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Growing up, I have learned that the best journeys occur when I visit someone.
Even the encounter with Lebanon was like this, the first time was to visit the relatives of Syrian friends met in Italy, and then from the second time on it was a continuous greeting saying, "see you soon, inshallah", leaving with tears on my face for nostalgia of who I was saying goodbye and then return each time with a big smile hugging all those I previously had left.
Each time, more and more, and more and more often for four years.
This time it is different.
Each time it was a little bit, but this time I felt it inside me during the last days, before leaving.
The passage of time in recent years has shown me how people's lives go on, although I keep an eye on their daily lives depending on the period.
For some, things more or less remain unchanged, the "usual" life in the tent, with the "usual" work that comes and goes.
On others, god or destiny play yet another dirty trick, an unexpected illness, the death of a loved one, the beginning of a nightmare due to unjust persecution.

Finally we could afford to live in the house of our dreams.
The family house was located outside the center of Homs, large and spacious.
After years of hard work as a teacher, my husband had saved up enough money to renovate it.
I was glad, finally our children would have enough space to grow up happy.
I used to spend days with my sisters thinking about the furniture and the parties that we could have organized in that house.
The whole family would have been together, we would have all fitted in.
I still remember the marble countertop in the kitchen, it was shiny and new.
I could have kneaded bread and cooked all the food I wanted in that beautiful kitchen.
Everything was ready, all that was missing were the appliances, the beds and the upholstery.
I remember that long discussion with my husband.
That month he wanted to spend the money we had planned to spend on the furniture to buy a small car, as ours had suddenly broken down.
He insisted on spending the money for the car, I was angry because I wanted the washing machine, beds and carpets.
I wanted to move out as soon as possible.
After a long discussion, he won.
He had bought a car, small and ugly.
Every day I looked at it and it made me angry, that damn car had delayed the life I dreamed of in that house.
A few weeks later, that damn car became our home and our only way out.

 “A real Syrian hunt is underway” says Capannini, Project Manager for Lebanon.

“We express s the utmost concern over the recent events of racism against Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We ask that the international community intervene before the situation precipitates with even more serious violence and with the serious risk that it can spread to other cities ». This is what Giovanni Paolo Ramonda, President of the Pope John XXIII Community declares, regarding the expulsion of 1,400 Syrian refugees from the city of Bcharre, in northern Lebanon. An escalation that began last week, following the murder of a Lebanese citizen by a Syrian citizen, which led the municipality of Bcharre, under pressure from popular uprisings, to expel the entire Syrian community.

CURRENT SITUATION

SYRIA-LEBANON

In Syria, the Syrian Government attacked Idlib, thus interrupting the ceasefire which had started with the pandemic. No casualty has been reported so far. Syria is experiencing a harsh economic crisis, with extremely high inflation rates, which has been worsened by the pandemic, with non-official sources reporting a high and worrying rate of cases. Poverty is another enemy killing almost as much as war.
In Lebanon, the situation has been quite tense on different grounds throughout the whole month of September. On September 10th a second huge fire broke out in the port in Beirut. Firefighters could bring it under control in a few hours, but panic spread among the citizens, who are still shocked after the explosion on August 4th. A third fire broke out on September 15th in downtown Beirut. Moreover, in mid-September the Lebanese Army had to fight against a terrorist group in Beddawi, near the city of Tripoli.
A pervasive sense of uncertainty is haunting the Lebanese as well as the Syrians. A clear sign of this uncertainty is the increasing number of people who are boarding smugglers’ boats to reach Cyprus. Some of these boats were detected by the Lebanese Navy and UNIFIL, so people, both Syrians and Lebanese, were forced to go back to Lebanon.