Laya Mosto

And these kids were taken into custody and tortured.

And then that's where the first protest started in that city, in that town.

And that trickled across the whole country.

And you would see that on TV.

You would see that every week.

You start seeing what they're doing to children, to women, to how they're torturing people, how they're raping people.

Absorbing all of that on TV and you start seeing it, you can't sit down and be quiet anymore.

So the whole country revolted and then that fractured everything and the war broke out and just things kept getting exponentially worse.

At first, I remember like the little things in school, the arguments and stuff.

I think things always kind of start out in other cities in the country, not the capital.

Then they slowly kind of trickle to the capital.

2012 particularly was pretty bad in Damascus.

I actually almost died twice in May of 2012.

Yeah.

Once was like on my way to school and I was like late to the bus.

And had I not been late, I would have 100 percent been in like the explosion.

There was a building that was attacked.

It was labeled as a terrorist attack.

But really, it was the president's order to have a hit on this like military complex at rush hour to make it seem like it was like, oh, terrorists are coming to Syria.

And that's why we're fighting now.