BEIRUT, Lebanon — In the images, he
sits alone, a small boy coated with
gray dust and encrusted blood. His
little feet barely extend beyond his
seat. He stares, bewildered, shocked
and, above all, weary, as if channeling
the mood of Syria .
The boy, identified by medical
workers as Omran Daqneesh, 5, was
pulled from a damaged building after
a Syrian government or Russian
airstrike in the northern city of
Aleppo. He was one of 12 children
under the age of 15 treated on
Wednesday — not a particularly
unusual figure — at one of the
hospitals in the city’s rebel-held
eastern section, according to doctors
there.
But some images strike a particular
nerve, for reasons both obvious and
unknowable, jarring even a public
numbed to disaster. Omran’s is one.
Within minutes of being posted by
witnesses and journalists, a
photograph and a video of Omran
began rocketing around the world on
social media. Unwittingly, Omran —
like Alan Kurdi , the Syrian toddler
who drowned last September and
whose body washed up on a Turkish
beach — is bringing new attention to
the thousands upon thousands of
children killed and injured during
five years of war and the inability or
unwillingness of global powers to stop
the carnage.
Maybe it was his haircut, long and
floppy up top; or his rumpled T-shirt
showing the Nickelodeon cartoon
character CatDog; or his tentative,
confused movements in the video. Or
the instant and inescapable question
of whether either of his parents was
left alive.
ADVERTISEMENT
In any event, by Thursday morning,
Omran’s image had been broadcast
and published around the world, and
Syrians were sharing mock-ups of his
photograph in memes that both cried
for help and darkly mocked the futile
repetitiveness of such pleas.
One, riffing on Omran’s officelike
chair, showed him at a desk as if
representing his country to the world.
The real representative of the #Syrian
people pic.twitter.com/eRPCRJUENU
— Zaher Sahloul (@sahloul) August 18,
2016
Another pasted him like a silent
accusation between President Obama
and his Russian counterpart, President
Vladimir V. Putin.
Syrians are tweeting Omran's picture
as they ask why the world is doing
nothing about the killing in #Aleppo
pic.twitter.com/ioXM3Tgmke
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August
18, 2016
The drafting of Omran as an emblem
of despair is not new; images of dead
and injured children from Syria are
shared daily on social media, many of
them indescribably more harrowing.
Pieces of children’s bodies being
pulled from rubble are photographed
with appalling regularity in a war of
indiscriminate attacks, most often
from government airstrikes and
shelling but also from rebel mortars.
But while the mind revolts against
looking too long at those pictures, and
many news media shun them as too
gruesome, it may be the relatively
familiar look of Omran’s distress that
allows a broader public to relate to it.
In the case of Alan, the Syrian toddler
who washed up on a beach after his
family tried to reach Europe on a
smuggler’s boat, the child was dead.
But his body was intact, lying in the
sand as if sleeping, and dressed neatly
with evident parental love for his big
journey.
Omran, as he is carried from a
damaged building in the dark, could
be Everychild. He looks around in
confusion, his chubby forearm draped
trustingly across the reflective stripe
on his rescuer’s back, before he is
plopped into the chair at the back of
an ambulance, lit blindingly white.
He settles into a thousand-yard stare,
apparently too stunned to cry. Then
he puts a hand to his bloody brow,
looks at his palm in surprise, and tries
to wipe it on the chair. He glances
around, as if trying to understand
where he is.
Omran’s picture and video were
distributed by the Aleppo Media
Center, a longstanding group of
antigovernment activists and citizen
journalists who document the conflict.
They were also shared with journalists
by doctors from the hospital where he
was treated, which is supported by the
Syrian American Medical Society .
The video shows two more small
children brought to the ambulance,
and then two adults. They were taken
to a hospital already swamped with
casualties.
Mohammad al-Ahmad, a radiology
nurse, was in the emergency room
when Omran arrived around 9 p.m.
with bruises and cuts all over his
body.
“The boy was traumatized,” Mr.
Ahmad said. “He wasn’t speaking
when he arrived. A few minutes later,
he started crying from pain.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Ahmad cleaned Omran’s face and
bandaged his head, as images shared
by the hospital’s medical staff showed.
Doctors said they found no apparent
signs of brain injury.
In the chaos, the hospital workers,
who communicated via online
messages, could not immediately say
which of the boy’s adult relatives were
alive and whether they were with
him.
That is not unusual, medical workers
say, in a city where some dead and
injured children cannot even be
identified because they are brought in
alone. Bombings bring so many
patients at once that doctors treat
them on the floor, and hospitals and
medical workers have been
systematically targeted in the war.
Later, doctors at the hospital said they
had verified that Omran’s parents had
survived, though their home had been
destroyed. Relatives declined to speak,
saying they were afraid of
government reprisals. The doctors said
the family may have relatives living in
government-controlled territory.
Mahmoud Raslan, who had taken some
of the video and photographs of
Omran, said in an interview that the
boy lived with his mother, father and
three siblings, and that they were all
injured.
Cases like Omran’s are a daily sight in
eastern Aleppo, several doctors said,
adding that he was lucky in that he
made it to a hospital that was still
open.
Mr. Ahmad, the nurse, said three
other children had been hospitalized
with Omran, along with a 22-year-old
man who had been stuck under rubble
for eight hours. He said that at least
three people had died in the strike.
“But Omran took all the attention,” he
said.
Mr. Raslan, the photographer, was
surprised that the images of this one
boy drew so much news coverage
when, he said, he photographs similar
events every day.
On Thursday morning, journalists
from around the world were
clamoring in an online chat group for
more information about Omran and
his family. But the doctors had moved
on.
They were handling yet another influx
from a bombing that morning, later
posting new images. A boy lay on the
floor, his legs missing. A woman in
black put her hand to her mouth in
anguish.
Another boy lay on a gurney, soaked
in blood, as a clinician worked on
him. A few minutes later came another
text message: The boy had died. His
name was Ibrahim Hadiri, and there
was a new photograph of his face,
eyes closed. It is not likely to go viral.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/world/middleeast/omran-daqneesh-syria-aleppo.html