Syrian refugees – how to help It’s early September 2015 and nothing exceptional has happened. A young Syrian boy, 3 years old and with small shoes on his feet, has been taken away from this world. It’s nothing exceptional because these days, in what Syria has become today, children are taken...
Empty plates in Syrian homes “Oil, tea, sugar, rice. And harr in the jar, from chilis I’ve dried.” Yussra Ibrahim al-Muhammad stands in her small kitchen taking up 1/3 of the tent where she’s lived for over three years now, in a camp settlement just outside Qabb Elias, a town...
Aleppo, Alep, Halab, حلب Lately, for different reasons, Aleppo has been on my mind. I have been carrying a book around (wrapped in a piece of fabric – it’s a hard cover and has a personal dedication on the first page, and I’ve borrowed it from its owner and...
Yesterday, amidst all the uncertainty about a possible coming US-led strike on Syria, I went with my sweet (the best!) colleagues Alison and Alia to speak to people who are leaving Syria for Lebanon. Each week, thousands of people make the journey across the mountain range that separates the two...
“It’s like a small Syria here, but without the violence and the troubles.” Raghad Mardini stands barefoot in the small green garden, right in front of an old stone building. We’re in Aley, a short drive up the mountains outside Beirut, where Raghad has restored an abandoned horse stables...
Karim and I were driving in the Bekaa when we saw something. On the right side of the road, next to the big, rectangular tents that house Syrian families coming to work in the fields in Lebanon: a clothesline dancing in the wind. There was something with the colorful...