Syrian Life on Hold in Lebanon

Maya Louay El Sheikh Issa loves bananas. Back home in Syria her and her brother found a secret stash in the kitchen cupboard and ate them all. She also recalls a pink teddy bear she used to own, but speculates as to whether it is now filled with bullets. Over two years ago Maya and her family travelled by bus from their home in Homs, Syria, to escape the war and now live in the abandoned Gaza Hospital in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp neighbourhood of Beirut.

Maya’s story is part of Life on Hold, an interactive documentary published on Al-Jazeera that features ten Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. Each have a page dedicated to them with videos and images which offer insights into their lives. In Maya’s case there are old photographs which explain the history of Gaza Hospital and footage of cotton candy being made, a treat for her on the first day of Eid.

Through the characters the viewer is introduced to daily life as a refugee in Lebanon. We learn through Mohammed, for example, that there are many children who work to supplement their families’ income and as a result a whole generation of Syrians will grow up without education. Doctor Bashar informs us that access to healthcare for refugees is difficult and expensive and Umm Ala’a says that no one can celebrate now for more than an hour before someone cries.

“I think the content that Reem did is very touching in a very, very simple way. It may not be a philosophical documentary but it’s very human,” says Ralph Dfouni of Kngfu media who partnered with Al-Jazeera to create Life on Hold.

Reem Haddad is the senior producer from Al-Jazeera who led the project. Also involved is Syrian artist Tammam Azzam who is known for superimposing Gustav Klimt’s Kiss onto a burnt-out building in Damascus, an image which went viral two years ago. His latest work for Life on Hold saw him designing a wall for each character which changes with time and displays the exact number of days each has been a refugee for. If you hover over the twinkling stars you can read comments made by viewers, all of which are positive.

One comment on Maya’s wall, for example, offers to relocate her and her family; but she may not have seen this. In real life many of the characters don’t actually have an Internet connection to check the project or to see what people have written on their walls. “They can barely eat really,” says Dfouni. “But Reem is going back to Lebanon and she’s going to check on a couple of them and take her computer with her and show them.”

Positive comments were incorporated into the design to create a “web of moral support” to replace hateful rants. “That was my aim at the beginning and Al-Jazeera of course was completely opposed to it,” he says. “Their argument is that they are a news channel and not a moral support [system] for anybody. But I thought the idea was really good to give back to these people since we have an interactive platform and we don’t always use it very well.”

When it comes to the Middle East, comments can quickly become polarised. “You get the Lebanese and the Syrians, and the Muslims on the Christians and the Shia on the Sunni. It becomes completely politicised. So putting a little barrier at the entry and making it and exposing it in this way, where a comment cannot reply to another comment really, and putting it in a nice environment, it changed everything completely,” says Dfouni.

In the British press, much has been made of Syrian men, women and children braving the treacherous journey to Europe by boat. Yet there is barely any mention of Europe from the characters of Life on Hold. “Man they are so far away from the idea of being able to move,” says Dfouni, “because of paperwork; because they know how far away they are from being accepted anywhere. It’s barely an idea in their minds. I’ve spoken to a few of them and they feel so far removed from the process of possibly getting somewhere else. They’re not of that breed for some reason.”

What is the future, then, for those who stay in Lebanon? “I’m Lebanese and when I go there I can barely comprehend how this is going to end. For Lebanon and obviously for Syria,” says Dfouni in a comment that seems to encapsulate what many people are thinking about a conflict that has entered its fifth year, claimed over 200,000 lives and displaced nearly 11 million people.

One million of these refugees now comprise one quarter of Lebanon’s population. “The commissioner of the United Nations was saying it’s like if the United States would take 60 or 70 million people in at once. Relatively to the population of Lebanon it’s a disaster and everybody knows it. But it still goes and Lebanon is a crazy place. It sustains these absurdities and it’s going well. All my family is in Lebanon and they’re doing well.”

On top of all their problems is the added pressure of hostility many refugees have reportedly experienced from the Lebanese and Palestinians they are now living alongside. Dfouni says that in Sabra and Shatila refugee camp Syrians rent three or four square metre rooms from Palestinians; “for an incredible amount of money, for maybe the shittiest place in the world or one of the most terrible places in the world, the hardest to live in. Like Maya; Maya lives in a building I’d be scared to walk into.”

“When it gets to that point I think it becomes very personal. It becomes each man for himself – Palestinian, Syrian or whatever it may be, Lebanese. It becomes very unique and personal to the situation. I’ve heard stories of horror, of Lebanese men letting a family live in a dump if they would let him sleep with their daughter who’s like 14 years old. I’ve heard a lot of stories like that. I don’t think this bigger notion of Palestinians or Lebanese welcoming the poor Syrians is anything [but] valid. I think it’s really a case by case. I heard a lot of Syrians there saying they were badly treated by the Palestinians. Man, the Palestinians have been there for two generations so maybe they forgot.”

Life on Hold was made in English, Arabic, Turkish and Bosnian. Dfouni says that only the English version did well, compared to consumption in the Arab world which was zero. He thinks this is partly because most people in the Middle East watch TV for news or check Facebook rather than using this kind of platform. “The other aspect of it I think is if you go to Lebanon and talk about Syrian refugees nobody listens to you. They are just overloaded with all this,” he says suggesting this could be down to the historical enmity between the two countries.

“I’m one of them. I grew up in a country that was completely destroyed by all kinds of wars and I grew up hating the Syrian regime, which was the regime of the father, Hafez Al-Assad. It’s very hard even for me to make the difference between the regime and the people because there were about 100,000 Syrians that came in and out of Lebanon and they looted and they stole and they killed. So 30 years of that and it’s quite difficult to make a shift as a population, to welcome two million of them.”

And yet despite all of this, perhaps all is not lost. Take Mohammed, the first character we meet: “I think he’s an example for a lot of our first-world depressions. I think if we watch Mohammed and we see his incredible will. You know I love that kid. She [Reem Haddad] didn’t look for anything flowery or anything like really shocking. She just went and sat and talked to them and I think the result is very human, very close to us. And very simple to watch, other than the fact that it’s sometimes hard to watch, it’s an easy watch. But it’s just one more project to make them aware of the horrible situation. Nothing more philosophical than that really. Reem wanted people to leave with hope. You know, that’s all people want.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.