Where are you…? - Neville Kyrke-Smith

I was back in the Middle East earlier this year and met with Christians who had fled Daesh (Isis). Randa and Sami from Zabadani in Syria told me how they fled when more than 5,000 armed terrorists took over their town in February 2012. Christian houses were marked up. Fighting broke out every night. People were killed in their homes and others kidnapped. 

The extremists went from door to door shouting out: “Where are you Christians?” 

Randa, Sami and family used to have a 10-room house – now five of them are squeezed into a tiny one main room flat, with kitchenette and shower, provided by the Melkite Church in Zahlé, in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. They would like to return the few miles across the border to Zabadani but everything has been destroyed – their home was razed to the ground. 

Meanwhile they are being helped through Aid to the Church in Need, as are 650 families in Zahlé, Lebanon, with food, basic supplies and accommodation.  

Fadi, now aged 14, told me that he cannot remember what happened, but his father told me that he held his hand as they walked over bodies as they fled from Homs.

Can we begin to imagine the fear and terror? What would I have done… or recently...