11 September 2002

As a Palestinian refugee, I am really thankful not to be in the same boat as the people we met today. I live in a Palestinian camp in Damascus – which is not classified as a camp in the United Nations (UN) reports. It doesn’t look or feel like other Palestinian camps because it has developed a lot in many ways, and there are different races there.

I visited Jaramana with a French journalist, Philip, because he is interested to know what the camps in Damascus look like. The camp looks different to how it did three or four years ago, when I last visited. A new street has been built and a new vegetable market established, which in a way feels better, even though it is not much, considering the number of people.

This camp is not small; about 5,680 people live here – actually, are crammed in there. It’s situated east of Damascus, on the street leading to Jaramana (a town in Damascus itself). The houses are built very close together, with narrow alleys – not proper streets – running between them. Large families live there, with lots of children. They play soccer in those narrow little alleys, running after each other, unaware of the bad luck they have, living in this camp.

However, about a year ago, a man from the Arab Gulf helped to improve the camp. He had a street made, to separate some of the houses, and a bridge was built in a busy crossing area – where before, three girls, and a woman and her daughter were killed in a tragic car accident, just crossing the street. He also set up a fountain next to the camp. It really looks very beautiful.

We met a girl there called Amina, and she told us proudly how most people in the camp go there for the evening, and that sometimes there are visitors from outside.

Of course, people’s houses were destroyed when the street was built. To compensate, houses were built for them in other areas of Damascus, and so they moved there. But now they have debts to pay for their old houses.

When we first saw Amina, who is a very helpful, nice girl, she passed us saying ‘Oh my God’ in English. She thought we were foreigners. I think she thought I was a foreigner because I look different to the other girls in the camp; I was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, trousers and sunglasses. Actually, my appearance is different from theirs simply because they have a certain appearance all over that camp. Amina told us that all the girls there cover their heads, so it’s shameful not to. So I asked her, ‘Well, why are you wearing a hat and not a veil?’ She said, ‘I don’t like to wear a cover. I always wear this hat and people call me a foreigner because of it.’

That’s why I like this girl so much; she sounds just like me – she wants to be herself and break taboos, to express and show her own personality. I really think, very deeply, that if this girl had the chance – like me, since we’re both refugees – to complete her education at school and university she would change a lot. Because I remember that I was just like her as a child. But when I got to university – where I studied English literature and read many books ­– many of my ideas changed and I started to look at things from a different perspective.

When we started talking to Amina, she was confident and funny. She was always smiling, in spite of the fact that there are a hundred reasons to make her sad. I really admire this kind of person, who can be optimistic and laugh even though they have so many troubles in their life. We asked her if we could talk to her family about the camp. She had been on the way to somewhere else with her friend, but she took us to her house instead.

She led us there through a great many narrow alleys, of unpaved, stamped earth. It’s not something you’d want to experience for more than one day; there’s a pressure you feel, because of the narrowness of everything, as though you can’t even breathe.

Philip said, ‘This camp looks very much like the camps in Gaza.’ And then I felt a little bit happier – that at least I’m in a place that looks like something in Palestine, which I’m not even allowed to see. All I can do is hear and read stories about it, enviously thinking ‘Oh! Those people at least are in Palestine,’ or watch movies, where I imagine myself as one of the actors or passers-by. And when foreigners tell me that they’ve been there, I just think, damn it! They’re not even Arabs!

Anyway, we arrived at Amina’s family house. It is surrounded on all sides by other houses. They have two rooms and a very small yard. Many people live in the house – at the moment there are two girls and three guys, one of whom got married and lives in the same house. Amina has another sister, who married and went to live with her husband; and another brother, who is also married and lives in another camp in Damascus. There’s also their mother. They don’t have much furniture in the house, only some mattresses and two rugs – I saw their clothes lying out on the floor.

We asked her about her dad, and we felt her sadness when she said, ‘He was the dearest to my heart’ – the same phrase repeated by her sister. ‘He died because of illness. We didn’t have money to take him to the hospital and get him all the medicine he needed. He used to work for a building firm, carrying things like earth and sand on his back until he was unable even to stand up straight.’ Their mother came to Syria when she was six years old: ‘The Israelis displaced us. Palestine is a very nice country. The only thing my family brought along from Palestine is the keys of our house. We were told we would return very soon.’ She was very friendly and nice, and wore traditional Palestine dress.

We asked Amina who supports the family. I was surprised to hear that it is her. She is twenty-two, and works for a biscuit factory from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., earning $80 a month. She complains about her work: ‘I work most of the day very often under the sun. Once I had sunstroke and wanted to quit, but my family did not let me. My mum said, ‘Who is going to work if you don’t?’ My job is very boring, but what shall I do – work under these humiliating situations, or be a beggar on the streets?’

I asked her, ‘What about your brothers? Why don’t they contribute?’ She said, ‘No one would ask them to. Simply because they’re men, no one would have control of them. But of course, they can dominate me and my sister.’

I was really astonished to know that it was only Amina who supports the family, and that it’s okay for men not to work, as this doesn’t happen very often in Arab society. Usually men are responsible for supporting their families.

We asked Amina whether she’d like to move out of the camp. She said, ‘I’ve got used to living in the camp, but I’d like to live in Salihaa’ (a rich region in Damascus, filled with shops). Amina and her sister Eman left school at a very early age. Amina had to work to help her family. We asked her if she’d like to read books, and she said, ‘Yes, I’d like to read novels but they are expensive.’

When she heard Philip and I speaking English to each other, she started saying the English words she knows. I told her I could teach her English, and she was very excited. Her sister, Eman, told us that, in the camp, there are some courses run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). ‘But although the foreign volunteers work for free, the people who work in the UNRWA centre made us pay $2 a lesson, which is maybe not very much, but for us – the people in the camp – it means a lot. This really irritates me because the volunteers are very nice and want to help us, while the people who take our names and run the whole centre are corrupt.’

When I heard this story I thought I’d suggest organising new English lessons, without the UNRWA centres, with the help of my friends from Europe. That same day, I met a very nice half-Spanish, half-American guy called Adriano, and when I told him about this he immediately said, ‘I’m very excited to teach those children!’ So he’s going to start very soon. In the Jaramana camp there are UNRWA schools and a centre for medical treatment, along with some other centres to distribute food – wheat, canned meat and so on – from the UN and EU. The UN schools are not as good as those in the Al-Yarmouk camp. I think this is because the people who are in a position to assign the teachers in the UN schools choose their relatives, or they get payment from others.

Unfortunately, people think that they are too weak to protest; they are not aware how important education and learning is for them.

The centre for medical treatment is no better. Amina’s family told us that they went there to register their names to have UN aid, but people there said, ‘You can’t, because you have two unmarried brothers at home’ – implying that the two single men ought to be supporting the family. Apparently people with contacts in the UN are better off. People working at the medical treatment centre turn some people down, saying, ‘We’ve run out of this kind of medicine – you have to go to the drugstore to buy it,’ even though it is in fact given to some other people.

I am deeply impressed after being at the Jaramana camp. It has woken me up to the fact that, although I do have problems, they can’t be compared with the problems these people have. I urge people to be helpful to these refugees, and to think about the terrible conditions they are under. And for those who can contribute with any form of help, please do contact me with your suggestions.

Copyright © Buthaina Shaheen, 2002. Published by openDemocracy. Permission is granted to reproduce articles for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring and lending is prohibited without permission. If this has been sent to you by a friend and you like it, you are welcome to join the openDemocracy network.