Beyond the Fire

Fouad Saleh spent much of his childhood in a Syrian refugee camp. Zubair Ahmed watched his father pass away after a rocket hit his neighborhood. A little boy carrying a gun bigger then himself came to Chuku Mansery's home and demanded money – her house was burned down when her mother told the boy that she had nothing to give.

What Fouad, Zubair and Chuku have in common is not only that they have seen extreme violence. They all live in the U.S. now and they are now teenagers whose lives and personalities have been shaped by war. They, along with 13 other teens from eight countries, tell their stories on a Web site called Beyond the Fire.

Beyond the Fire, created by Sesh Kannan of Washington D.C., combines elements of both the documentary film and the online diary. The site allows teenage refugees of war to tell their stories through an interactive interface. Each story is told in words, sound and photos and visitors can post comments and navigate their way through a number of nations and time periods.

Kannan conceived of Beyond the Fire when he read a news article last year about how the youth of America don’t generally understand what happens in war. "It's not all smart bombs," Kannan says. He points out that most Amercian youth don’t see images of the ways civilians are affected by war; how they become displaced, become refugees, etc. "There is a lot more to war – it's not just a bad guy, good guy thing,” he adds.

What Kannan hoped to do was convey the human effect of war to the younger generation by giving them a place to start a dialogue with their peers, rather than simply having an adult read them text-book material. While Kannan works on film documentaries, he says that the online format gives visitors a chance to really connect with the material. "It made sense to work online," he says. "Film is passive. [A Web site] can be more of an exploration." With help from Electric Shadows, a grant program run by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and Free Range Graphics, Kannan was able to create a site that captured the visual and sound elements of film along with the dynamic benefits of the Web.

At Beyond the Fire, visitors are required to explore by virtue of the site's design. Once you "Begin your journey," as the site asks, you find yourself on a map of the world. Teenagers stand on eight countries – Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone – and you visit each teen by clicking on his or her photo. The site makes its visitors into online travelers; you can even create a passport to keep track of whom you have visited and comments you have made in an online "travelog."

When visitors to the site have to be actively involved they will better absorb the reality of these teenagers' stories, says Kannan. The site was created to work in a classroom or for individuals. Indeed, Kannan's vision is reaching both audiences: since its inception earlier this year, Beyond the Fire has been online siine April of 2004 and so far over 1,100 visitors have created passports. The reality of war, as the creators of site hope to communicate, is not just one of loss of material items, loss of home or even loss of life. What really happens in war, says Kannan, is much deeper.

Lila Farah, 17, from Somalia, was shot in the leg at seven when she went into her own backyard and saw a man with a gun. Somalia is a country that, since the UN and U.S. pulled out inn 1995, has been mired in violence between warring factions. Lila and her family escaped to Kenya when she was eight and obtained refugee status in the United States in 1996.

Telling her story on the Beyond the Fire site was helpful, Lila told WireTap, because now, "It feel's like it's OK to share with the world what happened to me. I'm proud of myself and my family – that we made it through."