Atiya, 11, Lebanon
Though she’s lived in Lebanon from age three, Atiya has a powerful sense of identification. “Though we’ve been right here for a very long time, although we have now Lebanese buddies and I’m going to high school, we’re totally different,” she says. “Our accent is totally different. I really feel totally different from everybody else. I’m not in my nation and while you’re some place else, you by no means really feel actually secure.”
Atiya barely remembers Syria, She is aware of her native nation solely by tales advised by her mother and father. “I keep in mind there have been bombs, I keep in mind the noises, the hisses and explosions. My mother and father say Syria was lovely, that it was an excellent place to stay. They inform me in regards to the meals, the outlets, the parks and the walks we took. However I don’t actually know,” she says.
“Generally folks ask me why I’m nonetheless right here, why I don’t go residence. I wish to shout to them: ‘Why don’t you perceive? My nation was destroyed — the place would you like me to go? I’ve nowhere to go.’”
She, her mother and father and 4 siblings stay in Nabaa, a poor neighborhood within the suburbs of Beirut. A number of years in the past, Atiya made a drawing of a home surrounded by a backyard with a little bit lady in it. “I imagined Syria and our home. My mother and father say our residence was burnt down and the neighborhood fully destroyed,” she says. Her prolonged household is equally torn aside, unfold throughout Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Atiya desires of peace being restored in Syria and of her household reuniting. “Generally folks ask me why I’m nonetheless right here, why I don’t go residence. I wish to shout to them: ‘Why don’t you perceive? My nation was destroyed — the place would you like me to go? I’ve nowhere to go,’” she says.
The disaster in Lebanon has made it tough for Atiya’s mother and father to fulfill the household’s fundamental wants. CARE assisted by offering her with a back-to-school equipment in the beginning of the varsity 12 months.
Zenab Bagha, Patricia Khoder, Amal Maayeh, and Johanna Wynn Mitscherlich contributed to this story.