What do you know about hiding?
Dialogue with Syrian refugees on racism, humiliation and impossible return
The intensity and methods of racism, and even sentences used against Syrian refugees and workers in Lebanon, regain a necessary margin to understand the great social transformation that has taken place in the city of Beirut, especially after the economic collapse, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the explosion of the port of Beirut. This daily distinction that sets boundaries between people is constantly evolving, imposing persecution based on tone and colour, and always puts us before important questions:
How are Syrian refugees dealing with racism? And are they really going beyond it? How much do they feel about themselves and the place? How do they face requests to return to their country?
The effect of the transformation of the Syrian individual's social life has been put to the feasibility questions with which he has become convinced that his life is too little to engage in any major debate without being against him. So in moments of profound transformation, the most logical questions seem fragile, even if you try to describe other people's experiences and feelings.
What do you know about hiding?
It is hard when you always feel accused, and your charge is that you personally belong to what you're trying to escape. What does it mean to be a Syrian refugee today in Lebanon, it means nothing, and this nothing makes you a target. You need to be insulted, beaten, deprived of the most basic human treatment, and pay for government mistakes only because, in their eyes, you are not worthy of life. Life that God created for all of us, suddenly you sense that you must hide yourself. And believe me, even if you disappear, you will remain accused of moments when you were breathing Beirut’s air.
Mahmoud, 31, said his words as he tried to wipe his face with his hands, as if what he said, left on his face a loss-like expression. Perhaps because racism and the talk about it resemble this end in which the Syrian refugee realizes that he has already lost everything, he must always be prepared for all kinds of taunts and discrimination
At first, when I told Mahmoud that I wanted to interview him about racism against Syrians in Beirut, he smiled sarcastically, standing on the tip of the restaurant where he worked as a delivery, telling me with a light tongue: forget. If only I felt that this request for forgetfulness was indeed the beginning, and that claiming forgetfulness is the backyard that Syrians inadvertently created, to throw their harsh experiences in Beirut, or their last weapon to transcend and circumvent their reality, as if trying to forget and asking others to forget too.
Mahmoud has been delivering orders for five years, having resumed his studies of French literature in Syria, and went to Beirut to complete his education. But the city's conditions and high fees forced him to work in any profession that might help him to secure the needs of his mother, sister and young son.
I never came from Syria because I wanted to, I left because I didn’t want to kill or get killed by the army for the sake of a failed state. Everytime I think about how I left, I remember that I have nothing left, our house has been destroyed. My family is half arrested. The second half is in separate places. And I am alone, with a terrifying security situation. All of the Syrians that are living with me in the Palestinian camps of Chatila, Al Burj and Mar Elias, have no voice, they are all fleeing death, and all they want is that they feel like normal humans.
Mahmoud's talk was cut by out loud screams accompanied by unjustified anger as the first attempt to call, to rise slightly inside the restaurant and come out with bags of food as he tries to stack them in the motorcycle box. He asked me to wait for minutes, and then he set off quickly to be swallowed by high car lights.
Minutes later, Mahmoud sat close to the sidewalk with his hands tangled, as if he were more comfortable talking. He looked at me and said:
For the next times I leave the house, I know that I am heading to a world that is not to me, in which I have no role other than silence. What does it mean when customers say to the manager don't send us our food with a Syrian delievery worker? It means, I deserve less than existing. Everything I have to deliver food orders I try to conceal my current identity so no one discovers that I am Syrian, by talking less, sometimes by wearing a medical mask. And eventually you opening the Internet or hear on the street the phrase "Syrians are living better than us", especially after the collapse, as if Syria's life was compared to humiliation and hunger, and it is always necessary to be the least, and under the place where it has the normal capacity to live.
After the economic collapse in Lebanon, racism against Syrian refugees in Beirut increased markedly, especially after the Government of Lebanon promoted a "voluntary and safe return" plan to repatriate 15,000 Syrian refugees per month, announced by the Minister of Displaced Persons Issam Sharafaruddin, while the Syrian regime stated that its doors were open to those who wanted to return to their country.
