Wednesday, October 2nd.
We set foot for the first time in Za’atari, the largest Syrian refugee camp in
the world. Za’atari is now home to 120.000 Syrians seeking refuge from the horrors
of war.
The facts and figures are simple:
over 2 million Syrian refugees fled their homeland in the last two and a half
years, since the uprising against the Assad regime began in 2011. Out of them,
600.000 crossed the border into Jordan, increasing Jordan’s population by 10%.
120.000 found safety in Za’atari. Refugees still arrive in the camp every
night. But it is beyond the figures that things get complicated. I can’t even
begin to understand how it must feel to leave your country, not because you are
looking for better opportunities, but because your house has been bombed, your
child has been killed, you or your close ones have been imprisoned or tortured
or you have been shot at. How it must feel to hit the road with only the cloths
on your back, sometimes having to leave your family behind. And these are just
some of the stories I heard from refugees.
So, one must keep in mind that
this story isn't about figures. Not mainly anyway. As Kilian Kleinschmidt,
Senior Field Coordinator, UNHCR, presently running Za’atari refugee camp, said
in an interview we recorded, “we must recall one thing: this is not a statistic, not a commodity, not
a warehouse. These are 120.000 human beings, with 120.000 stories, with 120.000
worries and, as well, 120.000 hopes.”
And Za’atari is “just the tip of
the iceberg”, Kleinschmidt explains, it is “what you can see, feel, smell,
touch when it comes to the refugee crisis. 2 million. 2 million Syrians have
left Syria and are somewhere.”
With 77% of the Syrian refugees
in Jordan living in an urban setting, the day before going to Za’atari camp, we
visited the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) registration
center in Amman. It is their largest center in the world, processing up to 4000
Syrian refugees on a daily basis.
I cried there. For a few moments
I let my camera down and I looked directly into an old woman’s eyes. The woman
was just sitting, waiting alongside others in a large room filled with
refugees. I could not look any longer. I went outside and started to cry.
“The large numbers of Syrians entering
into Jordan cross illegally the Syrian-Jordanian border, which stretches 360
km. At the moment, we’re seeing most Syrians coming in from the far eastern
border and going through a very difficult journey in order to cross into
safety”, says Tala Kattan, Assistant External Relations Officer, UNHCR. “The
majority of Syrians have witnessed a lot of violence and trauma and were
displaced multiple times before coming into Jordan”. Some were subject to
torture or wounding.
Once they cross, they are taken
by the Jordanian armed forces, given food and transported into Za’atari camp.
Some of the refugees leave the camp because they have friends or family living
in the urban environment, but often people remain in Za’atari.
If I were to describe Za’atari in
a single word, I would not use sad or depressing, even though they are first
impressions that come to mind. I would say surprising. Yes, this is the word.
Za’atari, more than anything, surprised me.
The main entrance into the camp
leads into the commercial street of Za’atari, some call “Champs-Elysées” after
a street sign mounted in its vicinity. Walking down this street, you can’t
really believe you are in a refugee camp. You get to see so many businesses...
restaurants, barber shops, clothing, food and vegetables, mobile phones shops,
internet cafes, even bridal shops and billiard clubs, where refugees play pool.
There are over 680 shops that UNHCR has counted so far.
93% of the Syrian refugees in Za’atari come
from the south of Syria, from Daraa. “Coming from a region close to the border,
most of the families in the camp have a history of trade”, Kleinschmidt
points out. Syrians are
recognized as the best traders in the world, together with the Lebanese.
Therefore, even in a refugee camp “we are seeing innovative steps”, Kleinschmidt
adds.
But is it only their trading skills that drive
these changes and these developments in the camp? The impression you get in the
camp is that people also want to make the place feel more like home. Because
they need the occupation as well, not only the money. Because they need to feel
useful, not only displaced.
With refugees starting to realize that the
conflict in Syria is far from being over and their wish of returning far from
coming true, they are at the same time starting to develop their shelters in
the camp as they would be living at home. It’s only natural for them to keep saying they would like to go back to
Syria if it was safe, that this is not really their home or their country, that
they don’t have memories here and they feel displaced. Of course they complain,
find life in the camp hard and boring or fear the coming of another winter. Who
can blame them?! But at the same time, walking around the camp you get to see
flower pots at the windows, little gardens in front of the tents, even
fountains in the middle of a courtyard. The fountain is the symbol of feeling
at home for Syrians.
You get to see houses in Za’atari which have been built
with elements of UNHCR containers that refugees cut into pieces and reassemble
in fact as a prefabricated villa, Kleinschmidt explains.
That’s why I say Za’atari is surprising. With all the stories about the war, the
traumatizing experiences of violence and destructions, the bloodshed and loss
of lives, the longing for going back – things that, without fail, you find in
every refugee’s eyes, voice or words – you still somehow get the twisted
feeling that live moves on in Za’atari. That people are in some way
getting back to normalcy.
It is surprising because you get to see a boy
that fled the war playing counter strike in a gaming hall. You see other boys
playing with made-up guns on the streets of Za’atari, babies sleeping near a
toy pistol. And at the same time, you see a little girl not losing her faith
and praying.
Out of the 525.000 Syrian refugees registered
with UNHCR in Jordan, over 50% are children. Za’atari was full of children. “Soora,
soora”, “Sourini” you could hear them shout anywhere in the camp. It means
photo in arabic. Almost all of them are coming from Daraa, the region in Syria
where the conflict began and the uprising became visible. Kleinschmidt says “it
is the kids of Daraa, who are still today in the camp, which began to throw the
first stones, started the first demonstrations and were arrested for the
uprising”. And by the looks of it, even the little ones are growing up in an
atmosphere of hatred, with stories of tyranny and oppression surrounding them
at all times. But I can’t help wondering about the babies that were born in the
camp and never saw Syria, the ones that don’t know other home but Za’atari and
most likely won’t know other for a while. What does their future look like?
Will it be easier for them in time to treat the refugee camp as their home,
their only home now? Or will their parents, brothers, neighbours’ tales ignite
in them the longing for the country they normally belong to? I honestly don’t
know. Reading statistics is much easier.
When Kleinschmidt arrived in Za’atari, he went
public in saying that “this was the most depressing and most difficult camp he
has ever worked in, one of the most depressing locations”. When we arrived in
Za’atari, we found “a sort of a living town”.
So, despite everything, life does move on.
Syrian refugees in Za’atari, most of them people who have lost everything, are
finding themselves more and more connected to a home away from home.
Multimedia documentary by:
Audio&video: Laurentiu Diaconu-Colintineanu
Photography: Ioana Moldovan
Video editing: Cristian Burtan-Fleischer