「爆発したら、笑おう」　内戦続くシリアで幼い娘に父が教えた悲しきゲーム

【サルマダＡＦＰ＝時事】シリア反体制派の最終拠点となっている北西部イドリブ県では、内戦から逃れることなど到底不可能だ。そこでアブドラ・ムハンマドさん（32）が娘のサルワちゃん（3）を安心させるために見つけた唯一の手段は、爆撃をゲームに変えることだった。（写真はシリア・イドリブ県サルマダの自宅で、娘のサルワちゃんの耳にささやくアブドラ・ムハンマドさん）
　ソーシャルメディアで最近、爆発のたびにサルワちゃんが笑う様子を捉えた動画が広く共有された。ほほ笑ましい一方、イドリブ県に住む人々の厳しい日常をいや応なく思い知らせるつらい動画だ。
　風切り音が大きくなり、アブドラさんが「飛行機かな、爆弾かな」と問い掛けると、サルワちゃんは「爆弾。爆発したら笑おうね」と答える。
　別の動画では、サルワちゃんはリビングルームでアブドラさんの膝の上に立ち、戦闘機が落とした爆弾のごう音がとどろくと大笑いした。
　アブドラさんが「サルワ教えて、飛行機は何をしたの」と聞くと、サルワちゃんは「飛行機が来て、私はたくさん笑ったの。飛行機は笑わせるだけじゃなくて、私たちに笑って笑ってって言ってくるの」と答える。
　ＡＦＰの記者はイドリブ県のサルマダでアブドラさんと面会した。サルマダは反体制派の最終拠点の中に位置し、現在はロシアの支援を受ける政権軍が制圧を目指している。
　アブドラさん一家は、政権軍にすでに奪還されているイドリブ県の別の町、サラケブから逃れてきた。サラケブの一部地域は空襲で破壊された。
　アブドラさんによると、サルワちゃんは１歳の頃には近くで起きた爆発で泣き出すようになっていたという。
　アブドラさんは「それ以降、空から何かがやって来るたびに私は携帯電話を取り出し、『おいで、一緒に笑おう。イード（・アル・フィトル＜Ｅｉｄ　ａｌ-Ｆｉｔｒ＞、断食明けの祭り）で遊んでいる子どもたちだよ』とサルワに語り掛けるようにしている」「今起きていることを悲惨なことだとは伝えず、むしろ何か面白いことだと教えようとしている」と説明した。
　「いつの日か、娘はこれが死の音だと知るだろう。しかし、その時までには自分たちは何者で、自分たちを取り巻く事情は一体何であるのかを理解しているだろう」
　９年近くにおよぶシリア内戦で亡くなった人は３８万人を超えている。国連によると、昨年１２月以降だけでもおよそ９０万人が自宅や避難所を離れなければいけない状況になっている。
　アブドラさんは、もはや夢も希望も持ってないと語る。「メッセージを送り続けることには疲れた。望みなど一切ない。ただ、この子たちがまともな生活を送ることだけを願っている」【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/02/21-08:45）

In Syria's Idlib, there's no escaping the war, so Abdullah al-Mohammed says the only way he found to reassure his daughter Salwa was to turn the shelling into a game.
A video in which she laughs every time an explosion goes off was widely shared on social media in recent days as a heartening but grim reminder of Idlib residents' daily lives.
Is it a plane or is it a mortar?, he asks, as a whizzing sound grows in the background.
A mortar, the three-year-old answers. When it comes, we will laugh.
In another video, Salwa is standing on her father's lap in their living room and her hearty laugh is set off by the sinister thunder of a bomb dropped by a warplane.
Tell me Salwa, what did the plane do, the father asks his daughter.
The plane came and I laughed a lot. The plane just makes us laugh, it tells us: Laugh at me, laugh at me, she says.
An AFP reporter met the 32-year-old father in Sarmada, a town in Syria's last rebel pocket, which Russian-backed regime forces are trying to crush.
He and his family fled from Saraqeb, another town in Idlib which has already been retaken by regime forces and has been partly levelled by air raids.
Now as the regime presses its northwards offensive and continues to push civilians ever closer to the Turkish border, the air strikes are back.
Mohammed explains that when Salwa was still 12 months old, she started crying when she heard fireworks in the neighbourhood.
He had to explain that it was only the sound of children playing for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
After that, whatever was coming to us from the air, I would take out my phone and tell her: 'Come, let's laugh together, these are children playing for Eid, he says.
I try not to show her that what is happening as a bad thing but rather show it as something funny, he explains.
- 'Decent life' -
One day, she will know that this is a sound of death but by then, she will have understood who we are and what our story is, Mohammed says.
The north of the province of Idlib is a dead end for hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced from other former rebel bastions across Syria.
It has been described by aid groups as the world's largest de facto open-air displacement camp.
Hundreds of people, many of them children, have been killed in recent weeks as pro-regime bombardment spares nothing, from homes to hospitals.
According to the United Nations, 900,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and shelters since December alone.
Tens of thousands of them are left to sleep rough in the thick of winter, with temperatures dipping to minus 7 degrees Celsius (around 19 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas last week.
More than half of the displaced are children and at least seven of them have died from the cold and the bad living conditions.
For those who have a shelter, the trauma of the intensive shelling is an issue that overwhelmed health services and relief organisations can scarcely address.
After nearly nine years of a conflict that has killed more than 380,000 people, Salwa's father says he no longer has dreams or hope.
We are tired of sending messages, we have no aspirations. We just want these children to have a decent life, he says.