Exclusive interview: Drowning sounds of bombs with laughter

In a video widely shared on social media, a toddler laughs each time she hears the sound of falling bombs in Syria.

Salwa, a three-year-old Syrian girl, has only ever known war. But as a game to distract her from the surrounding violence, her father taught her to laugh whenever she hears bomb explosions.

We interviewed her father Abdullah Abu Salwa, who fled from Saraqib in Idlib province to Sarmada with his family two months ago. 

“I got the game idea from Eid, there were boys playing outside with fireworks and she got frightened,” Abdullah told Al Jazeera.

“I took her on the balcony and explained to her that the kids were only playing. So we made the connection between the explosion sounds and playing. A few days later, there were warplane strikes, she got frightened again, so I told her ‘this is the same sound of the boys playing, don’t be scared.”

The viral video was filmed in Sarmada, a small town near Syria’s border with Turkey where the family has sought refuge amid a renewed offensive by Syrian government forces and their allies on rebel-held northwest Syria.