Tag Archives: War

Don’t spread the bullshit

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Since the pandemic started I have seen family members and friends on and off social media latching onto conspiracy theories in a never-ending cycle. What I found funny at first, like believing there is a magnetic chip in the anti-covid vaccine because your government is trying to control you or that this whole thing is a plot from Bill Gates, is no longer laughable.

Conspiracies and fake news. Even in war. Because there are two sides to the story: a Russian one and a Ukrainian one. Russia is clearly saving Ukraine from nazis and Ukraine is attacking and killing Russian ethnic groups – which means that this invasion is not an invasion but a heroic attempt from Russia to save its neighbour. Yeah right.

When did facts no longer matter? Did Russia invade Ukraine? Yes. Was this legitimate? No. Are there nazis in Ukraine? I’m sure there are nazi sympathisers everywhere including in Ukraine. Does this make them all nazis? No. But what about the US, they say, they’re not any better. Please spare me the “whataboutism”. Because if we go down that road, it’s pointless to even have a discussion. The USA f****d up in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, in Libya. Basically in every country they interfered. Was the US right to support dictatorships in Iran and Latin America? Hell no. If I condemn Russia for invading Ukraine, am I siding with the American foreign policy? Hell no. Are most Russian media spreading the regime’s propaganda and misinforming the local population? Yes they are. So you’re saying that the western media has always been non-biased? No, not at all. I never said that. Does the West have more independent media that will go at length to share facts with their readers & viewers? Yes. I come from the least democratic region in the world, where media is politicised, not reliable and totally controlled. Those few journalists who try to write it as it is end up dead or fired or just leave the country. So you can understand why I appreciate reliable media.

But (there’s always another but) look at how Europe is embracing Ukrainians fleeing their country. Why were Syrians, Africans, Afghans and other non-white refugees treated differently? I am not a policymaker so I will not answer this question but I surely don’t like Europe’s double standards. I find it sad and disgusting. So the west is not perfect, I told you. No it’s far from perfect. But there’s a reason you came here because this is where you can have a better life, or was it maybe that you didn’t have a choice?! You’re at least in a part of the world where you won’t be sent to jail for 15 years for saying I don’t like my president. Or I’m gay. Democracy is real. It is not perfect, but it is the best system we’ve had so far. It is where you get to choose which newspaper to read, which TV to watch and you make your own conclusions. Journalists are not meant to tell you what to think. They don’t make policies. You do, when you choose who to vote for. Journalists are messengers who go to Ukraine and Russia and other countries to see what is happening up close. As a friend (hi Roel!) puts it nicely: if you don’t like the way they report on Ukraine, why don’t you move your ass and go there to check for yourself with your big mouth?

For those of us lucky to be living in a civilised country, who come from countries where human life has no value, we should not forget why we left. Don’t resent the country you’re living in but the country you came from. It basically kicked you out. You were never welcome there.

For those of us living in Europe, yes, Europe is not perfect. There is racism, fascism, discrimination, inequality, poverty. But take a moment and look where Europe came from. A couple of generations ago, France and Germany were at war. Look at the rest of the world, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America. Autocrats, militias, corruption (lots of it), dysfunctional societies, oppression, women’s rights? Non existent. You might say colonialism contributed to that. You might say the west is purposefully keeping the rest of the world on its knees. You might say the west has lost its moral compass and values. We at least have family values (which is bullshit by the way). I won’t keep going because there is no point. I do agree we have to understand the past to build the present and the future.

Seeing these posts on Twitter and Facebook trying to analyse how we got to the war in Ukraine will not help solve the current situation. This is, as we say in NGO jargon, a lesson learned. And for those who do have access to decent media because they live in free countries, what’s your excuse not to read The New York Times, Le Monde, La Libération, De Volkskrant, Der Spiegel and others? Because you have a responsibility to stick to facts. You are more to be blamed for spreading misinformation. You have the opportunity, the means and the access to the truth and yet you make a conscious decision to promote conspiracies. That’s either stupid, sick or both. In all cases, there’s something wrong with you. And please don’t start arguing why you are not vaccinated. Oh wait, this is probably a different group. Oh man, the end must be near.

