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Outlook: Our Love Survived the Syrian Conflict

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Razan-and-Ahmad

27/01/2016 GMT

Our Love Survived the Syrian Conflict

BBC World Service - Outlook, Our Love Survived the Syrian Conflict

One couple's struggle to stay together in the midst of the Syrian conflict

Razan Alakraa was introduced to Ahmad Alhameed in 2009 during a trip to Syria. The couple fell in love but staying together has been anything but easy.

Ahmed Alhameed was a doctor enduring imprisonment and - he says - torture. Razan Alakraa was born in the UK to Syrian parents. She became a London based activist trying to get news of events in Syria to the outside world.
So how could their relationship survive distance and war? We hear their story on Outlook. 

We meet the German man who cycled the world for nearly 50 years. He covered over 648,000 kilometres and only used two bikes. It all began when Heinz Stücke was 20 years old and working as an apprentice in a factory.

Raoul Peck was eight years old when his family fled Haiti because of Papa Doc's brutal regime of terror in the 1960s. The family settled in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Raoul grew up to make films which reflect upon his experiences. They include the acclaimed The Man By the Shore, and later Lumumba - which is about the DRC's  first democratically elected  leader. 

And we meet the man who has been called the real life "Q" after the gadget inventor from the James Bond films. His name is Ralph Osterhout - and he has invented gizmos for the US Navy Seals, the American government, and for Hollywood movies like Home Alone 2 and for James Bond himself in The Spy Who Loved Me. Ralph told me his dreams of being an inventor started as a child living in a broken home, when he used to escape into the books of his hero, 007. 

(Photo: Razan Alakraa (L) and her fiancé, Ahmad Alhameed (R) at BBC Broadcasting House, London)

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