However, if you are in Syria and living in one of Assad’s besieged areas, you won’t need to do any exercise or to pay any money to get slim. Assad starvation tactics will do the job turning you into a skeleton in a record time.
Stories about besieged areas in Syria can be both cynical and horrifying. The irony lies here in the agonizing details of each story and how people could overcome the tides of war and turn their tragedies into a kind of achievement.
After being evacuated from the ravaged city of Darayya five days ago, many heart-wrenching stories about starvation siege started to emerge showing how inhumane and brutal the siege imposed by Assad militias was.
Amina Kamel’s story was among those that help document the horrors inflicted on civilians in besieged areas and reveal how people could survive miraculously in hell-like circumstances.
Amina, 38, is a pale-faced mother of 4 children who used to be mildly overweight. She always dreamt of having a slimmer body shape and went on a diet many times but couldn’t resist the temptation of food that she had to make for her family every day.
When her hometown Darayya fell under Assad militias stiffening siege, Amina was obliged to go on a strict diet that consisted of one meal every sunset.
Amina, who lost more than 20 kilos during the first year of siege, has never dreamt of reaching less than 60 kilos in her life; however, this loss didn’t bring her the happiness or joy that usually comes with a slimmer and healthier body shape since she had to suffer with her malnourished children from having nothing to eat every day besides that she hasn’t become healthier though she has become slimmer than before.
The starvation siege in Darayya was accompanied by barrel bombs that used to hammer the city every day. Amina’s son, 4, like many other children in his age, has never known anything but deprivation.
After reaching reception centers in Idlib, Amina Kamel told AFP that they used to eat a portion of soup every one day and had to fast until sunset the next day.
The suffering of Amina’s family through the 4 yearlong siege accompanied by the everyday bombardment turned life into hell in the agricultural city known before to be one of the main food sources for the whole capital, Damascus.
The starvation siege aimed at kneeling the people of Darayya and pushing them to give up their city to Assad militias drew ire worldwide particularly after many international awareness and solidarity campaigns put Darayya along with other besieged cities under the spotlight.
Ironically, the UN’s mission in Damascus, which has been proved recently to be spending millions of cash in a 5-star hotel and pouring other millions into the pockets of Assad’s associates and cronies, responded to those campaigns by entering the city empty-handed last April with just few packets of condoms and anti-mosquito sleeping nets!
Being evacuated at last with other 8000 civilians from Darayya, Amina can enjoy having some food and her favorite chocolate along with her 4 children for a while. She no longer wants to be slimmer. She likes her body shape now and may think of putting on extra kilos in the future.
For Amina, it was a hard experience to dream of a hot meal and a bar of chocolate every night she went to sleep in that underground trench along with her starving husband and children, but while that nightmare is over for Amina and her family, many other Syrians still have to undergo the same agony every day.
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