Terrible Choices

Today we met Syrian women who were smuggled across the border to come to a women’s leadership training. They took this huge risk, because they are desperate to find a bright spot what is otherwise a bleak, bleak future.

One woman brought her 11 year old autistic son with her. Two girls, no more than 20, left behind protesting mothers. One woman tore her hands and feet crawling through razor wire, hiking up mountains and scaling walls. She is 6 months pregnant.

Today we met Syrian women from inside Syria. Everyone here is quick to make that distinction. There are, of course, challenges and pain for all Syrians, but for those inside, there is active war. There are daily “indiscriminate shellings,” to use a term that several used when describing life inside. There is poverty. There is depression and trauma. There is rape and death.

We spent the day crying with these women. A woman described how she had to lie to her 6 year old son, who she left in a town with the “indiscriminate shellings,” because the road she took was actually more dangerous than that. She told him she was in the village not too far away and would be back soon. This same son and her 2 other children had been living with her in Turkey for a while. Every day she would leave the house in this foreign land and look for work. She would tell her children to lock the door to their one room and not answer the door no matter what. She left them paper to draw on and eventually someone donated a TV. The children sat inside all day, from 7 to 7, freezing because she didn’t know how the Turkish heating system worked. They lasted a year and then went back to Syria.

“Camps are a humiliation,” said another woman who also went back to Syria, because camp life was handouts and mockery from the local population. Indeed, we had heard this from the refugees we talked with earlier in the week. They estimated that 10-15% of the camp population had left to return to Syria, despite the violence.

The women described their lives trying to make a living and hiding their fear from their children, alone, because the men are lost to fighting and death. As bombs rain down, they tell their children, “Do not to worry, because God is almighty and it is the word of God if we die.”

Raqqa

On Day 4 in Gaziantep I had a chance to turn on the TV after a long day and the top headline is that the prick from that terrorist group was killed. When they flashed a map to show where he was, it showed a spot in Syria that 4 days ago would have meant nothing to me. Now, fully immersed in learning about the conflict in Syria from Syrians living it here on the border, I know about Raqqa. I know that Medya, my lovely, lovely coordinator, who is working 24/7 to set us up with all of our meetings and tirelessly and graciously escorting us to and fro, is from Raqqa. She told me that Raqqa was known in Syria as a place where all types of Syrians: Arabs, Alawites, Sunni, Shi'a, Kurds, etc. lived in relative peace before the Revolution, but ran to their corners and built up walls to keep each other out once the fighting started.

We don’t hear these stories. This place is now on the map because of this jerk and his evil associates. We have heard that the Russians are bombing opposition forces and we talk about the proxy war and geopolitics. But we don’t talk about the young Syrian boys who want to run from refugee camps back into the hellscape of Syria and risk their lives to fight the Russians. Imagine these young boys with fists and rocks in the air, fighting the Goliath, but almost certainly without the biblical ending. We hear that women are absent from the political negotiations, but we don’t hear Masa’s story. Hers is that of many women, who were on the frontlines of the revolution when it began, protesting and supporting the fight, but returned home to be met by disdain and divorce from their husbands for neglecting their household responsibilities.

I have always been concerned about this conflict, especially because of my dear friend Hala. But, as always, when you meet the people who are directly suffering and hear the stories that aren’t sexy enough for the news, your heart and mind are overwhelmed. The most mind-blowing thing that I struggle to articulate here, and in so many other places I have traveled, is that these people are me. They love and hate like me. They take taxis, buy diapers and drink coffee like me. They are flesh and blood like me. They do not deserve this tormented existence of war.

Gaziantep Part 1: Landing

In between thoughts of pity over my exhaustive journey and excitement in planning a field trip, we start our descent into Gaziantep, Turkey. Turkish Airlines is all about their in-flight map. They have it on about 23 different 3D perspectives as the plane flies across the sky, far more than any other in-flight map I have ever seen. As we grow closer, the regional map starts to populate with interesting cities: Baghdad, Bahrain. But closer to Gaziantep, nothing. Is it a sleight of hand by Turkish to omit the dark places nearby? Then about 15 minutes out, Aleppo shows up on the map and indeed quite close to Antep (about 90km to be exact). Yegaads. Clearly the crew is thinking the same thing, because in the next second, the proud map display disappears, prematurely and well before landing.

Too late. My vigorous imagination of a place I’ve never been to, in a provocative location on the edge of a war zone, combined with my ever-present landing anxiety, kicks into gear and begins to fuel a number of speculations. I start praying that ack acks or RPGs will not be spotted suddenly hurdling toward us in the crystal clear night sky. Seriously. Seriously.

What I will find here in Gaziantep is most likely a people torn apart by conflict, but determined to improve their lives and somehow find peace. I will find that my fears, while ever present and at times justified and/or histrionic, will be eclipsed by other priorities, such as capturing the right picture of the people here to carry back home with me. It reminds me of Congo and of course of northern Uganda. These are places dear to me that have terrified me at times for both real and imagined reasons, but also places where the plight of those on the frontlines dominates my memory and more importantly my efforts to articulate requests for action to the powers-that-be. Here I already know that the message will be to support women and girls and men and boys to settle Syria and bring peace at last.

Broad strokes at this stage - the rest to be shortly filled in.