‘I hadn’t realised it would be a big deal’: Meet KCL’s kindest student

She’s really really nice

| UPDATED

A hero KCL student has been sending out books and letters to Syrian refugee in Jordan.

About a year ago Ahmad, a 21-year-old refugee at Zaatari camp in Jordan, gave heartbreaking letter to a UNHCR worker, sharing his longing to get back to university.

Selfless Clare Henley started shipping over faves like “Of Mice and Men” after she received a letter from Ahmad.

It read: “My sister and I quit our university study and lost our dreams and ambitions thereby we were both outstanding students studying English literature at Damascus University, Syria.

“We have been living in Zaatari camp for two years. This long period of false promises to continue our study and to make up for the lost time made us really hopeless and despaired.

“My sister, who has spent three bitter successive years without study, sheds tears day by night. She is a pitiful state lying in the caravan.

“Both of us have lost the most precious thing in our life, our study we are helpless… no one supports us.”

What a top lass (she’s on the right)

This is where War and Psychiatry student Clare Henley came in. Incredibly moved by Ahmad’s letter, she wrote back to him.

“I am terribly, terribly sorry for the horrific things that are happening. I hope these books bring you some joy and mean you don’t feel too far from your studies. You will return to them one day, I’m certain. Don’t lose hope. All my love. Clare”

Along with the touching letter, generous Clare sent 12 books, including “Of Mice and Men”, “Flowers for Algernon” and other classics.

Speaking exclusively to The Tab, Clare told us what encouraged her to reach out to Ahmad. She said: “I hadn’t realised it would be a big deal. There are so many books in my house it was honestly nothing to send them, I just hope that they’re able to be of some use to the people who received them.”

“What so many people are going through is awful, and it’s important to notice when there is something that you can do.”

And her unbelievable selflessness was not a one-off: Clare even “sent a few more books last week, just so Ahmad knows he hasn’t been forgotten”.

Speaking out to her fellow KCL students, she added: “If there’s something that appears to you that makes you think ‘oh I could do something about that’, then really do it.

“To you it might not be anything at all, but to someone else who’s having an inconceivably terrible time it can be so much more important”.

If you want to get invovled, books can be sent to:
Heba Azizieh
UNHCR Branch Office, PO BOX 17101
Amman 
11195 
Jordan

For more information, follow @zaataricamp on Twitter.