A 6-year-old New York boy wrote a touching letter to Barack Obama, telling the President that he would offer his home to a Syrian refugee boy, BBC News is reporting . The letter has since gone viral on social media.
By now, you may have heard of Omran Daqneesh — or, if you haven’t heard his name, you’re at least familiar with his picture. Weeks ago, a photo of the bloodied and dazed Syrian boy, a victim of an airstrike that destroyed his home in Aleppo, went viral. The stark cruelty of the image became a sort of metaphor for the brutality of the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Omran Daqneesh #Syria #Allepo #War #Children #Child pic.twitter.com/8zx6T4DPDL
— BLURZ REBIRTH (@BLURZREBIRTH) September 20, 2016
As CNN reported at the time, Omar and his family were injured but not killed . Though he survived, his future remains uncertain and bleak. His home is destroyed, and even if his family makes it out of Syria alive, the life of a refugee is scarcely better than that of life in Syria. If he’s lucky, he might make it to a Western nation, such as the USA or a European nation. But even then, his prospects are grim.
New York boy Alex saw the image of Omar and, in an act of kindness and compassion that is sorely lacking in many adults, penned a letter to President Obama, offering a place in his home to the young war victim.
“Dear President Obama, remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to our home… we’ll be waiting for you guys with flags flowers and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”
The rest of the letter is filled with the types of things only a kid could say. He promises to teach him “additions and subtractions.” He tells him that he has a friend from Japan who is also learning English. He warns Omar that his (Alex’s) sister does not let people touch her lip gloss, but he is free to smell it.
You can read the touching letter in its entirety here , courtesy of the Metro .
Alex’s words seem to have struck a chord with Obama himself: speaking this week at the United Nations summit on the refugee crisis, Obama read portions of the letter, then showed a recording of Alex himself reading the letter.
“We should all be more like Alex. Imagine what the world would look like if we were. Imagine the suffering we could ease and the lives we could save.”
Alex’s response to the refugee crisis is the exact opposite of the approach of some American adults — in particular, Donald Trump, Jr. The son of the Republican presidential nominee raised eyebrows this week when he compared the refugee crisis to a bowl of Skittles.
Bowl of Skittles photographer, a refugee, says he doesn’t approve of Trump Jr. tweet https://t.co/kiCGtcMliv pic.twitter.com/4xTAr3RdLv
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 20, 2016
If social media is any indication, Alex’s letter has struck a chord with regular Americans as well.
“A six year old who has more humanity, love, and understanding than most adults. Kudos to his parents.”
“Neither of these sweet little boys, someone’s sons, are Skittles.”
The Obama administration announced that the U.S. plans to take in an additional 110,00 refugees in the 2017 fiscal year, a small fraction of the millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world.
[Feature Image by Aleppo Media Center/AP Photo]
