“I didn’t find anybody, and my husband bled to death,” she says.
Flash forward three years. Bombs are still falling on Daraa, but this time Abeer is running towards them.
“It’s hard to see someone close to your heart dying in front of you, and you’re powerless to help them,” Abeer al-Thawra tells Syria Direct.
“That’s why I decided to join the Civil Defense.”
Abeer, a mother of five young children, is one of dozens of women across Syria serving as first responders with the Syrian Civil Defense.
As a woman working alongside men, Abeer says that after the pain of losing her husband, she is indifferent to what people say about her.
“People’s criticism comes from a place of fear,” she says. “Society doesn’t accept a woman in an ambulance; it’s considered work for men only. But when there’s a bombing, and the wounded person is female, people feel the need for it.”
In her tours around Daraa province to raise awareness about basic first aid, Abeer encourages women to be involved in their communities.
“I call on all women to act, to get out into the field and not limit themselves to staying at home,” Abeer says. “Society is in dire need of you.”
“Under our circumstances, it’s necessary to have a paramedic in every home,” she argues.
“Society is in dire need of you. All of us as women must realize our active role, and the greater responsibility we have after the war, and to contribute something, no matter how small. We must stand alongside men to realize balance in society.”
“The circumstances that Syria is going through are not an excuse for inaction and fear. Rather, they are the primary motivation to act. Losing those we love, and the pain that comes with that determines how we see things. It gives us two choices: either we give up and live in grief, or we take those moments and turn them into the strength to get up and keep living.”
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