The Suffering of the Olive Branch in Afrin, by Hamrin Hanan
In September 2019 we worked with Hamrin Hanan, who we met in the Skaramagas refugee camp in Greece. Hamrin participated in Footage’s Her{connect}Her program to create and publish this book. In her book, through her writing and illustrations, she shares her experiences of the devastation that the outbreak of war in Syria had wreaked on her family, her home and her community in Afrin, Northern Syria. Her narrative paints painful testimony to unendurable trauma of war and its impact on women and girls who are subjected to sexual violence as a weapon and means of subjugation and degradation. Here’s a reminder from her book about the Syrian war which started March 15th, 2011: "It was the worst day of my life, a day that shattered all my dreams and ambitions, destroying homes, killing children and innocents. I was thirteen years old, I left school due to the raids that threatened my life with each bullet, I was behind in my studies and stayed home, counting the faraway sounds of bull...