The day I met Turki

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In 2013, I worked for Save the Children Lebanon as a communications and media coordinator. That’s when I met Turki, who was a child at the time, with a heavy burden that no child should carry.

I met him in a tented settlement in the Bekaa Valley on a rainy April day, exceptionally cold and windy for Lebanon. I was accompanying a media crew from ABC Australia to meet new arrivals from Idlib and Aleppo in Syria – refugees who were living in tough conditions with irregular access to water, electricity and food.

On our way back, I noticed that more land on both sides of the road was busy with refugee tents and children running around.

Turki and his family were living there. They arrived from Syria two months ago, after Turki’s father had an accident, falling off the roof where he would sit watching the shelling and explosions. He was still depressed. Turki was in fact the breadwinner for the whole family: five younger brothers and sisters and his mother and father. He was 10 years old.

When I spoke to him, Turki was standing next to an old carriage piled with scrap metal he had been gathering from nearby streets. He was sorting out which pieces he could sell.

“I work every day from 7am until 1pm, gathering scrap metal here and there,” Turki told me. “Then I try to sell the pieces to adults, who scare me sometimes because they beat me”. He made around 15,000 Lebanese Pounds (approx 10 EUR) a day. “Life is not nice here,” he said. “I am sad because my father cannot work, but we need money and I have to bring food for my family.”

Huge responsibilities

A small boy, Turki had responsibilities that would daunt a grown man. His worried look was that of an adult, not a child. After his working day, he finally got to go home to his tent and played marbles with his friends and cousins. This was the only time I saw him smile.

His sisters and brothers were very shy and clung to their mother as if they were scared to leave her. None of them had been to school for the past two years.

Most Syrian children I met were excited to go back to school, make new friends and study for a better future, but not Turki. “I don’t like to go to school,” he told me. “Schools were shelled in Syria. They weren’t safe for us.” If the school were safe, though, he would be prepared to return – except that he had to work. “I don’t want to go back to school,” he said, “but I do hope we can return to Syria, to our home.”

In the meantime, Save the Children was providing help with shelter, education and child protection – necessities then and for the foreseeable future because as Turki said, with the wisdom of the maturity that was being forced on him too soon: “From what I see, it will be a long time before that can happen.”

Today on World Refugee Day, I can’t help but think that Turki is now 15, and still waiting for the deadly conflict to end in his country so he could go back.

Lives on hold

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I recently translated a short documentary on a Syrian refugee family in the Bekaa, East of Lebanon. They had left Syria in 2012 and have been living in Lebanon ever since. It was the first time in more than a year of being in The Netherlands that I got in touch with anything related to Syria. To be honest, I only met a couple of Syrian young men in Amsterdam during my Dutch classes. They had already been living and working in the country for almost two years. Watching this documentary made me emotional. It brought me back to my days in the Bekaa where I spent a lot of time listening to refugees’ stories and trying not to lose hope as years went by and very little changed in their situation. 

It all seems so far away here. Or maybe I am no longer that much involved as I used to be- being caught up in my own integration process and all. But on this  World Refugee Day, I couldn’t help but think of that Syrian refugee family in the documentary and many others who are still waiting to move on with their lives. In 2011, when I went for the first time to Wadi Khaled in North Lebanon with the purpose of organizing recreational activities for Syrian children who fled Syria with their families, I thought this was temporary. It’s been over six years now and all I can think of today are the changes that can happen to a person’s life in such a long period. Think of what happened in your life in the past six years. 

I started my third decade, got married, have two beautiful nephews – one of them is already going to school – moved jobs, got promoted, traveled to Asia for the first time, lost family members and friends, made new friendships, learned a new language, migrated. While the lives of those refugee families I met are still on hold. And they have been on hold for so long. 

