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A boy asks Obama to bring a Syrian boy to him in a handwritten letter

A boy asks Obama to bring a Syrian boy to him in a handwritten letter

Posted September. 24, 2016 07:45,   

Updated September. 24, 2016 08:25

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“Dear President Obama, remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria?”

A letter handwritten by Alex, a 6-year-old boy living in Scarsdale, New York, to President Barack Obama is touching the hearts of people. The White House released a video clip of Alex reading the letter on Wednesday (local time). “We will give him a family and he will be our brother,” Alex wrote.

Omran Daqneesh is a 5-year-old Syrian boy who sat covered in blood and dust in an ambulance after an airstrike by the Syrian government and Russian forces in Aleppo, Syria, in civil war on Aug. 17. Though Omran lost his 10-year-old brother to the air strike, his blank stare and lack of tears made people heartbroken. Omran’s photo was known to the world after the Aleppo Media Center (AMC), a local news media, released it.

“We’ll be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers and balloons. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him,” Alex wrote. “In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language.”

“The humanity that a young child can display, who hasn’t learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of other people because of where they’re from, or how they look, or how they pray,” President Obama shared the letter at the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees held in New York on Monday. “We should all be more like Alex. Imagine what the world would look like if we were.”



조은아 기자achim@donga.com