Story of a Syrian astronaut becoming a refugee in Turkey

What is the pain of being without a home and without a country? How painful is it to be away from home?

 The answer is in a piece written by Hanzade Germiyanoğlu, whom I am directly quoting below:  

"It has been six and a half years since Sidra left Aleppo. She has walked kilometers, leaving the past behind and the future in a conundrum."

This Eid el-Fitr is the sixth holiday that she has spent in a Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) container in the Akçakale district of the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, away from home, with a sour taste on her palate. 

She is 16 years old and does not miss wearing new clothes on holidays, but she does miss those days, those holidays when the whole family had serenity, peace and hope.

Let alone being without a country, the fact that their homeland will never be the same as before. The hopelessness is worse than being homeless.

It was only six holidays ago when the family had the sweet daily rush of the pre-holiday period. Their worries would have been about what her grades would be like in her report card and how credit card debts looked like at the end of the month. They would worry over what they would cook for the neighbors in the evening…

This holiday, their only concern is about the future that awaits them. "What about the future? What if the future never comes?" they wonder. 

Her mother was a teacher and her father was a civil servant. Sidra's story could have been the story of any one of us.

There is also another story, which is much closer to us. It is the story of 66-year-old Muhammed Ahmed Faris who lives in Istanbul's Kocamustafapaşa neighborhood. He is Syria's first and only astronaut. He lives in a two-bedroom house...