Walid al-Musalh - Baghdad


"I loved the school so much that the weekend was getting bothering me, the manager here makes you feel that you are among your family." These brief words are described by Muammar Said, 44, an Arabic teacher at the school.

"Without beauty, we would not have been real educators," Muammar told Al-Jazeera Net. "We learned from him that education starts from the inside."

As usual, Gamal Fares, 45, comes early every day carrying his bag full of papers for the Al-Aqsa Primary School in the remote village of Rukan, along the administrative border with the city of Falluja, where he has been the director for three years. With his young visitors.

Known for 24 years of his educational career with his friendly smile and the ingenuity of his creation, he treats his nine management staff as someone rather than as their manager, motivating them a lot and "urging them to be fathers, not teachers", as described by Al Jazeera Net Abdul Fares, a 42-year-old teacher.

"You see him most of the time wandering through the school yard, grabbing what he finds lying on the ground, leaving students with self-denial and a paternal spirit," Fares said.

Jamal studies his students one by one, looks at the reasons for their absence, and comes to some of their homes close to the school to come to those who failed to attend for whatever reasons.

"I had a lot of trouble persuading my son Mohammed to go with his brothers to school, but Mr. Jamal did it on one of his visits to us. He came back with Muhammad after bringing him a small gift," said Saget Mohammed, 51, a father of three.

Director and colleagues work as a team (Al Jazeera Net)

Suffering and defiance
In a village called "Tahoos I" in the district of "Abu Ghraib" (west of Baghdad), "Jamal" lives with his wife and six children in a dilapidated house covered by a roof of trunks of palm and mud reveals what the family suffers from tightness.

Jamal is one of the displaced people fleeing death after he left Anbar province when Islamic state militants seized him in 2015. But his family could not surrender.

"Sunrise" the eldest daughter completed secondary education and reserved for herself a seat in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ibn Haitham. "Joseph" the second son in the sixth grade preparatory distinguished as well as the rest of the children, in the need to live sometimes to know the benefits.

It is not easy to get out of what can be carried out, and to a family that has not experienced this kind of adventure and risk, but it has been hated in the face of fierce battles.

"I used to hold one of my daughters in my arms when I was displaced," Gamal told al-Jazeera.net. "I wished I could carry all my children to get rid of the evil that lurks for them."

After the exhausted family arrived at their new place of residence, another journey began to find shelter and cope with the landfill, which became stable and a haven later, a place nobody would compete with. The smells of garbage and their emissions choked the breath.

"We addressed the Municipality of Baghdad, the illegal dumping of waste in a populated area and the work was stopped at that site, but the environmental and health consequences are still lingering, and more than the suffering of residents of nearby houses."

Despite the darkness of the horizon, there is a glimmer of light for Gamal, which led him to be in the convoy of distinguished.

Jamal with his three children (Al Jazeera Net)

Teacher problems
What is perceived by the naked eye as a basic need for schools in the absence of the schools themselves, the overcrowding of students with over 70 students per class, the duplication of time, and the lack of curricula and books necessitate an audit and a standstill.

"We are working to support the teacher psychologically and scientifically, but the circumstances of the country may compel us to sometimes fail," says Abu Ghraib education director Hussein Falih.

If the official educational body recognizes some shortcomings, then who addresses the problems? But who makes the civilization and builds minds other than those who are originally deficient?

There is no renaissance of nations except in the quality of education, and this is what Gamal has been doing for a long time.