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Reporter's Notebook: A Family's EscapeFromSyria's Idlib

Heather Murdock

   MANBIJ, SYRIA - It has taken eight hours for Ahmed, 32, and his three
   children to drive from Idlib, Syria, to the entrance to Manbij in a car
   packed with cousins, nieces and nephews. The streets were jammed with
   traffic at 3 a.m. because it was the safest time to flee the bombings
   in his neighborhood.

   We ask why, after months of living under constant bombardments, he
   finally decided on this day to leave.

   "Tell them," he instructs his 6-year-old niece, patting the back of
   Fatima's blond hair. Her cheeks arechubbyand she wears a
   rainbow-colored plastic headband.

   "Our neighborhood was bombed, so we moved," she says in a polite,
   matter-of-fact manner. "Then there was more bombs and we had to move
   again."

   She grins when Halan, a translator, compliments her adult-sounding
   Arabic. But her head bows and she quietlynodswhen asked if she was
   afraid in Idlib. "Yes," she says, barely audibly.

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