The following is the first in a series focusing on Syrian refugees in Lebanon By Kareem Shaheen The Daily Star BEIRUT: Suad Hosari’s last two Ramadans were spent under siege. After fleeing her home in Deir al-Zor, then her in-laws’ home in Aleppo, she is now living with her husband and five children in relative calm in Beirut. But, she says, her heart is broken.
“The best thing is when we eat suhoor at night, read the Quran, pray and then go to sleep, and when we prepare food,” she said. “But the heart is sad. Your country is being slaughtered. All the Arab countries are being slaughtered. How can you have Ramadan?” Even the food, she said, is just for survival.
Hosari was waiting for her children to finish their classes at the Haret Hreik community center run by the Amel Association, an NGO working with Syrian refugees. The multi-story building is freshly painted, a colorful facade to help inspire the dozens of children and adults who attend classes and workshops here.
Wafa al-Attas, who runs the Haret Hreik center, says she focuses on intellectual and educational activities in Ramadan to avoid tiring the students.
“For Muslims the month is special and the majority like to fast regardless of the difficulties,” she said. “Some feel that the greater the difficulties the more the reward.”
The center’s activities, such as art therapy and competitions, communal iftars and storytelling, are intended to create a fraternal spirit mimicking that from back home.
Indeed, the yearning for happier, simpler times is evident as Hosari recalls Ramadans past.
“I would get up early to make the food and my husband would take us in the car to the bank of the Euphrates and we’d swim there until seven, then go back home and eat,” she said.
She described nights out drinking coffee and smoking nargileh, inviting her in-laws over for iftar, preparing traditional sweets. She misses hearing the athan, the Muslim call to prayer, and getting excited about the Ramadan cannon, which marks the end of the fast when it is fired at sunset.
Now her needs, and those of her children, are more fundamental.
“If I don’t have a closet, that’s fine, or if there are water and electricity cuts ... but the children are around me and they are fine, that’s the most important thing,” she said.
But Hosari’s children have also suffered in the displacement. She says two of her older children were briefly kidnapped in Aleppo in Ramadan of 2012, and the family fled the city on the first day of the Eid, marking the holy month’s end. Now, she says, her children suffer from nightmares in which she is taken away from them.
Despite the hardship, the family is fasting and praying together, and Hosari tries to decorate their home and to make their favorite meals. She speaks fondly of the children gathering around her and telling jokes.
“I’m trying to change it around,” she said.
This upending of social structures can have long-term consequences on children and families fleeing the violence in Syria, an ordeal that has lasted more than two years amid fighting between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
“Most of the families are scattered,” said Hoda Abbas, an activist with Najdeh, an NGO that helps Palestinian-Syrian refugees. “In Ramadan you meet at the family home, with uncles, aunts, the families invite each other over for iftar. This is not possible now.”
The erasure of old routines, overcrowding and the additional costs such as paying for ice and water that they didn’t have to pay for in Syria puts additional stressors on the families.
The fragmentation of homes, which is particularly salient in Ramadan when communal activities are at an all-time high, hits children hard, Abbas said.
“When you sit down with the children, the first thing they bring up is that they miss home, they miss their grandparents, or their aunts, or their father if the father isn’t there, or their toys and bed,” she said.
Mohammad Ibrahim, a Palestinian-Syrian with a wife and four kids, is astonished that he has to pay for a cup of water in Lebanon.
The 48-year-old Ibrahim, not his real name, fled the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus less than a week ago after what he says were seven months of fighting between regime forces and gunmen in the camp.
He has been searching for a home for four days, and spends the night with his family on the balcony of a home in Shatila, where he was waiting in line to collect coupons from Najdeh that he can use to buy groceries during Ramadan for his family from a nearby co-op.
“Ramadan is [supposed to be] lovely and problem-free, but what happened is bigger than us,” he said.
“We are fasting, but where is Ramadan?” he asked.
“We just want a shelter. We can handle the food, but the shelter?”
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13/07/2013
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