traveling around the United States to raise money for earthquake relief. So far, he says he has raised $100,000 by fundraising at schools, places of worship and efforts on social media.

Meanwhile, on the ground, his colleagues who survived have been in a race against time, using the funds raised by workers like Al-Dahhan to help rescue those still trapped under the rubble and deliver relief to shell-shocked survivors.

Since the earthquake, Al-Dahhan says he has not properly eaten and can’t sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time, the exhaustion evident in his voice.

“At least I get a little bit of relief, knowing what I’m doing matters, because the more I can fundraise here, the more it helps out there,” he said. “But I am in constant stress that I’m not doing enough and I need to keep going. When I sleep, I feel guilty. I need to be awake every second. I need to be working. I want to get more updates. I feel like I’m operating here, but my mind and soul are there.”

He describes in detail the photos he’s seen from the ground and recites story after story of the horrors that keep him up at night. One of them is about a colleague who crawled out of the rubble with his 5-month-old baby and returned to save his wife and daughters, desperately digging in the freezing rain for two days until they were rescued.

Another story is about a family that lost two sisters in the earthquake, leaving their children orphaned. When their brother learned of his sisters’ deaths, Al-Dahhan says, he suffered a heart attack from the shock and died — also leaving his children fatherless.

Al-Dahhan’s voice cracks as he details each story, but he does not allow himself to cry.

There is no time to mourn.

Syrian Americans lead urgent relief efforts

Ameer Alsamman was on the phone with a friend in Latakia, Syria, when he heard screaming and loud shouts. Then the call dropped.

“My mind started racing and I immediately thought it was an Israeli airstrike, since we have had a few of those in Latakia over the past few years,” Alsamman, 27, told CNN. “When I saw the reports of a massive earthquake in the middle of the night, I began to wish it had only been an airstrike.”

He spent the next hours in agony, he said, watching images of death and devastation pour into his phone with no way of knowing if his friends or family were trapped under the rubble.

“I have never felt as helpless as I did that night. All I could do was watch on and hope that my loved ones would make it,” he said.

It took three days after the quake for the first United Nations convoy to cross through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, which is the only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria. Instead, volunteers, including the organization Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, led rescue efforts to help Syrians trapped under the rubble.

“It felt like no one was there for them, no aid was coming through, the only organizations able to provide aid were the ones already there,” Al-Dahhan said.

“It made the situation more frustrating.”

As the clock ticked, the opportunity to rescue survivors decreased, igniting panicked efforts from Syrians in the US like Alsamman and Al-Dahhan to raise as much money as possible for organizations on the ground.

Doing nothing was not an option.

As Al-Dahhan travels to raise money in person, Alsamman is using social media, so far raising over $1,000 for reputable international organizations on the ground and 10 food boxes that were delivered directly to those affected.

Nour Al Ghraowi, who immigrated to New York City from Damascus, Syria, following the civil war in Syria that started in 2011, is also helping through her work as a communications coordinator with Karam Foundation.

The nonprofit, which Al Ghraowi says “seeks to empower Syrian refugee youth and families nationally and internationally through access to innovative education, community-driven aid and skill development,” has raised more than $49,000 for earthquake relief.

The money has been used to distribute hundreds of food baskets, blankets, water bottles, diapers and hot meals to survivors in Syria and Turkey.

“Even though on a bigger scale it seems that the world has been quiet and no one has been talking about them, there are organizations and people who are still fighting for them, who never stopped for one moment fighting for them,” Al Ghraowi said.

Syrians are suffering from repeated trauma

For Syrians, the earthquake is just the latest in a decade-long series of tragedies.

Most of the casualties were in the northwest area of the country, predominantly in Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus, a region already struggling to rebuild vital infrastructure heavily damaged by aerial bombardment during the country’s civil war, which the UN estimates to have claimed 300,000 lives since 2011.

Half of northwestern Syria’s 4.6 million population has been forced out of their homes by the conflict, with 1.7 million now living in tents and refugee camps in the region, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF. Last year, the agency reported 3.3 million Syrians in the area were food insecure.

