* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Along a busy, noisy market road in the centre of Tripoli, I’m following two Save the Children case workers to the home of one of their contacts. It is a rough part of town with high crime rates. We turn down a tiny alley where an unfinished stairwell emerges, a narrow space of raw cement. Used nappies are on the floor and we can hear shouting from the stairs above. A boy pushes past us as he stumbles down the stairs. We don’t know why he’s running or who from.
We reach Aisha*s apartment. A metal door, not unlike a prison cell is the entrance to her home. She peers around it and greets us with an apprehensive smile; “Come in, you are welcome,” she tells us in Arabic and nods to the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling on exposed wiring. “The power is off. It might come on soon,” she adds.
Aisha*’s home is a dingy, high ceilinged room with one tiny window carved out of the wall; far too high for anyone to see out of or for any natural light to come in. Inside are thin, threadbare mattresses and a unit containing everything she owns; basic food, some simple cooking implements. There are several large bottles of water Aisha*’s family collect daily for washing and cooking. Her three children are inside. Louay, 2, is fast asleep on the mattress in the dark, snoring lightly. Rahaf*, 9, and Mo’men, 6, greet Rayan, their caseworker from Save the Children as she takes out some colouring books and crayons for them.
Aisha* tells us her story. At the age 21 her five-month-old baby was killed during the shellings in Aleppo. Overwrought with grief, her husband Elyas* took the decision that the family should leave Syria, in the hope that they could start their lives afresh. He left with the promise that he would return as soon as he had travel documents for them all, so that they could travel to safety in Lebanon. “I couldn’t recover from what had happened to my baby, and my husband was so worried for me. He thought I was in shock,” Aisha says.
The next time Aisha* saw Elyas* was nine months later when he was lying in a hospital bed in Latakiya. He was covered from head to toe in bandages and was drifting in and out of consciousness. He had been abducted, then tortured and interrogated about his reasons for travelling. When he was finally able to leave the hospital, he was not the same man who had kissed her goodbye in Aleppo. This man was angry all the time, and saw images that were not there. “My husband changed so much. He was aggressive and violent with me. He never used to be. He even tried to commit suicide. Because I love him I tried to just absorb it all. I was under so much pressure,” Aisha* explains.
Aisha* tells us that even after they moved to Lebanon, Elyas* would sometimes wake up screaming in the night, or go from talking calmly to launching a glass across the room at the wall. She said that the children, especially Rahaf* who remembers the person her father used to be, have been shocked by his behaviour. “Their father yells at them and gets angry and they do not understand why he has changed. Sometimes they wet the bed randomly, even during the day. They are frightened and get scared so easily.”
At two points Aisha* is so upset she can barely speak. Her body rocks with sobs but she insists that she wants to keep talking. Rahaf* and Mo’men* are lying on the floor in front of her colouring in pictures. Briefly Rahaf* stops and turns and looks at her mother. Her face shows no emotion, perhaps a brief flicker of curiosity. She turns back and carries on colouring. This is not an irregular occurrence for her.
Later Rahaf* shows us her pictures. She says that she misses eating ice cream with her grandparents. She goes on to talk about her father. “I love Dad because he kisses me. Sometimes he makes me sad because sometimes he will not allow me to kiss him. I am sad that Dad is not playing with me anymore. My mum says he is sick. He sleeps a lot and doesn’t let me sleep beside him anymore.”
This family’s lives have been torn apart by the war in Syria and although the decision to move to Lebanon may well have saved their lives, the stresses of life in Tripoli only compound their issues. They live in an area prone to gang crime, with high rates of poverty. Aisha* tells us she does not feel safe here.
For refugees, the lack of access to services is a huge obstacle. They have no automatic right to healthcare, or even the legal right to work, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. Without access to such basic rights, Aisha* can see few prospects in her family’s her current situation. There are an estimated 200,000 Syrian children living in Lebanon who do not have a place in school at all. With places severely limited, Aisha* was initially refused school places for Rahaf* and Mo’men*.
Part of Save the Children’s work with families is to ensure that they have the correct documentation, and to help them navigate the government processes. Rayan was able to help by appealing to the school on Aisha*s behalf and finally helping secure their place. School offers them a respite from the tensions at home, and gives some hope to all of the family. Rahaf* tells us she is unsure what she wants to be when she grows up; “Maybe a journalist. Or maybe I will help children too.”
For a while, Aisha* talks about life in more general terms; cooking, making clothes, and looking after her children. The little one is full of smiles and mischief and tries to play hide and seek on the stairwell. His mother laughs and indulges him – a complete contrast to the scene in her room half an hour before. She chats and smiles about the children, telling me about their personalities. I get a glimpse of the woman she was before the war engulfed her life - gentle, warm, and engaging. She is only 25-years-old herself, yet she has experienced so much loss and hardship in her days.
I find myself wondering about Aisha* in a different setting. In a home full of laughter, where her children eat ice cream and climb over their grandparents; making tea and laughing with friends; with a husband who is so moved by her grief that he will risk everything to bring his family to safety. I ask her how she feels about their decision to come to Lebanon. “Life is worse than you could imagine. I am living but I feel I died a long time ago.”
Her children are clearly affected but also very much loved. They return our smiles easily and Louay clambers on me like any other two year old I’ve ever met, playing peekaboo and giggling behind the chair. He has known nothing but this life. It is sad to think of that as a consolation.
Tragically, there is a chronic lack of psychologists in neighbouring countries that are able to address the needs of Syrian children, who have not only witnessed the horrors of war, but whose experiences are compounded by the insecurity they face even when they escape. As of October this year, only 26% of the funds requested to address this need had been met, with aid agencies like Save the Children voicing concerns over ignoring these issues now and storing up problems for the future.
Rahaf* is now starting child tailored counselling, where she relays her feelings through conversation and drawings and play, while Elyas* has been referred to specialist counselling. The complexities of the support families living in situations like Aisha’s are well beyond the realms of any one organisation, and the inter-agency approach to assisting them is vital if their needs are to be addressed.
Elyas* is receiving regular counselling now and Aisha* says she can see some improvements in him. She is also undergoing counselling herself. Aisha* says her sessions give her an outlet to talk about what has happened. Rahaf* is aware in her own way that her father has much to overcome, and that he is seeking help. “My dad is getting help for his problems. He tells the people what is wrong and what has happened to him,” she says quietly. It is hard to imagine how much harder things would be if this family had no outlet for their grief, if they had to bring it home every day to the tiny room with one tiny pointless window.
Aisha* tells us that Elyas* is still in physical pain. The wounds on his body still weep from the wounds inflicted on him. Aisha too, weeps every day for the wounds inflicted upon their whole family. This is a family who, were it not for the war, would have been living very different lives. It is hard to quantify the price they have paid for a war they played no part in. Aisha*seems defeated by hopelessness, but she is clearly more resilient than she thinks, having weathered so much on such young shoulders. Her children too, though troubled, are kind, smart, young people, who with the right support could surely turn around their outcomes.
Save the Children’s new report,Childhood in the Shadow of War, provides a unique snapshot of the pressures and burdens of daily life in host communities as experienced by Syrian refugee children now living in Lebanon and the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and internally displaced (IDP) Iraqi children. Sadly, the growing psychological needs of millions of displaced Syrian and Iraqi children are still vastly under-met.
