A cave's interior has been carved into cube-shaped rooms. Improvised lighting, barely strong enough to illuminate the cavern, shows children sitting, legs crossed, on the bare floor.
They are calling out boisterously, raising their hands eagerly, clamoring to answer questions.
These are some of the students in Syria who, because of civil war, have deserted their schools and taken classes literally underground.
An amateur video, posted by a local activist on YouTube, gives a glimpse of one of these cave schools, which is reminiscent of the stone schoolhouse from "The Flintstones."
Behind the citizen reporter, Abu Diyaa, is a group of first- through fourth-graders who greet him graciously with a round of applause.
"Why here?" Abu Diyaa asks a male instructor.
"We want to keep educating our children," says the teacher, who does not give his name. "But in the city, there is always this imminent danger that the regime choppers or planes will bomb us or drop the TNT barrels."
The school is in Kansafra, in a picturesque region known for its flowing green fields and its groves of olives, cherries and grapes. But none of that is visible from the classroom, which has no windows.
The children's previous school, in the nearby town of Jabal Zawiya, was deserted. Abu Diyaa's video shows a gaping hole in that school's ceiling, the battle scars of what he says was shelling by regime fighter planes.
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