00:00In the narrow streets of the Al-Qusur neighborhood, grief hangs in the air.
00:06Maya Nasser lost both her father and uncle during mass killings carried out when pro-government fighters attacked the area.
00:16Beneath her family's apartment, she shows me the spot where she says they were shot dead.
00:23She's planted a bush there in their memory.
00:25These are the marks of the bullets that they fired while shouting at us to get down.
00:34Look here and there.
00:37I knew that they had killed my father, yet I still ran down the stairs to check on him, and I found both my father and my uncle right here.
00:46I cried and screamed, and I don't remember what else I did.
00:51That is what happened.
00:55For months afterwards, Maya says she couldn't leave her room.
01:00She describes feeling trapped by shock and an inability to grieve.
01:06But today, she volunteers with a local initiative known as YAMI,
01:11a grassroots effort founded by community members to support the children of those who were killed.
01:17We're preparing games and activities for the children here, and we'll give out these presents.
01:26YAMI, which also means mother in Arabic, carries the initials of Yusuf, Marah, and Yorub, three young Al-Awai graduates from the neighborhood.
01:38They were preparing for medical school before they were killed in March.
01:42YAMI made me feel alive again, and it was the reason I was able to leave the house once more.
01:51It helped me reflect on how to be present and offer support to others, especially at a time when I felt extremely vulnerable.
02:00Two of her friends, whose fathers were also killed that day, volunteer with Maya.
02:10Despite the new meaning she's found in the work, she says she has little faith left in the country or the new government.
02:17I wanted to leave long ago.
02:22I stayed only to be with my father. I was very attached to him.
02:28He kept urging me to go, telling me we had relatives in Germany who could host me.
02:35But I refused to leave on my own.
02:37Now it's different.
02:39I'll leave everything behind the first chance I get.
02:42Signs of what happened in this neighborhood on March 7 and 8 are still visible.
02:51Survivors say nearly every family in the area lost someone.
02:57Behind me, a newly built burial site for victims of the atrocities.
03:01Locals tell me nearly a thousand people were killed in the Al-Qusur neighborhood alone.
03:06Most of them were laid to rest in this mass grave.
03:10Among them, Yusuf, Marah and Yorub.
03:18The volunteers at Yemmi are honoring those three young people and all their own dead
03:23by caring for the children who lost parents.
03:26As the community here still struggles to grasp the scale of what was done to them,
03:33some, like Maya, focus on the small things they can do.
03:37They sound like only a thousand people in the mundo and all their own.
03:38Thank you for joining us.
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