If you’ve watched the television, logged onto social media or frankly been alive the last two weeks, you will know Aleppo is on fire.
You’ll be sad. But then you’ll move on with your day to more pressing issues like what to get the kids for Christmas, how expensive cashews are this time of year and whether it will rain for the barbecue you’re hosting tomorrow night.
READ MORE: Our explainer on what is happening in Aleppo right now.
I’ve spent the last 12 months working very closely with Syrian people in my job as a journalist at Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT World. Before I moved here for work I sweated all that small stuff. M7 traffic jams would drive me bananas. Now I’m just glad there isn’t a pipe bomb on the bus. When I used to go to dinner, I’d get frustrated with poor service. Now I’m too busy checking for random backpacks under tables in case they’re a bomb. Shopping centres still give me the creeps. I avoided them in Turkey because they’re such an attractive venue for terror attacks.
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Your experience in a very troubled part of the world, was far more harrowing than my short time spent in central Africa.I truly hope your PTSD will ease soon Natasha, The mind is a very fragile thing. I remember coming out of the experience feeling a sense of anger and depression on my return, Initially I was awakened to the shallowness of our western lives filled with material desires. It took me years to get over that anger and contempt...I was only nineteen, which may explain some of it. To your credit, you seem to have a better adjusted and adult approach to your experiences. Just want you know that I truly understand your confusion and pain having witness a few horrors of my own,
Thank you for this post. I think it is all too easy to forget that the majority of the world do not live the same quality of life we're lucky to experience here. I strongly encourage anyone i meet to spend some time travelling through developing countries and to realise how lucky we are here. Recently i was in Papua New Guinea working for an NGO and it completely tore my heart to see the lack of medical facilities and the routine violence and sexual assault against women.