Word gets out about hearing aids for Syria’s deaf children

US charity’s tour of camps in Lebanon brings smiles

BAR ELIAS, LEBANON // Six-yearold Aya Al Souqi, a Syrian refugee, held the phone up to her face and said: “I hear you.”

It was only the second time she had spoken to her mother, who now lives in Germany, since being fitted with a hearing aid from a Chicago-based charity.

Aya, timid and small, was a little more than a year old in 2012 when a rocket struck her family’s house in the Eastern Ghouta countryside, outside the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The strike killed Aya’s father and, the family believes, damaged her right ear. The family then moved to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where thousands of Syrians now live as refugees.

“She used to respond to her name and play with other children,” said her grandmother, Hayan Hashmeh. “When we came to Lebanon, we noticed her hearing was very limited.”

The Deaf Planet Soul charity is on its first mission to Lebanon to treat Syrians, young and old, suffering with hearing loss. Most have been affected by the war in their homeland.

For many of the patients, this is the first time they have been seen by hearing-loss experts.

“When people think of refugees, they think of cut-off limbs and brain injuries, and all these visible things,” said Zaineb Abdulla, a therapist and vice president of Deaf Planet Soul. “They don’t think about the invisible results of war.”

The team of five audiologists, therapists, and a student are working in clinics around Lebanon during the charity’s twoweek mission. In a makeshift clinic in Al Marj, Gregory Perez, a mental health professional, used sign language to communicate with seven-year-old Jana Faour, a Syrian-Palestinian girl raised in Lebanon, who is deaf. Her parents have no money to enrol her in a school for the deaf, so her mother is teaching her Arabic sign language from lessons she finds online. Jana, who usually depends on her younger sister to be her voice, was thrilled to be able to sign with someone new. Although Mr Perez signs in American sign language, the two found they had many words in common. Jana looked up at her parents and beamed.

“It’s the first time someone sees to what I want, which was to have Jana meet a therapist, to work with her personality instead of just her hearing,” said her mother, Samar. Mr Perez and Ms Abdulla are deaf. Mr Perez can speak only haltingly and said he founded the charity last year to “empower the deaf and help the deaf community be independent”.

Aya’s mother, Kinaz Khatib, left for Germany in 2015, crossing the Mediterranean to Europe by boat, hoping to secure the right to bring her children over. She is still waiting for the appropriate papers.

Aya’s hearing loss has made the separation especially difficult, her grandmother said. But with her hearing aid on, Aya was transformed. “How are you?” she asked her mother. “I miss you.” The Deaf Planet Soul team held workshops for children over 10 days in Lebanon. They returned to Chicago on March 16 to raise funds for another mission. “This is a forever project,” said Mr Perez.