'No more joy in Eid' for Syrians displaced for the holiday once again

Abu Mohammed lives his life in lists: he lists the places in Syria to which his family has been forcibly displaced. He lists the different reasons for each displacement. He lists the number of Muslim holidays he’s spent away from home, reports Reuters.

“When we were in our houses we had our rituals and our ambience and the joy was different,” he said, sitting in a field in the village of Hazano in the northern countryside of Idlib province, among the last territory in Syria still held by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Bashar Al-Assad’schizophrenia: asking refugees to come back to Syria but at the same time keeps planning chemical attacks – Cartoon [Mohammad Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

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“The sweets we would put out had their own style. Today there is nothing available and we’ve forgotten this. We used to visit cemeteries before Eid prayer. Today we’ve forgotten this. We can’t reach the dead’s tomb to pray.”

Eid Al-Fitr, celebrated after the holy month of Ramadan during which Muslims fast from sunrise till sunset, is one of the main markers of the Muslim calendar, a day of family joy.

This is the eighth Eid Al-Fitr that Syria has spent at war and the fourth that Abu Mohammed has spent away from home. His latest displacement is the fifth time he has been forced to flee as government forces advanced. Another list: where his family has ended up. Afrin and Azaz in northern Syria. Turkey. Europe.

“We’ve dispersed and there is no more joy in Eid.”

The last rebel-held territory in the northwest corner of Syria is home to hundreds of thousands of people who fled other parts of the country as government forces advanced.

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Last year rebels and government forces reached a demilitarisation agreement there sponsored by Assad’s ally Russia and by Turkey, long an ally of the rebels.

But the Syrian government and Russia stepped up an offensive last month on the area. Hundreds of people have been killed by shelling. Last month 270,000 people were displaced in the most intense violence for months.