For life in a war zone, it appeared to be an unremarkable day. Andi (not her real name) was walking to work at a clothing company in her home town in the north of Syria.
But her heart quickened when she saw a car used by Bashar al-Assad’s security operatives. In it were two men, their faces covered. One of Assad’s men had been pestering her for months, declaring his love.
After she told him she was engaged, to a fellow Kurd, he had made a dark threat. “He said: ‘If you get married I will leave a stamp on your body, so you will never forget me.’ This is what [Assad’s men] are like – they think they have authority – that no one will stop them.”
She quickened her pace. But the car slowed alongside her and the man rolled down the window. By the time she saw the jug of acid in his hand, it was too late. “It was pain beyond imagination,” she said. “There are no words to describe it.”
An unhappy story, but not unusual. Thousands upon thousands of Syrians are living with the crippling physical and emotional scars that are a daily product of war: children with missing limbs, men and women disfigured and deformed by the barrel bombs that Human Rights Watch says Bashar al-Assad has used in hundreds of places over the past year.
Like many of her compatriots, Andi had seemed destined to live with the scars of her past for the rest of her life. Then, after fleeing to Brazil to escape her attacker, she had a chance meeting with Brazilian war photographer and film-maker Gabriel Chaim that changed fate’s trajectory.
She posed for a photograph, which then featured in a Guardian picture gallery that was spotted by the Leap Foundation, an NGO providing specialist medical and surgical services.
In Germany, where Andi had eventually claimed asylum with her husband, she got a call from Syria Relief , which had sponsored an exhibition of Chaim’s work in London: a German plastic surgeon was willing to carry out her surgery for nothing.
“I felt so glad, I didn’t think it would ever happen,” she said. She described the impact of the scars on her life: “I avoided people, I avoided the mirror, I didn’t want to look at myself. I never thought I would get surgery, all the doors were closed.”
But when Ryan Snyder Thompson , the director of international disaster relief at the Leap Foundation saw the portrait of Andi, he saw not a hopeless case, but an easy fix.
“I’ve seen the quality of work our volunteer surgeons can produce, and it seemed a relatively straightforward procedure,” he said. Dr André Borsche , a member of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery , a Leap partner, responded to the call for help.
And in February, eight months after she was attacked, Andi went under his expert knife at the Diakonie hospital in Bad Kreuznach , the cost covered by Interplast, another medical NGO.
As tragic as her story is, Andi is one of the lucky ones, according to Ayman Jundi, general secretary of Syria Relief. “This is a fantastic outcome for her, and it’s given her a glimmer of hope in her life,” he said. “But it should also highlight the fate of many thousands of victims who can’t get this treatment. This is a war zone. We see a lot of burns, a lot of amputees, spinal injuries, paralysis.”
And beyond the victims suffering war-related trauma, there is a silent, often ignored group of Syrians – those with cancer, diabetes, heart defects – who no longer have access to a functioning healthcare system. “This is the hidden epidemic, the hidden crisis,” said Jundi.
Since having the surgery, some things have improved for Andi; others haven’t. “I don’t have the same deformities, I am no longer scared to show my face in front of people,” she said. “But I am no longer the same person. I think about what happened all the time. Even now I’m living in Germany, I look around on the streets to see if anyone is following me.”
When she came round from the anaesthetic she told her husband that in her dream, her attacker told her he would do it again. “It is difficult to forget,” she said.
Andi and her husband now have a five-month-old baby. Her brother lives in Germany, her husband is learning German: the family is desperate to settle. But because they passed through Spain on the way to Germany, and had their fingerprints taken, they are being told they may be sent back there.
Asked how she felt about the future, she said she was positive – up to a point. “If we are allowed to stay in Germany and I can get over my fear, then that will be better,” she says. “But if they send us away – I don’t know what will happen.”
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk.
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