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TCNJ Magazine - Winter 2017

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18 WINTER 2017 me?" He looked at me and he said, "No, I wouldn't." I think it was in that moment that he realized how emotional and irrational this notion of going to Syria and fighting was. It was his attempt at coping. It was his attempt at getting control over something he had no control over. You see that a lot in people with PTSD. We talked for a little bit, and he started to see our perspective. That family really had an impact on me. He's still getting therapy and hasn't gone back to fight, which is a relief for all of us. One day, after a session, one of the mothers told me, "You know, Abrar, my second-eldest son died in the war. He died June 2012. Abrar, that day, my heart died." You just have to take a second and swallow that phrase: "My heart died the day that my son died." Apparently a bomb went off and cut off both his legs. They sent the body to his village. Then this woman says, "Now my youngest son wants to go back and fight in the war." I'm sitting there, thinking, "What can I do?" I told her, "Okay, give me your phone number. I'm going to ask you to invite him to the clinic for a therapy session." The following week, I asked, "Did you tell your son to come?" She says, "Abrar, I tried speaking to him. He won't listen. I can't afford to lose another son." I said, "Where do you live — we're going to come over." So we're sitting at his mother's house and talking to her 19-year-old son. My coworker asks, "What's this I hear that you want to go back and fight in the war?" They're talking and eventually, he says, "You know, sometimes when I get really, really angry, there's this intrusive thought that I want to go back and fight in Syria." I said to him, "So, you find it courageous that you're going to run away from your problems and you're going to run away from your family and break your mother's heart and probably die? Do you recognize that there's a lot more involved now than at the beginning of the war?" At the beginning of the war, it was just the Assad regime and the rebels. Now it's Hezbollah, the Russians, who knows, ISIS even. Patients would tell me, "We don't even know who's hitting us anymore." I asked him that and he said, "Yes, but if I have this mentality and we all have this mentality, all the Syrian people are going to die, and nobody is going to help them." I said, "We appreciate your courage, but if the Prophet Mohammed was sitting right in front of you, would you give him the argument you just gave On campus Photos from around the globe dot Ebady's dorm room wall.

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