Home Away from Home
"I always heard the word refugee but I never imagined I would be one", says Samar Hariri, a grieving school teacher and mother of five. Samar, her husband and their children are just a handful of the 100,000 displaced Syrians who flocked to Camp Zaatari - just a few kilometres from the border with Syria - and who now call it home. Two years ago, collections of tents sat incongruously in the middle of this barren desert. Now a refugee city with a distinctive heart and soul of its own, a community of resilient, hopeful people looks set to grow ever more established. "You ask yourself, why is this happening to me? A person who always had dignity now has none". Once a prosperous, middle class family man, Abu Diaa now focuses on transforming their camp into something resembling home: an essential coping mechanism for enduring life in a refugee camp. It is an impulse Kilian Kleinschmidt, head of Zaatari Camp, understands: "When you lose everything... your home, your belongings, you have lost your identity. Everything has gone." In this deeply moving report we witness the stoicism of a family rebuilding themselves among thousands of others.
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