A 28-year-old Syrian student at Columbia University lost his two young nieces and their mom within the devastating earthquake that has claimed at the very least 11,000 lives in his country and neighboring Turkey.
Hussein Akoush, a student on the Ivy League school in Manhattan since 2021, told The Day by day Beast that he was sent right into a “panic” when a friend texted him about “massive destruction” in his hometown of Al-Atarib in northwestern Aleppo.
“I saw the magnitude of the earthquake was 7.8. At this point, I spotted it was huge,” he told the outlet.
“I had to examine in on my family in Syria. So I sent messages to all my sisters and my brother, but none of them received my messages,” said Akoush, who moved to Turkey in 2016 after which to the Big Apple in 2021 to review neuroscience.
He finally heard from his uncle, who said, “‘Don’t worry, we’re advantageous, your mother and your sister are well,” Akoush told The Day by day Beast.
“‘Your brother’s constructing collapsed but we managed to take him out of the ruins. But we all know nothing about his wife and two daughters,’” he said his uncle told him.
Eventually, he learned that his nieces — 6-year-old Sedra and 5-year-old Maria — and their mom Fatima perished within the disaster.
“With a heavy heart and profound grief, I announce the passing away of my two nieces and their mother in last night’s earthquake,” Akoush said on Twitter.
“So, my brother lost his wife and his two daughters,” he told The Day by day Beast, adding that his brother has undergone surgery for a broken arm.
“It was a terrible night… I used to be not capable of sleep,” he said.
In a GoFundMe page from 2020, Akoush wrote that “before the Syrian revolution began, I used to be a hardworking student. I was top of my class but I used to be obliged to drop out of the School of Dentistry at Aleppo University in 2012 for fear of arrest by the Syrian Government due its violent response to the peaceful protests on campus.
“In the course of the war, I dedicated myself to peaceful activism against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Al Assad, as I watched friends and relations and innocent civilians being ruthlessly killed,” he continued.
Akoush said he learned English, decided to maneuver to Turkey and have become a contract journalist after facing “a litany of death threats and constant bombardment.”
“Fortunately, I used to be awarded a partial scholarship from Columbia to cover half of the schooling however it remains to be not enough and that’s the reason I’m hoping you’ll make a donation to assist pay for my first yr of tuition,” he wrote.
Akoush received $51,426 in donations, surpassing his goal of $50,000.