On World Refugee Day, I think of them all. I hope they will be able to resume living soon. 

Born to Leave

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Amsterdam on a (mildly) warm day

I was doing well back home in Beirut. I had what I thought was all I needed: a loving family, wonderful friends, a great job. Everything seemed perfect in my own little circle. But it was a circle that I had created, like many other Lebanese, to shield myself from the dysfunctional mess around me. Finally, I couldn’t keep the outside out anymore. So I tried my luck here in Amsterdam. And what a change it’s been. 

Beirut was my city. It’s chaotic, and full of character. It blends the old with the new, the rich with the poor, the Arab world with the West. Its streets and suburbs are a colourful mess: shiny new sky scrapers mix with traditional two-story houses and pitiful shacks. It is on the Mediterranean, so with the smell of salt a feeling of freedom continually washes over the city. And it’s true: Beirut is open, tolerant, even liberal compared to the rest of the Arab world. At least, in my circle it is. Its character is fuelled by its people, talented, creative, smart, hip, but also deeply disturbed, to be honest.  

I love Beirut like you love a destructive lover, who keeps you hanging on with hints of how it could be, how it should be. Until the moment you realise you have to leave, if only to maintain your health and sanity.  

So here I am, taking a walk on a sunny Amsterdam day along the dozens of waterways and canals, heading toward Oost. I sit on a bench for a long time listening to the sound of the light breeze through the long trees, watching a couple of ducks float on the water, enjoying the summer sun as the tram bells echo in the background. Everything is so peaceful, so clean. I think of when I started learning Dutch in Lebanon and how surprisingly fun the classes were. Then I remember the day I learned my residency was in order, and how ready I felt to go.  

Beirut does not have an easy past. After a 15-year long civil war which left so much destruction on its buildings and in the hearts of its population, its problems now are more mundane: lack of water, power cuts, pot-holed roads, suffocating traffic, and not a single publicly accessible park worth the name. An ongoing trash crisis – the result of incapable, corrupt, money-hungry politicians – has made the streets of Beirut smell like a garbage dump for the past year, with no solution in sight (despite creative and angry protests). And then there are the more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees (on a Lebanese population of 4 million), which is putting extreme pressure on the already weak local infrastructure and public services. Religious and political tensions, staggering economic and social inequality – it’s all widening the gap between the rich and poor.  

It all seems so far away here, as if I’ve driven into a morning fog on a dark forest road and came out on the other side in daylight. Amsterdam feels magical, like a dream, with its incredibly beautiful architecture and lit canals. And the green; I can’t emphasise enough how great it is to be able to access parks for free, just sit there, read, spend time with friends or exercise in the morning in the fresh air. Nothing can beat a bicycle ride – no matter how challenging it may look with all the confused tourists around – through the endless small streets feeling the wind on your face. It’s ultimate freedom.  Everything works. While this may seem like a fact-of-life for those living in a developed country, it makes me realise the collective commitment and effort that have been put into it, to have a well-functioning society. Every detail has been thought of: the alignment of trees on the sides of the roads, bike lanes, parking spots, parks, where to stick posters (RIP, Johan Cruyff) and ads, where to post your mail, how to sort the trash, where people with disabilities can go, children, bus stops and the list goes on and on. I was even able to become a fiscally legal ZZP’er (self-employed person with no personnel) in less than a month. This is a miracle!  

I love Beirut’s generosity, its hospitality, how it embraces you and makes you feel home, welcome. But after years of disappointment, I had to leave; because I want to build a stable life and make a new place home. So here’s my first post on the struggle to achieve that in Amsterdam. There are problems too – the hardness of society here is one. But more on that later. I’ll keep you posted, those of you going through the same process, or Dutch people interested in what it’s like to arrive here, while I wonder about my new life, in this new city. Hopefully, this one will make a better lover.