When Hiba Mohammed Yassin Ghalia took her daughter Maria to visit Aleppo's historic citadel for the first time, the eight-year-old thought she had walked into a security raid.
“She asked me, ‘Mama, is there an operation?’ She saw all the equipment, the darkness and all the people and thought it was a security operation,” Ms Ghalia, 43, told The National.
“The children get scared by the simplest things,” she said. “I told her, ‘No, it’s not a security operation, quite the opposite. It’s the Aleppo citadel.’”
Maria was a toddler when the family fled to Al Hol camp, deep in the Syrian Desert near the Iraqi border. She grew up amid night raids by security troops guarding the camp, in a rain-soaked tent, and without schooling. Children in Al Hol had never seen trees, rivers or tall buildings.
They are among 90 Syrian families that have been allowed to leave Al Hol in the past six months, after Kurdish-led troops in the north-east struck a deal with the central government in Damascus for their evacuation.
For these families, the departures mark the end of years of displacement in dire conditions in Al Hol. The notorious camp houses female relatives of ISIS members and sympathisers, as well as civilians who sought refuge during intense bombing campaigns against the group in 2018 and 2019.
“Sometimes I can’t believe that I got out of that nightmare and that we are finally free of it,” Ms Ghalia said.
Hiba Mohammed Yassin Ghalia's daughter Maria, 8, grew up in the notorious Al Hol displacement camp, which also houses ISIS sympathisers. Ahmed Fallaha for The National
The shock of normal life has taken time to register for the children who leave.
“After all these years in a desert camp with extremely difficult conditions, these women and children clearly need support and integration,” said Mun
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