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Issue 6 December 2013 Middle East & North Africa I do not want to be born a refugee Naela Mansour 2 Marta Bogdanska 12 Haid Haid 52 Displacement Exilium Female Syrian Refugees Violating Rights in the Name of Protecting Women Editorial Contents Arsaal, North Lebanon. Lots of Syrian refugees stay in this northern village close to the Syrian border Editorial 1 Sadly, the Middle East has witnessed some conditions, fl oods and three children who froze Displacement 2 of the largest mass displacements of people to death. Nejat Taştan explains how the de jure Naela Mansour worldwide over the past decade. As it currently and de facto situation of refugees and their host The Winding Road Between Damascus and Beirut 8 stands, millions of Syrians are fleeing their communities works in Turkey. As for Lebanon, Dima Wannous homes, moving within the country and Rayan Majed traces the refugee experience in Exilium 12 sometimes far outside of it. Not surprisingly, a country that has received the largest number Marta Bogdanska neighboring states have absorbed most of of displaced persons and is the only country Trapped in Disaster - Iraqi Refugees in Syria 16 these people and have managed well under the to still keep its borders open. Pierre Abi Saab Kelsey Lundgren circumstances. However, the question of how reviews the fi lm “Not Who We Are” by Lebanese Fleeing Towards Another Death - Syrian Palestinians in Lebanon 21 to deal with the waves of those who have lost documentary filmmaker Carol Mansour – a Mitwali Abu Nasser everything and might not be able to go back production made in cooperation with hbs. Haves and Have-Nots in Jordan’s Za’atari Camp 28 in the near future is a huge challenge for the In a reportage, Ryme Katkhouda looks Areej Abuqudairi refugees and for host communities, especially into the impact of Syrian refugees on Lebanese The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Turkey 31 since there is no settlement on the horizon. society and its economy. Since the situation Nejat Taştan Naela Mansour traces stories of particularly affects children, Emma Gatten On the Circumstances Syrian Refugees are Facing in Lebanon 35 displacement within Syria. While for most explores what exile means for Syrian children Rayan Majed refugees, exile is a dire prospect, Dima Wannous in terms of schooling and fi nding something Carole Mansour Wants Us to See / Wants to Show Us Something 41 elaborates on how, for some Syrian artists, their akin to home. Pierre Abi Saab fl ight to Beirut gave them a space to breathe. We Finally, Haid Haid explains how We Love the Syrians, Yet… 42 are also featuring a part of Marta Bogdanska’s “protection” has become the legal and ethical Ryme Katkhouda project “Exilium.” The photographer asks cover for ignoring the personal and sexual Syria's Children Seek Another Childhood in Lebanon 48 refugees about one item in their possession and rights of female Syrian refugees in neighboring Emma Gatten traces how a trivial lighter, a photo, a table cloth countries. In her article on early and often Female Syrian Refugees - Violating Rights in the Name of Protecting Women 52 all of a sudden assumes a diff erent meaning in not formally registered marriages of Syrian Haid Haid their life. refugees in Jordan Areej Abuqudairi shares her Wed in Refuge - Syrian Women and Girls in Jordan 58 There are stories of multiple insights on the legal vulnerability of women Areej Abuqudairi displacements as well. After the Iraq War in 2003, and families in the context of exile. more than one million Iraqi refugees came to Of course, the many diff erent facets Syria and are now stuck, as Kelsey Lundgren of this topic make it nearly impossible to cover shows, with a home that has vanished long them all in only one issue of a magazine. Still, it ago and an uncertain future in their refuge is our hope that we can at least shed some light home . Palestinians, who were more privileged on several key aspects of the Syrian refugee as refugees in Syria than in any other Arab crisis through voices that are on the ground, country, face the problem of where to go from living the tragedy. here. Mitwali Abu Nasser travelled to Palestinian We will also continue the discussion camps in Lebanon to assess their situation online at our website, which you are directly. encouraged to visit: www.lb.boell.org Areej Abuqudairi looks at how the internal economics of the Zaatari refugee Bente Scheller, René Wildangel & Joachim Paul camp in Jordan has developed after it became infamous as a result of the tough weather 2 Displacement Displacement 3 married a man from the Syrian Golan Heights, start of the Syrian