Little Amal: The poignant message behind the 11-foot tall Syrian refugee puppet who’s travelled 5,000 miles

A giant puppet that has travelled over 8,000km (4,971 miles) has finally reached the UK.

Little Amal, a 3.5 metre-tall (11ft 5in) puppet representing a 9-year-old Syrian refugee, began her journey in Turkey at the end of July to raise awareness for the needs of refugees.

This week she reached the shore of Folkestone in Kent and today she continues her journey to visit St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London.

Little Amal, whose name in Arabic means “hope”, follows in the footsteps of the 17,000 refugees who have already made the perilous journey across the Channel this year. Her 5,000-mile route is a recreation of a real refugee route used by those fleeing conflict and poverty and provides “an opportunity for people to be sympathetic and imagine what it would be like to be her”, one of the organisers said.

To get to the UK, she trekked across Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, visiting towns, cities and villages along the way.

Little Amal’s journey, The Walk, is produced by Good Chance Theatre under the artistic direction of Amir Nizar Zuabi and producers Stephen Daldry, David Lan, Tracey Seaward and Naomi Webb.

Speaking to indy100, Lan said that although we may draw lines to denote where a country begins and ends, the planet ultimately belongs to us all.

He said: “The way people live in one part of the world powerfully affects how people live in another part. We share a single planet, we may make divisions in countries but the reality is we’re all sharing the same ecosystem. When the rains don’t fall or the plains burn it affects all of us.

“Amal is just a 9-year-old child looking for her mum but she has been able to — in a small way, but in a way — suggest that this is the case as we need to look after each other, we need to care for each other.

“It started as a small idea and it’s grown to thousands because people want to be part of it, and that is the most heartwarming thing about it.”

Along her journey, the puppet has been met with artistic and cultural events.

After setting off from southeast Turkey, she was greeted by a small orchestra in Chios, a small island off the mainland.

Lan said that although she was warmly received almost everywhere she visited, the reception she got at Chios was particularly special. The locals on the island rewrote the words of a local song, usually sung during New Year’s Eve, to warmly welcome Amal.

In Italy, she was greeted in the Vatican and received a blessing from Pope Francis, before going on to Bologna to play a football match with a young people’s football team.

Lan also said that a particularly touching part of the trip was in Marseille, France, when a group of around 60 people delivered a dance wearing life jackets in honour of those who lost their lives at sea while trying to make the crossing from north Africa to France.

Amal then moved north, and went up the Alps near the Italian border. She met people high in the Alps who support those who crossed the border by coming over the hazardous mountain range. Often such arduous journeys are made at night to avoid France’s National Gendarmerie who patrol the border for fear of being sent back to Italy.

According to EuroNews, the Italian Red Cross has intercepted 5,000 migrants since 2017 in Claviere on the Italy-France border. Over 1,500 of these were between October 2020 and March 2021, Michele Belmondo of the Italian Red Cross said. Belmondo takes part in patrols warning migrants of how dangerous the mountains can be, and in some cases rescues them.

Another notable stop Amal made along the way was Geneva in Switzerland, where she visited the United Nations offices, the world-famous scientific research centre CERN, and she even attended a special concert at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

She received the largest audience in Antwerp, Belgium, where her visit coincided with another puppetry festival celebrating Belgium’s Borgerhout giants.

Sadly, she was not welcome everywhere she went. In Kalambaka, northern Greece, the village council said it did not want to welcome a “Muslim doll from Syria”.

In the UK, however, she has been welcomed with open arms, with actor Jude Law taking her by the hand as she took her first steps on British soil.

Mayor Sadiq Khan has also welcomed Little Amal. Khan greeted her ahead of her 10th birthday on October 24 where a celebration is planned to take place at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington.

As she reaches the last leg of her 14-week pan-European trip, events in London, Oxford, Coventry, Birmingham, and Barnsley have been arranged before her journey culminates in Manchester.