Last week I was in Northern Lebanon researching a story on refugees fleeing the slaughter in Syria. I will be returning to continue my research in several weeks, but I wanted to document what I heard and saw while it’s still fresh in my mind. As more and more refugees leave Syria for Lebanon and Turkey, already fraught political balances will become more strained. I fear the story will become more focused on politics and less on the human suffering at the centre of this mess. Holding a tiny fatherless baby in a roomful of homeless women, it was difficult to overlook that suffering.
I spent Saturday afternoon with a group of Syrian refugees, most from the town of Tal Kalakh in Homs Governorate. From where we stood in Lebanon, we could see over the border into Syria: a river valley, soft green hills, and then in the far distance, the some of the homes they had left behind.
The group I met included 13 women, several babies, 24 or so kids and about a dozen men (some too old or injured to fight, others walking back into Syria to rejoin the fighters). They sleep in one house, most in an unfurnished room about 3.5m x 12m.
There are an estimated 3,000 refugees in Amaret Al Beikat (local pop 6,000) and another 8,000 in nearby towns. My local contact said more arrive weekly.
The women left Syria when the army moved in and began shooting their sons and husbands. Several young men had been jailed without reason – one with his 76-year-old grandfather – and when they were released after 11 months, they fled.
Two of the boys were wounded – one had two paralysed fingers left by a bullet wound to the upper arm – and one woman had a still-healing scar on her face; evidence, she said, of being shot whilst crossing the border. Several women showed me slide shows on their mobile phones: this is my brother, shot in the head; this is my cousin, dead; this is my son, shot in the chest. Photo after photo of dead men and boys.
Book review on 26 Books: Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein
This week Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s most-wanted war crimes suspect, was finally arrested. Captured whilst living under an assumed name in Lazarevo, a town with old ties to the Milosevic family, the former General has been found fit to stand trial and has until Monday to launch an appeal against extradition to the Hague.
Due process likewise awaits Serbia’s EU bid, which has just cast off its greatest impediment. While cynics and conspiracy theorists are keen to poke holes in the affair –- that this ‘hiding in plain sight’ thing is a little too unbelievable; that the timing of the capture is all politics, not policing; that Serbia knew where he was all along and was just biding its time — the fact remains: Mladić is now in custody and the great wheels of international justice must now creak into action.
Still, the reaction of one man, interviewed on Channel 4 news, makes me wonder if the Serbian government hasn’t been just the slightest bit duplicitous about the whole ‘we searched high and low’ thing:
“We are all Serbs here, so everybody loves him. We would never have sold him out, not for any amount of money.”
What I found especially interesting was the public’s reaction to the arrest. Channel 4 and ITV news presented a few vox pops that ran along the same lines: “he is old news, he is not part of Serbia now, and I as a twentysomething don’t have anything to do with the things that happened during the war”.
It’s a very different take on collective responsibility, at least if you hold the German WW2 example as the gold standard, which the West largely does. I understand the modern Serbian approach, though: Mladić and his actions really didn’t have anything to do with these people. But it remains to be seen whether Europe will accept that perspective, and whether the rift between those who did live through that time, and those who didn’t, will become a factor in Serbia’s recovery, or tear it apart further.
Mladic’s capture: BBC news timeline
TIME’s take on the capture and what it means
Book review on 26 Books: Going Ashore by Mavis Gallant
Yearning for community: is loneliness an unavoidable part of urban life?
The other day I was at the London Fields Lido for a morning swim. I finished up and sat on the deck next to an older woman who leaned over to me and immediately started chatting. She was lonely – so lonely that she confided in me, a perfect stranger. I was really struck by this (and if you have ever witnessed the classic British reserve, you would be too).
Mary is in her sixties and is widowed. She moved down to London from the North ten or so years ago and doesn’t have much community here. She cares for a grandchild (he lives with her) and is on benefits. And she comes to the pool just to be around other people – sometimes to chat, other times to just be less alone.
I was struck by Mary’s situation. So many people live in London, but there is so little community to tie us together. I sometimes think of us as autumn leaves caught in a gust, all of us feeling the same pressures but none of us close enough to touch.
So how to address this?
Mary isn’t tech-savvy – were she, she might be able to find a group online and engage with them offline. The local council – Hackney – apparently doesn’t do much for the over-60s. I asked Mary about local classes and get-togethers and she said there weren’t any. I have yet to research this to verify this.
Ultimately, Mary was planning to do something about her situation: I suggested she set up a morning coffee hour at a local coffee shop, and advertise it with flyers on the local boards (Broadway Market has plenty of these). She was really excited about the idea of creating her own community network (ok, maybe a little intimidated, too) and she listed off a few places she knew would support the event and people she thought might come. Even more touching, she was keen for me to invite a neighbour of mine – an older gent I mentioned as an example of other over-60s living alone and lonely.
Still, it made me think – is it true that the only by-product of a city is loneliness? And thinking about digital and social initiatives, what do we do when the people who most need this support are the hardest to reach?