'The war was my childhood left among the ruins': Through her diary, this young girl chronicled her escape from the Syrian civil war

When Myriam Rawick was only eight years old, she started keeping a diary about the war that was unfolding in her native Syria.

As feuding forces waged battles in her hometown of Aleppo, Myriam's family was forced to gather only what they could carry and flee their homes in search of safety.

As the war displaced more than half of Syria's pre-war population and ravaged her home city in the coming years, Myriam continued to track her experiences growing up among air strikes, chemical attacks, militant coups, and food and water shortages.

Today, Myriam is 13, and her diary has been translated from Arabaic and published in France. Read the excerpts of a heartbreaking journal from a child forced to come of age in the Syrian civil war: