Amal (11)
Lebanon

Amal (name changed) is eleven years old when we meet her. At the age of seven, she fled with her family from the destroyed Syrian city of Homs to find refuge in Lebanon. Today, she is living in an informal settlement in the Bekaa Valley. Her father, Gibran Aragi, earns his living as a teacher in a preschool run by Save the Children, in order to secure the survival of his daughter and her eight siblings.

Amal does not say much more during the visit of Martina Dase and Dominic Nahr. The 11-year-old girl fled with her family from the besieged Syrian city of Homs to the neighboring country of Lebanon. Since then, she has withdrawn from the world. She is mostly silent and cries a lot. She misses her grandmother, who stayed behind in Syria. Her parents do not know how to comfort their daughter.

Amal's father works as a teacher at a Save the Children preschool. He is popular and a sought-after mediator in disputes. His conciliatory way of solving problems has earned him the nickname “Man of the Camp“. Amal's mother, a warm-hearted woman, does her best to instill hope and confidence in her nine children. It pains her to witness her daughter's silencing. Neither parent can imagine that their daughter would want to be photographed. But in the encounter with the photographer Dominic Nahr, something changes in Amal. The otherwise so closed girl suddenly comes out of her shell. She puts her hand lightly on her hip and looks directly into the camera. As if she were saying: Look, here I am.

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, committed to helping children at war for decades, describes a special moment in the life of the Syrian girl Amal, captured in a contact print. Like all our guest authors, Anne-Sophie Mutter allowed herself to look in depth at a single image without knowing the whole story.