THESSALONIKI – Torn apart in the deadly chaos of an air raid, a Syrian family of seven has been reunited, against the odds, three years later at a refugee shelter in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, a centuries-old melting point of cultures overlooking the Aegean Sea.
When the warplanes screamed in over the village of Dana, near Idlib in Syria, in September 2017, Abdul Salam Al Khawien was at home with his five children.
His wife, Kariman, was out shopping in the marketplace. Bombs burst among the stalls, scattering corpses and knocking her unconscious.
She spent the next week recovering in a clinic, and by the time she was well enough to leave, Abdul had fled with the children to safety across the Turkish border, some 15 kilometers