Rifaie Tammas

“It was four or five am when the actual battle started. Imagine forty or fifty shells landing in the same minute…it kept going for hours and hours without stopping. Then the airstrikes came, and then the land-to-land missiles. On the second day I lost a close friend, the next week I lost my uncle, two days after that I lost my father. The campaign continued for fourteen days. We heard that there was a deal between Hezbollah, the Free Syrian Army, and the government…when we got close to the first checkpoint they opened fire on us.“ Hear how Syrian academic Rifaie Tammas made his way from his war-town homeland to Macquarie University in episode three of the Pioneering Minds podcast. Soundcloud: http://macq.it/1SR9LxX | iTunes: http://macq.it/1U6sjcN