The song comes alive as night draws in. Hear it curl beneath the blanket, slip between the fold of cradling arms, in rooms across the world. To an audience of children, a hidden chorus of caregivers fills the night with song. They’re singing lullabies.
For Khadija al Mohammad, nighttime has always been the time for silence, comfort, and quieting the noises of the day. When her eldest son, Muhammed, was born 19 years ago, a decade before the Syrian civil war, she sang sweet lullabies—songs passed down by her mother and grandmother, songs of heritage and place.
As the conflict escalated, her family left their home in Kafr Nubl in 2013 and made a reluctant crossing to Turkey, where her youngest child, Ahmad, three, was born.