SPORT AND FUN, NOT WAR AND FEAR

In the village of Aljiina, near the Syrian city of Aleppo, something special is taking place. At the Golden Bridge School the air is filled with the happy chatter of children, punctuated only by the occasional battle shout, kiai. There’s a karate class in process, but what makes the session unique is that many of the students here have special needs.

The school is run by black belt Wasim Satot who opened the karate school to build a sense of community and to help the children overcome the traumas of Syria’s civil war. Bringing together able-bodied children and those with disabilities, boys and girls, aged between six and 15, Satot’s work caught the attention of photojournalist Anas Alkharboutli. 

“Wasim’s story is an example of adaptation and the creation of something positive despite the circumstances of the war,” says Alkharboutli, whose documentation of the classes led to his photography series Sport and Fun Instead of War and Fear. In this image he captures two Down Syndrome boys engrossed in conversation while waiting for class. The series won him first place in the Sport category at the 2021 Sony World Photography Awards. “I learned from [this series] that anything is possible. No matter how difficult the circumstances, they can be adapted and turned into something positive,” he says, adding that winning the award was also a win for the children in getting their story heard. 

Alkharboutli has won many accolades for his photography, but he might never have been behind the camera at all. He trained as an engineer at the University of Damascus, but when the siege began in nearby Eastern Ghouta he quit school and in 2015 picked up his camera and started to depict the troubles in his homeland for the outside world. 

“My project is Syria,” he says. “I strive to document everything that happens in it, and I try to focus on children because they are the biggest victims of this long war.”

A decade on from the outbreak of Syria’s brutal war, the quest for justice continues with Alkharboutli determined to use his camera to communicate on behalf of the millions of Syrians still living in the country. However, rather than focus on the battlefield, his aim is to project hope, however small. “The world always sees killing, displacement and siege, but there is another aspect of life in Syria that is full of positivity.”