Dear President Obama

Dear President Obama,

Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan.

Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won’t bring toys and doesn’t have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math. And he [can] smell Catherine’s lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn’t let anyone touch it.

Thank you very much! I can’t wait for you to come!

Alex

6 years old

Last month, like people around the world, Alex was moved by the heartbreaking images of Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old boy in Aleppo, Syria, sitting in an ambulance, in shock as he tried to wipe the blood from his hands.

In his letter, Alex told President Obama that he wanted Omran to come live with him and his family. He wanted to share his bike, and teach him how to ride. He said his little sister would collect butterflies for him. “We can all play together,” he wrote. “We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”

Those are the words of a six-year-old boy — a young child who has not learned to be cynical or suspicious or fearful of other people because of where they come from, how they look, or how they pray.

We’ll be waiting with flags, flowers and balloons.

With these words, we adults learn an important lesson from a six year old. Can we become as compassionate and welcoming to those who need a place to call home? Can we look at other humans as our brothers and sisters? Can we play together and work together to create a better world?

Can we?