October 2, 2023
Greetings from the believer,
It helps if you know her story. Amal is a ten-year-old girl, a refugee from Syria. She is lost, away from her family, she is searching for a home, and for compassion. Not simply for herself, but for everyone like her.
Her story is bigger than that, so it becomes almost natural that she would become bigger with it. Amal is twelve feet tall. There’s more.
When I first learned about Amal, maybe a year ago, it was unsettling. I watched a video of her walking through Amsterdam, and it was difficult to understand. She is a puppet, towering over the people around her, and as strange as that image was, it was more remarkable the response of the crowds, especially the children.
It didn’t really register until I watched her, moving through the trees in front of my old high school, that beautiful, awful, abandoned shell of a place. She was walking along the brick and sandstone, pausing to peek into the windows, holding her hands up to the glass so she could see in.
I don’t know how many bombed-out buildings she has peered into, but somehow it seemed fitting. She is running from a war, from a place that was a home and now is an awful abandoned shell of a place.
And then she is a little girl again, running from something. She is hiding. She looks at the children filling in the grassy space around her, and she puts her hand to her heart, and leans over and then turns away. I see you, but I have to go, she says. She was so expressive, I was standing fifty yards away and I was a little disoriented by how quickly you start to think of her as a real little girl.
As I watched her move through the crowd, and then wove in between parked cars, I recognize the echoes of some science fiction movie. Giant Girl. Girlzilla. But no one is running and screaming. They are laughing with delight.
She is a puppet. There is someone inside her running things, if you focus you can see him in her ribcage. There are people who operate her hands, but it wasn’t until later that I realized they were there, in plain view, but you don’t see them, any of them. You see her.
When I volunteered to help I didn’t think much about the event. I mean I was curious, I wanted to see the twelve-foot girl. But all of the rest, the message, the purpose, it felt like it couldn’t possibly register here. I thought that it won’t matter much, it’s an interesting show, but it won’t change anything.
There is no better time to tell you how wrong I was. It was astonishing.
She walked along from my old high school and past the library, moving from the street into the grass, the children swirling around her like a noisy stream of color. The grown-ups were as enthusiastic, and while it took a little longer, they began to lose their focus on the puppet, and saw the little girl.
The hope is that Little Amal will come to events like this and raise awareness for human rights, to remind people everywhere, including this place where we are not chased from our homes, what it means to be a refugee.
Who better than a little girl who has lost her family, who is thousands of miles and fifteen countries from her home, which is now ashes? Who better than someone who can tell her story without language, without PowerPoint, without political power? Without any of those things that get in the way.
Of course, it helps to be twelve feet tall.
She stood in the dusk, lit by spotlights, in an arbor of grapevine and flowers. A choir sang something that she would understand, and then one of the leaders spoke into a mic and welcomed her, saying; “You are safe here.” He told us her story and asked us to help her.
Someone brought her a bouquet of flowers, and then as I watched how grateful she was to have them, I realized she had done what she came for. She had touched us. And then this happened:
The man with the microphone asked if anyone had anything they wanted to say to Amal. No one moved at first, and then one by one, little children stepped up. “We love you.” “You are beautiful.” “Good luck on your adventure.” “I hope you find your family.” And more, but I can’t write when I have tears in my eyes.
People prayed for her, children played with her, some promised money, others simply stood in the dark with her and told her she wasn’t alone. And the children, some so young they couldn’t spell ‘refugee’, simply loved her, gave what they had, and left with what mattered most.
Hope this finds you cheering her on,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
Comments