When the earthquake struck there, many traumatized residents first wondered if they were being woken by the sound of warplanes once again.

“It’s a crisis within a crisis,” says Leena Zahra, a Syrian American and humanitarian worker focused on increasing mental health access to globally displaced people. “This tragedy will impact children, entire families, some that have been displaced over 20 times. It’s just going to be adding on to the psychological impact that they’ve already faced.”

Zahra emphasized the urgency of donations to provide immediate needs, including food, shelter, non-food items, and medicine, but said providing Syrians with mental-health care is also critical.

One of the biggest issues contributing to these mental health issues experienced by Syrians in the country and in the US, she says, is the feeling of being abandoned and forgotten.

“Syrians have been let down by land, air and sea. There’s the natural disaster, but they’ve experienced bombing, missiles, and demolitions, and they had to face and survive this alone,” Zahra said. “When you are failed by the institutions, again, that are meant to protect you, they are literally left on their own.”

“It’s only natural to have that reinforcement of asking themselves, ‘Do I matter as much or will I be forgotten again?'” she added. “‘Will I just be another statistic or another undignified picture that is circulated but not humanized?'”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday that it was the first group to send a team to provide mental-health support to earthquake victims in Syria. The team of Palestinians, along with local volunteers, is providing mental health services to about 300 children and their families in shelters and hospitals, who are suffering from severe trauma and depression as a result of the earthquake.

In the US, the earthquake — compounded by 12 years of devastating war — is also taking an emotional toll on Syrians who feel helpless watching from afar.

Some, including Al-Dahhan, have experienced psychological triggers, including photos and videos of buildings toppling during the earthquake, scenes nearly identical to the aftermath of airstrikes that have killed and displaced thousands during the war.

“I built walls up years ago, because the war that happened really messed me up. I didn’t want to get hurt like that again,” Al-Dahhan said. “But with this earthquake, I feel those walls crumbling. I am remembering things I don’t want to remember, and I can’t think of anything else.

Others, like Zahra and Alsamman, say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt, possessed with a relentless, sinking feeling that no matter how much they help it won’t be enough.

“I can certainly say, without a doubt, as Syrians, we don’t have time to almost mourn or process our grief because we’re trying to use energy, time, resources, all hours of the day, to keep Syria in the news, keep Syria in conversation,” Zahra said.

“We don’t have time to heal those wounds, we are literally shouting from the rooftops, please don’t get distracted, please share, please donate, please help.”

‘Don’t move on and forget about us’

A week has passed since the earthquake, but voice messages from people sharing traumatizing stories from the ground have not stopped flooding Al-Dahhan’s phone.

Every hour brings more news of death, children orphaned, entire families still buried under the rubble, as survivors remain in the streets holding onto diminishing glimmers of hope.

“I am living a zombie life here,” Al-Dahhan says after detailing another story from Syria. “I am operating, but my soul is not here.”

Mourning is difficult when you also feel burdened with the responsibility of advocating for your people, Alsamman said.

“To many in the international community, Syria is just another Arab country mired in war, poverty, and extremism,” he added. “We’re tired of the empty statements of solidarity and pointless global summits that are supposedly aimed at solving our crisis. We need action.”

Organizations on the ground need help raising awareness, funds and basic items like food, clothing and medicine. But the issue doesn’t stop with short-term relief efforts, Zahra says, arguing that activists must pressure the US and other countries to “activate disaster mechanisms and push for access to hard-to-reach communities.”

“We’re repeating the same things we’ve said in the past 12 years,” Zahra said. “If you won’t listen now, when will you listen?”

The Syrian crisis, Alsamman said, “has become an afterthought, a footnote to mention when talking about the geopolitical complexity of the Middle East.”

“Don’t move on and forget about us,” he begged. “In three weeks, when it isn’t as trendy to post and talk about Syria, know that the people of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, and Hama don’t have the option of moving on.”

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