A Syrian Photographer’s Gift to Refugee Children | The New Yorker

The Syrian photographer Serbest Salih had just finished university, in 2014, when the Islamic State laid siege to his home town of Kobani. He fled to the Turkish province of Mardin, just over the border, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have settled during the past decade’s civil war. A multiethnic conflict zone at the edge of Mesopotamia, Mardin is home to a community center called the Sirkhane Social Circus School. Under the tutelage of volunteer instructors there, children affected by war learn to juggle, spin plates, and walk on stilts.