Reports | 25 05 2020
Lubna is only one of the few female students to actually earn a high school diploma. Her father is considered a liberal, if compared to others in al-Ghoutah [in the Damascus countryside], simply for allowing her to study.
After her school in Irbin was closed due to the bombing, the girl moved to a school in the Madyara area. With the increasing intensity of the fighting that school also closed; so she moved to the Duma Institute. Not long after, Duma's sky rained with missiles, and the Institute was also closed.
Lubna considered that her continuing to pursue an education is a type of jihad. This issue had turned into a challenge and a confrontation—one for which she was willing to pay with her life.
When she got to the final exam period, Lubna was faced with one of two choices: either take the exams administered by the Syrian opposition Coalition, which will result in a certificate recognized only by certain countries; or take the regime's exams, which would require her to travel to Damascus with an escort. And so it was.
The young woman was not spared people's criticisms for venturing out of Ghouta. And although Ghouta students were reasonably well treated by the regime, they were equally not spared "lectures" calling on them not to return to the "terrorist" areas in Ghouta, as regime sympathizers described them.
Merely because she chose to commit herself to get her secondary school certificate, Lubna has been described in her social circles as a spinster—despite her not exceeding the tender age of 19. This is due to the prevalence of school delinquency and a high drop-out rate among school-age youth, coupled with a trend of early marriage for young girls at the ages of 14 and 15 years.
Lubna did not achieve her dream of studying at university. Yet she does not regret her obtaining a high school diploma, even if that meant losing her chance to wed. With a group of her friends, she was able to open a small educational institute for children, whose circumstances did not allow them to continue their studies. She believes that with education she will help to "reconstruct the country," as she puts it.