Disapeared in Damascus

The Young Syrian Blogger Who Wrote the Poem Below has been Kidnapped, grabbed off the street in Syria. 

This is from a post placed on her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, today by her cousin:  

Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. [...]

Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. [...]

One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad.

 Update:

I have been on the telephone with both her parents and all that we can say right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her.

Please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers, as well as the rest of her people and their struggle to take flight. 

*     *     *

Bird Songs

- by Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari

The bird flies free
Knowing no boundaries
Borders mean nothing
When you have wings

My heart and my soul
Long to follow and soar
Out over mountains
And deserts and seas

I have no wings
And earth presses in
Wrapped in a sheet
Forever to lie

Weighed down by dirtclods
Never to feel
Wind on my wings
Sun on my back

Soaring and flying
Freedom is coming
Here am I wanting
To know it one day