DAMASCUS — Nada, a teacher, starts her classes by asking her third-grade students to express their feelings. She is trained to deal with children who exhibit signs of trauma after living in a war zone for over two years. The school where Nada works is located in the relatively safe neighborhood of Sahnaya, in southern Damascus, but as in the rest of Syria, war is never out of mind. On the first day of the school year, Nada distributes “face cards” to her class of mostly nine-year-olds, all showing different emotions. She asks them to pick the face that best […]