revolution and the South “the immigrants” as they are called in Syrian joining Damascus in mounting demonstrations, Displacement dialect. She had nine children by this man and and later, armed resistance, Umm Ahmed was forced to help provide for them, washing would voice her deep concern over what was Naela Mansour down the entrance steps of buildings and happening where she lived. Many ordinary cleaning apartments. She then moved with her Syrians had a premonition of what the regime family from their camp near Adra and after “a might do if its power and authority were lifetime’s hardship,” arrived in al-Dhiyabiya, one challenged and were well aware that they were of the neglected and chaotic locations in the more exposed than anybody, more likely to South of rural Damascus. But she was delighted pay the ultimate price, and had absolutely no with what she had managed to achieve. She way to off set this fate. This is why they did not had put her nine children through school, with join the revolution openly, but remained silent all of them taking their baccalaureate and some and scared. Umm Ahmed was protective of her going on to university, and with her husband family’s modest assets and scared that it might she had built their large (illegal) home: Big all crumble away like some passing dream. enough, as she puts it, for both girls and boys She remained where she was for a to have the privacy they require. With the year and a half, beneath a hail of bombs and shells, until Ramadan 2012, when her house How might we speak of displacement? A lost a wall, its windows and part of the roof. dislocation? A yearning to be settled and the When the army stepped up its operations familiar landmarks nowhere to be found? against al-Dhiyabiya, al-Hajira and Sayyida Economic decline and the collapse of the Zeinab, she was forced to leave for Damascus, infrastructure that supports family and with her daughters, where she was joined by individual? It is more than all these things. It is a her husband and her sons at the house owned lassitude, an impotence, but also a fl aw in how by her husband’s family. Umm Ahmed says that time manifests itself: Having abandoned home this early morning journey was even more bitter one feels that time passes excruciatingly slowly; and more arduous than her trip from Tabariya with the change of environment the slowness of to Damascus, and that she hoped to die before time becomes infi nite. The migrant is paralyzed; “the war that was coming,” as though war and he loses his sense of initiative. Yet even this is exile were a seasonal rite that every Levantine not enough for us to talk of displacement. We must pass though. But the true torment was bring you here vignettes, of people who have to come: The quest for new accommodation. left their lands and emigrated; tales that shape Umm Ahmed tried to convince her daughters a society called Nowhere, called Suspended, that they should go to one of the refugee areas with all its gifts and pains. There is much pain that were housed in the Damascus schools, but and bitterness here, but sometimes, too, new they refused outright. They had no intention seeds send green shoots through the ashes, of going through such a degrading experience, and life goes on. especially since they were educated women: “Well-off,” with salaries. The search started in the housing developments of Barzeh, then on Umm Ahmed: “Is the road to to Jaramana, then the neighborhood of Harna close to al-Tell, before leading them back to al-Dhiyabiya open? Barzeh. Umm Ahmed could not feel at home Umm Ahmed, or Amina, was born in Palestine, anywhere after leaving her house in the South. in a camp in Tabariya, to parents who had Every time she would give some plausible moved there from Safad. She lived there for excuse in order to leave the place and attempt seven years before she and her family were to go back to her house in al-Dhiyabiya: The compelled to relocate once more in 1967. From water was cut off, the air was too cold and that journey, Umm Ahmed remembers the dry, there wasn’t enough furniture, the rent voices of the Israeli soldiers as they gave them was too high. And every time, she would force orders: “Damascus! Damascus!” she remembers, her nervous and unsettled family to continue with her siblings and her family being forced to searching. Between excuses she would come pick fruit from the trees. She also remembers each morning to the Sayyida Zeinab bus depot arriving barefoot at the gates of Damascus. and ask the drivers, “Is the road to al-Dhiyabiya When they reached Damascus they open...?” Every day they would insist that Naela Mansour holds a Ph.D.
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