Photographer reveals gut-wrenching photos of where Syrian child refugees sleep

Award-winning photojournalist Magnus Wennman captures stories of refugee children

Award-winning photojournalist Magnus Wennman has unveiled a heart-rending photo series showing the plight of refugee children in the Middle East and on Europe’s doorstep as they leave their hearth and home in the hopes of finding a safe place to live.

Speaking to CNN, Wennman said that the conflict and the crisis can be difficult for people to understand, “but there is nothing hard to understand about how children need a safe place to sleep. That is easy to understand.”

“They have lost some hope. It takes very much for a child to stop being a child and to stop having fun, even in really bad places,” he added.



The photographer traveled across regions where migrant children and their families are fleeing to tell capture their stories in his 'Where The Children Sleep'.

1. Lamar, 5, Horgos, Serbia

Lamar, a five-year-old, often talks about her dolls, toy train and ball which she left back home in Baghdad. The family left their home after a bomb dropped close to their house. Now, Lamar sleeps on a blanket in the forest -- scared, frozen and sad at Hungary’s closed border.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

2. Abdullah, 5, Belgrad, Serbia

Abdullah, who has a blood disease, has been sleeping outside the central station in Belgrade. The five-year-old saw his sister get killed in front of his eyes in their home in Daraa. “He is still in shock and has nightmares every night,” says his mother. His mother does not have any money to buy medicines for him.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda



3. Ahmed, 6, Horgos, Serbia

It is after midnight when Ahmed falls asleep in the grass. “He is brave and only cries sometimes in the evenings,” says his uncle, who has taken care of Ahmed since his father was killed in their hometown Deir ez-Zor in northern Syria.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

4. Maram, 8, Amman

Maram suffered brain hemorrhage after a rocket hit her house and a piece of the roof landed right on top of her. Her mother took her to a field hospital, and from there she was airlifted across the border to Jordan. For the first 11 days, Maram was in a coma. The eight-year-old is now conscious, but has a broken jaw and can’t speak.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

5. Ralia, 7 and Rahaf, 13, Beirut

Ralia, 7, and Rahaf, 13, live on the streets of Beirut after a grenade killed their mother and brother in Damascus. Along with their father, they have been sleeping rough for a year. Rahaf says she is scared of “bad boys,” at which Ralia starts crying.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda



6. Moyad, 5, Amman

Moyad and his mother were on their way to the market in Dar’a to buy flour to make a spinach pie. They walked past a taxi in which someone had placed a bomb. Moyad’s mother died instantly. The boy, who has been airlifted to Jordan, has shrapnel lodged in his head, back and pelvis.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

7. Walaa, 5 years old, Dar-El-Ias

Walaa wants to go home because she had her own room in Aleppo and she never used to cry at bedtime. Here, in the refugee camp, she cries every night. Resting her head on the pillow is horrible, she says, because nighttime is horrible. That was when the attacks happened.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

8. Ahmad, 7, Horgos/Roszke

Ahmad was home when the bomb hit his family’s house in Idlib. Shrapnel hit him in the head, but he survived although his younger brother did not. Now Ahmad lays among thousands of other refugees on the asphalt along the highway leading to Hungary’s closed border.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

 



9. Shiraz, 9, Suruc

Shiraz was three months old when she was stricken with a severe fever. The doctor diagnosed polio. When the war came, her mother starts crying as she describes how she wrapped the girl in a blanket and carried her over the border from Kobane to Turkey. Shiraz, who can’t talk, received a wooden cradle in the refugee camp where she remains day and night.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

10. Shehd, 7 

Shehd loves to draw, but more recently, all of her drawings have had the same theme: weapons. “She saw them all the time, they are everywhere,” explains her mother when the little girl sleeps on the ground alongside Hungary’s closed border. She does not play anymore either.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

11. Amir, 20 months, Zahle Fayda

Amir was born a refugee. His mother believes her son was traumatised in the womb. “Amir has never spoken a single word,” says Shahana. In the plastic tent where the family now lives, Amir has no toys, but he plays with whatever he can find on the ground.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda



12. Juliana, 2, Horgos, Serbia

It is 34 degrees Celcius. The flies crawl on Juliana’s face and she shifts uneasily in her sleep. Juliana’s family has been walking through Serbia for two days. This is the latest phase of a flee that started three months ago.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

14. Fara, 2, Azraq

Fara loves soccer. Her dad tries to make balls for her by crumpling up anything he can find, but they don’t last long. Every night, he says goodnight to Fara and her big sister Tisam, 9, in the hope that tomorrow will bring them a proper ball to play with.

PHOTO: Magnus Wennman via Bored Panda

This article originally appeared on Bored Panda