From feast in Syria to famine in Lebanon

Instead of a month of celebration, this Ramadan is a trying period for Syrian refugees whose acute poverty means many live on just one meal a day, writes Foreign Correspondent Josh Wood

DALHAMIEH, LEBANON // In Syria before the civil war, Amsha and her family would break their Ramadan fast with a feast. They would enjoy grilled meats, tasty balls of kibbeh, meat dumplings in yogurt, and soup, salads and cooked vegetables. There were never fewer than five or six dishes on the table.

But in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where Amsha, 30, lives with her six sisters in a tent pitched on what was once farmland, lentil soup and fried slices of squash are the only dishes for iftar this Ramadan.

It is a simple meal no different to what they would eat outside of the holy month, a menu dictated by the inescapable poverty that haunts and traps so many Syrian refugee families in Lebanon.

The iftar will be their only meal of the day. “We don’t eat suhoor,” says Amsha.

“To eat breakfast you have to have butter, you have to have cheese and other things. We can’t afford it, so we don’t eat.”

Her aunt Hasna, sitting on the ground beside her, says “it’s good for fitness”.

After six years of war, there are about 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Like Amsha and her family, more than 70 per cent of them live below the poverty line, says the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR.

The poverty is unremittingly crushing but is felt even more keenly during Ramadan – a month of piety, charity, feasting and celebration elsewhere in the Muslim world. Two months ago, the 40 families in Amsha’s camp were among thousands of refugees evicted by the Lebanese army from areas around Riyaq airbase, near the Syrian border.

The authorities evicted them because they deemed the refugees’ proximity to the airbase to be a security threat.

Left to fend for themselves, the refugees leased a new site on farmland about a kilometre away from their old site.

A new camp was hastily built, with residents salvaging what they could from the old one. Many of the dwellings are made of discarded vinyl billboards advertising goods their occupants can only dream of affording: diamond rings, luxury cars, expensive perfumes, fresh fish and blockbuster films.

Goats wander the loose gravel lanes between the tightly packed tents, but they are kept mainly for milk, not meat.

Many of the camp residents work as farm or construction labourers for just a few dollars a day. Having just spent money on setting up home in their new camp, few have any surplus for luxury and celebration during the holy month.

“Here, if I have money I can’t spend it all on food for Ramadan. I have to keep some money on the side in case one of my children gets sick or we have another emergency,” says Mohammed, 27, a refugee from Homs who lives in the camp with his wife and two children.

“In Syria we used to spend all the money we had, we didn’t care. But here we have to think.” Nor does Ramadan in Lebanon inspire the same feelings.

“In Syria, you would feel the happiness of this month by being together with your family,” says Mohammed.

“At Eid, you would go out and buy new clothes for the children. We don’t have this feeling here. It’s different.

“You’re outside of your country. And now we have the pressure of the government on top of all the suffering we’re already going through.”

There is little hope that the situation will improve and the economic outlook is worsening for the refugees. They have mounting debts but increasingly less work. Already there are rumours that the government will evict them from their new settlement.

Ahmed, a local leader, does not believe the rumours but holds little hope for the future of those he watches over.

From a small, fly- infested shop stocked with basic necessities, Ahmed supplies the camp’s residents on credit. He says the average family runs up a bill of US$200 (Dh734) a month, but many are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their debts, so he is forced to stop selling to them.

Like other men in the camp, Ahmed can be seen smoking in the day and he is not fasting this Ramadan. Some have given up because of their long hours of physical toil. Others, like Ahmed, have simply given up, defeated by life as a refugee.

“I don’t fast. I don’t care,” says Ahmed.

“I really respect Syrians who fast in Lebanon given how bad the situation is. Every year it gets harder and harder. As long as it goes on, it’s going to get harder.”