I asked Mahmoud: What happens if you go back to Syria? He looked at
me in surrender and said:
"Here is something that the Syrian regime does not know, not even the Syrian government, which is that at the end of the night if my son refuses to go to bed early or refuses to finish his homework, I threaten him with returning to Syria, Syria has become for us like a big ogre to scare small children, the Syrian regime has succeeded in turning Syria into a slaughterhouse that scares the big and small, because this regime never existed to build a state based on justice, but rather to build a power that is willing to kill for its survival, what will happen if we return to Syria? Tell me what will happen if 1,000 or 2,000 Syrian refugees who were deported from Lebanon to Syria are killed, in addition to the 500 killed by the regime in the war, nothing. We will just die."
Humiliation or death, whichever you choose?
"I don't know how to describe to you how I feel as I walk down the street while strangers shout at me to go back to Syria, I ask myself what do these strangers know about Syria? Or about the fear and death there? Absolutely nothing. No one knows fear like a Syrian, whose country has turned into the biggest threat in his life, and he is unable to confront it.
They think here that the Syrian is fine, and he is coming to Lebanon only to take advantage of it, they don't know that the Syrian is satisfied with a life of humiliation and thanks God that there are no planes overhead to bomb him, this is frankly our life, a comparison between fear, humiliation and death, and we must choose between them, we have experienced death more than once, and we are left with only the threat of humiliation in front of us. "
Um Ziad, 55, tried to recover her choked voice after the word "death", to get the word "humiliation" out of her mouth as if she were a narrow pun that could not sigh once. Um Ziad said her words and looked at the ground, as if she was trying to gather what had fallen out of her as she acknowledged how she felt. Perhaps the hardest feeling facing Syrians in Lebanon is that they don't have their choices, and this deep feeling that they always have to accept and adapt to difficult circumstances. They did not have a chance to be in a better place than Beirut, so they fully realize that no one will protect them, that they alone have to face requests to return to Syria, or questions of survival, without explaining how helpless they feel.
Ziad's mother tried to regain her power, while her young son was trying to say something before retreating at the last moment. She looked at me and then at her son, like she realized what he wanted to say.
My little son here worked three months to be able to buy a good pair of pants. The first time we got into a good shop to buy trousers, the owner of the shop fired us. The first thing he said to us is that what is missing is that the Syrians wore. You know, I'm not mad at what happened, I'm conquered by the idea that we haven't thought of buying from another shop. And till now he didn't get the pants.
She said with her heavy tongue.
"Then they envy us for the financial aid we get from the United Nations, as if financial aid from the United Nations is all we dream of, what is the financial aid that the United Nations gives us? It provides 300,000 per person, for one or two years it provided 300,000 per person, a short while ago it became 500,000 per person, not for all Syrian families, what does 500,000 per person do.
I am ready to offer all the UN money to anyone who can help me forget about life under bombardment, or every step I walked between the mountains on the smuggling route. Who are we or what are we? We are nothing, we take money for our fear and humiliation, and if someone is willing to take UN financial aid in exchange for getting me out of a life of humiliation, here I am."
Ziad's mother suddenly stood from her place, disappearing behind a thick curtain with large roses drawing. I didn't quite realize if she got up to cry or make coffee, or both. I tried to recover something suspicious of my last question to Ziad's mother, "What does it mean to return to Syria for her?" It sounded like a big question, and at one point I felt like it was bad. I thought, my God, how does man's question about his country turn into all this fear. How much did the Authority do until journalists were required to tightly bury their questions about Syria, fearing the recipient of tears. I tried to blur the question like, "What does Syria mean to you?" I meditated on the question well. It seemed very naive. Before I made any decision, Um Ziad came in holding coffee cups with slightly shaking hands, tried to sit in her place, her face bending with some defeat, drawing a fragile obsession of hope. I tried to throw in a quick question like I was getting rid of it, low and cautious. Um Ziad looked at me and said:
“Is there life in Syria? The problem is the regime thinks that there is no free media in Syria and they only publish the news they want, it means they can deceive us and deceive the world. That people are not mortified in Syria, that he is not capable of securing people's simplest needs. Syria is made so people can live? Syria is here to keep the regime, people die starving, sickening, arrested, not important, the important power is doing parties, opening hotels, working Russian restaurants, but we people who are loving, dreamy, sad and dying, are not important, and we must live our death silently. Swear to God, our country precious to us, I dream I return to Syriathat I dream of, not Syria where the smallest intelligence element has the power to end your life.”
This article was written and published in Megaphone on 14 October 2022