EXCLUSIVE, SPECIAL FEES APPLY. Must Credit - Magnus Wennman/Rex Mandatory Credit: Photo by Must Credit - Magnus Wen/REX Shutterstock (2853832u) Walaa, 5, in Dar-El-Ias Magnus Wennman: Where the children Sleep - 27 Sep 2015 Walaa, 5, wants to go home. She had her own room in Aleppo, she tells us. There, she never used to cry at bedtime. Here, in the refugee camp, she cries every night. Resting her head on the pillow is horrible, she says, because nighttime is horrible. That was when the attacks happened. By day, Walaa's mother often builds a little house out of pillows, to teach her that they are nothing to be afraid of.

 

EXCLUSIVE, SPECIAL FEES APPLY. Must Credit - Magnus Wennman/Rex Mandatory Credit: Photo by Must Credit - Magnus Wen/REX Shutterstock (2853832u) Walaa, 5, in Dar-El-Ias Magnus Wennman: Where the children Sleep - 27 Sep 2015 Walaa, 5, wants to go home. She had her own room in Aleppo, she tells us. There, she never used to cry at bedtime. Here, in the refugee camp, she cries every night. Resting her head on the pillow is horrible, she says, because nighttime is horrible. That was when the attacks happened. By day, Walaa's mother often builds a little house out of pillows, to teach her that they are nothing to be afraid of.

Walaa, 5, in Dar-El-Ias.

by Maria Sofou

Syria is bleeding. More than 4 million people have left the country during the yearlong war, desperately hoping for a future that is not constantly penetrated by the fear of death. Among them are more than 1 million children under the age of 12.

Photojournalist Magnus Wennman travelled across Europe and the Middle East, meeting some of these children, capturing them as they struggle to find a shelter in this scary world. Wennman’s lens gives us a heartbreaking document of those childrens’ suffering, a suffering that does not stop even if they are miles away from their war-zone homes.

The story behind the photograph below as we read it in Wennman’s Instagram account is truly heartbreaking: “Sham 1 year old. Roszke/Horgos. In the very front, just alongside the border between Serbia and Hungary by the 4-meter-high iron gate, Sham is laying in his mother’s arms. Just a few decimeters behind them is the Europe they so desperately are trying to reach. Only one day before, the last refugees were allowed through and taken by train to Austria. But Sham and his mother arrived too late, along with thousands of other refugees who now wait outside the closed Hungarian border.”

EXCLUSIVE, SPECIAL FEES APPLY. Must Credit - Magnus Wennman/Rex Mandatory Credit: Photo by Must Credit - Magnus Wen/REX Shutterstock (2853832v) Sham, 1, in Horgos, Serbia Magnus Wennman: Where the children Sleep - 27 Sep 2015 In the very front, just alongside the border between Serbia and Hungary by the 4-meter-high iron gate, Sham is laying in his mother's arms. Just a few decimeters behind them is the Europe they so desperately are trying to reach. Only one day before the last refugees were allowed through and taken by train to Austria. But Sham and his mother arrived too late, along with thousands of other refugees who now wait outside the closed Hungarian border.

Sham, 1, in Horgos, Serbia

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                                Lamar, 5, sleeping on the ground in Horgos, Serbia

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                 Abdullah, 5, sleeping outside a railway station in Belgrade, Serbia

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               Abdul Karim Addo, 17, sleeping in Omonoia Square in Athens, Greece

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                        Ahmad, 7, sleeping on the ground in Horgos, Hungary

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                           Ahmed, 6, sleeping on the ground in Horgos, Serbia

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                                                      Fara, 2, asleep in Azraq, Jordan

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                                   Iman, 2, in a hospital bed in Azraq, Jordan

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                               Mahdi, 1, asleep on the ground in Horgos, Serbia

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                                                     Maram, 8, in Amman, Jordan

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                                     Mohammed, 13, in hospital in Nizip, Turkey

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                   Ralia, 7 and Rahaf, 13, sleeping on the street in Beirut, Lebanon

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                                       Moyad, 5, in hospital in Amman, Jordan

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                                                    Tamam, 5, in Azraq, Jordan

 

All images by MAGNUS WENNMAN/AFTONBLADET/REX USA

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