“We Should Care About Each Other”
For two years, pediatrician Amani Ballour was the administrator of the Cave, an underground hospital in Ghouta, Syria, helping hundreds of patients under constant bombings. In her quest to save others, she not only put her own life at risk, but also challenged the conservative norms of the patriarchal society she was raised in. In January 2020, Doctor Ballour was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Prize for her humanitarian activity.
Amani Ballour comes from Eastern Ghouta, an area near the Syrian capital of Damascus. When she was younger, she wanted to be an engineer, but her family strongly opposed such an unorthodox career choice, and Amani had to settle on becoming a doctor instead. “In my community, there are differences between girls and boys, between men and women. They always said: “You’re a girl, you can’t do that.” I heard that all the time. My father wanted me to be a doctor because people respect them. So, I started to study medicine, but I didn’t want that in the beginning,” explains Doctor Ballour. However, over time, she came to enjoy helping people and decided to become a pediatrician because she’s always liked children.
She was still in the University of Damascus when the Syrian revolution started. Shocked by the way the government treated people who peacefully protested the violation of their human rights, Amani Ballour chose to give up her studies and move back to her village to help her community. “The people in my place, they were being bombed and killed just because they have had these very simple demands. Of course, I decided that I will help them because they are human, they are innocent, they need help. Unfortunately, a lot of doctors decided to leave,” says Doctor Ballour.
As more and more hospitals in the area were being bombed and destroyed, local healthcare community struggled to treat the population. A safe place was needed to help patients in a more protected environment – and so the Cave was created. Amani, who started working there in 2012, remembers how they set it up: “We found a place underground; it was very small. We called it the Cave. In the beginning it was just two or three rooms in the basement of a building. We were in a besieged area, and that meant that there was no food, no medications, and also we were bombed all the time.”
Taking enormous risks, they looked for supplies and equipment anywhere they could, raiding the bombed hospitals and searching the ruins, but locals still kept dying of starvation, injuries and lack of medicine. Finally, people turned to desperate measures and dug underground tunnels leading to Damascus, smuggling food and medication to the besieged Eastern Ghouta. As little as it was, it helped them get by for a while.
One would think that in such conditions people would appreciate help and leadership wherever it came from, but even in danger, the patriarchal Syrian society wasn’t about to let go of its definition of “a woman’s place.” When Doctor Ballour took over the Cave as its administrator, she was appalled to meet with strong male opposition who dismissed her just because she was a woman. She couldn’t believe their hypocrisy. “That was very frustrating to me, and it made me angry all the time. I am a doctor, and other managers of the hospital were doctors. So, no difference between me and them. I studied medicine and they studied medicine. We know the same things. We saw the same cases. We survived bombings together!”, she says incredulously.
“In the whole Eastern Ghouta, there were only five pediatricians, so of course I worked as pediatrician in my clinic.”
She had to work twice as hard as others just to prove that she had a right to be there. Managing a makeshift hospital in a war zone is already a full-time job, but Doctor Ballour also continued to treat her little patients on top of everything. Having to explain to them what was happening was excruciating: “In the whole Eastern Ghouta, there were only five pediatricians, so of course I worked as pediatrician in my clinic. I was working with children and they kept asking: “Why am I hungry? Why do they bomb us? Why are we here?” They asked a lot. Children didn’t understand it. They came to the clinic and asked me when this would end. And I had no answers for them.”
It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like: working underground, saving patients with limited resources, fighting discrimination while surviving in a conflict zone. When talking about it, Doctor Ballour gets painfully honest: “I tried not to let that get to me. I tried to be strong. It was my choice to be there and to help these people, so I did my job. But I was afraid. I tried to support the children and tell them not to be afraid, but I was afraid myself. I was afraid of bombings, afraid of everything, afraid we wouldn’t get the medical supplies and that would be horrible.”
Her solution to dealing with this soul-crushing pressure was to give everything to the clinic and making her patients feel better – both physically and psychologically. She never lost hope and never gave up, even in the hardest times: “It wasn’t easy to keep going, but I tried to focus on my patients. When I worked with a wounded child or a wounded person, I tried to focus on them. What should I do? How can I help? So that’s what I did.”
Even the men who so vehemently objected to her being a manager were impressed. Amani smiles as she remembers the moment she finally won them over: “I wanted to challenge this culture in our community. I wanted to change it and I believed that I could change it and be a good manager. Before we left the Cave, some men came to me and said: “You were right.” The same men who were talking about me and who said before: “You can’t, you’re a woman,” they finally came to me and said: “You were right, and you did a great job.” I was very happy to hear that.”
Overall, Doctor Amani Ballour worked at the Cave for about six years, two of which she spent as its manager. She and many others finally had to flee when the bombings became incessant and the authorities warned them that they would all perish unless they left. Needless to say, that decision didn’t come easy. “In February 2018, they started bombing all the time and using all types of weapons, destroying everything. You couldn’t see anyone on the surface. The military got closer and closer to us; they controlled the area. When they got too close to The Cave, we had to flee. We had no choice. They used chemical weapons too many times,” explains Doctor Ballour.
Even today, Amani Ballour’s fight isn’t over and will probably never be. She still has a lot to say and even more to do: “I believe in God and I believe in humanity. This is my goal in life – to help humans, and Syrian people still need help. I founded the Al Amal Fund – it means “hope” in English – to support children and women and empower them. This is my mission now, and I will go everywhere to raise funds and to help these people,” she says.
“What is happening in Syria started about 9 years ago, and the world has been watching all this time, and is still watching, doing nothing. It’s shameful in the 21st century. Everyone can help. Every single thing is important. We should care about each other, about other human beings.
