Yusra Mardini stepped on a plane back to Germany for the holidays overwhelmed by emotion. News had just filtered through from Syria of the overthrow of the country’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Joy and relief were met with hesitation, a reluctance to truly celebrate. The former Olympic swimmer for the Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) would sit with her thoughts for the next 10 hours, unable to access the internet to truly comprehend the scale of such a historic moment.