Dubai: A video of Abdullah Mohammed and his 3-year-old daughter in Syria has gone viral as it shows Mohammed trying to defuse his daughter's fear of bombings — with laughter.
The father is heard speaking in Arabic asking his daughter in a guessing game: "Is this a bomb or jet fighter?"
When his daughter answers, she says "a bomb". "Now," the father says, "it will come...and we will laugh."
Then they both laugh as loud as they could. It's a game the father has made up to help his daughter drown out the sound of bombs and face fear with laughter.
It was an anguished father's desperate solution to muffle the sounds of war, hoping the guessing-laughing game would help hush the girl's feelings of anxiety.
Mohammed is living with a friend in Sarmada after he and his family were forced to flee their own home in Saraqib due to heavy shelling. Both villages are part of Idlib, a city in northwestern Syria, 59 kilometers southwest of Aleppo.
The 32-year-old explained to Sky News that he devised the game to help shield his daughter Salwa's psychological state from "collapsing".
'She is only a child'
"She is only a child who does not understand war," he said.
"I decided to teach Salwa this game to prevent her psychological state ... so she is not later affected by conditions triggered by fear."
The father added that he wanted to turn the sound of the bombs into a "source of happiness".
"I needed to remove the fear from her heart," the father added.
The Syrian army are on the offensive for weeks in Idlib province, which is the last stronghold of rebels opposed to President Bashar Al Assad.
