“How do you feel today?” This was the seemingly simple question posed to me and a group of other women from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine who have been spending the last week together outside our home countries – mine is Syria – reflecting on topics like our work, peace, and how they intersect.
After nearly a year of war in Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, and recent events including the July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, last week’s deadly pager bombings, and now Israel’s bombings in Lebanon, it wasn’t – and still isn’t – an easy question to answer.
Telling the truth brought tears to my eyes. “I feel like I am trapped in a cycle of instability, fear, and an absence of hope,” I said. “Like so many other people in the Middle East, I am anxious all day every day, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I feel like I am constantly carrying the burden of all the people and things we have lost.”
For months now, I have been afraid that a wider regional war is going to break out. There are times when tensions seem to calm a bit, but then something happens and they flare up again. Last week, the killings in Lebanon of at least 37 people – and injuring of thousands – using remotely detonated radios and pagers in attacks targeted at Hezbollah, aggravated it all once again. Then Israel began bombing Lebanon, Hezbollah fired rockets deeper into Israel than ever before, and the big war that everyone has been dreading never seemed closer.
But in many ways not much has changed. I have been living with this fear for a long time; the fear that everything is about to erupt. After all, war broke out in Syria 13 years ago, and sometimes it feels like it is all I have ever known.
‘Everything has deteriorated’
I am now back in Damascus, where I have lived my whole life. When people ask me about the years before the uprising started in 2011, it’s sometimes hard for me to remember. It’s difficult to look back at what life looked like when I was a university student, just having a regular life – going to work, hanging out with friends, and planning for the future.
During the early years of the war, there was such brutality in Damascus. We lived under constant pressure almost every day – under shelling, under bombs. Death was everywhere, and my mind was occupied with how to keep my family safe, and how to stay alive.
The fighting had mostly stopped in the part of Damascus where my home is by the middle of 2018, and I hoped we might be entering a new phase of stability. In other parts of the country that isn’t the case even today, and the war is still raging. There are clashes between various parties, including the government and opposition forces, and in northwest Syria 3.4 million people are internally displaced and some 800,000 still live in tents.
But in many ways, what came next was more difficult than war. Over the past few years, everything has deteriorated: Destruction caused by the war, COVID-19, the revolution and economic collapse in neighbouring Lebanon, and Western sanctions have all had a negative impact on the economy.
Before 2011, one US dollar was worth 50 Syrian pounds. Now, inflation is so bad that it is worth around 15,000, and prices are constantly rising. Poverty is a major problem, too. While circumstances vary across the country, the overall poverty rate is 90%.
Trying to push on through
Compounding all this is the constant feeling that a new war might break out in Syria, and the entire region.
But I have still tried to get on with life. That’s a big part of my job as a journalist: I don’t report directly on war or politics – I mostly focus on cultural, social, and environmental issues. Like everywhere, people in Syria are always trying to find new ways to cope with an extremely difficult situation, and build some sense of normalcy. That’s what I love to report on: craftspeople creating new work; artists and musicians persisting; and how farmers are coping with the dual impacts of war and climate change.
But the truth is, despite so many people’s attempts to push on through, nothing here ever feels stable.
Last month, I was in my room, reading and listening to music, when everything started to shake. It turned out to be an earthquake near Hama – a city 200 kilometres north of Damascus – that injured dozens of people. That moment was terrifying – lots of people ran out of their homes because of what had happened in February 2023 when a massive earthquake hit southern Türkiye and northern Syria, killing nearly 60,000 people. Many of the victims died when their houses collapsed on top of them.
“Sometimes I think the rest of the world looks at us, in the Middle East, like we are second class citizens; like they are more human than us, or their lives are more important than ours.”
It felt like some sort of breaking point. Ever since the killing of Haniyeh, we had been waiting for war to erupt. Adding an earthquake to all this was almost too much to handle. Now, with both Israel and Hezbollah threatening to increase their attacks and the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon saying the region is “on the brink of an imminent catastrophe,” I am so scared about what’s next.
I’m also heartbroken about what I believe is a genocide in Gaza. In addition to so many deaths, Israel’s bombing and fighting has wounded almost 100,000 people since last October. Many are children. There have been countless other terrible losses: kids who can’t get enough food or an education; diseases spreading among people forced to flee their homes; pregnant women who can’t deliver their babies safely.
Sometimes I think the rest of the world looks at us, in the Middle East, like we are second class citizens; like they are more human than us, or their lives are more important than ours.
But we – in places like Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq – have our own rich lives, our own rich histories. We have dreams. We have hopes for the future. I don’t know if anyone has an answer for what’s happening in the Middle East, where we have been through so many wars, deaths, and displacements. Millions of lives have been changed forever, for the worse. I do know that we are tired, and we deserve to have normal lives. Everyone on the planet deserves that.
Lives on hold
A few weeks ago, my friend Maribelle, who lives in Aleppo, wrote this on Facebook: “Most people get tired of waiting for things like doctor’s appointments, emails about jobs applications, or even a message from their crush. For us in the Middle East, it’s a bit different. We are used to waiting for electricity, or for the official text for a few litres of petrol for our cars (in government-controlled parts of Syria, we get an SMS that alerts us of our turn for subsidised fuel). Now we have to get used to waiting for a bombardment, a military attack, or another earthquake?”
She’s right. We are always waiting for bombs and wars. It is ugly, and it has put so much on hold. Whenever someone asks me about my plans for the next month, or suggests we meet up in a few months, I reply: “Let’s just stay alive.” We just don’t know if something is going to happen, or if we will have a way out of the country, if the worst comes to pass.
There haven’t been international flights to most places out of Syria for more than a decade, mostly because of Western sanctions. Major airlines stopped flying to the country. That means people who live in government-controlled parts of Syria, who have passports and can travel, depend on Beirut airport. People in the north need permits to leave the borders, but those are difficult to get. Many try to use expensive and dangerous smuggling routes instead.
To travel abroad, people first must go to Beirut (and sometimes Amman), either by road or a flight from Damascus. So with all the worry about what will happen in Lebanon, we are also concerned that if Israel bombs Beirut or the airport, we will lose our only gateway to the outside world. This was a real concern for me over the weekend, as I tried to get back home while Israel dropped bombs on Lebanon.
As the violence and the death tolls escalated, my connecting flights on the way back to Damascus were cancelled, and I spent several tense days – alongside a Lebanese woman who had been with me at a week-long retreat – trying to find a way home. I didn’t sleep, thinking that somehow it would be worse to be stuck outside Syria, away from my family, when the war begins. That’s my worst nightmare; worse than being stuck in another war. Thank God I’m home now.
Talking about war
Everyone around me talks about the war, and what’s next, which just adds to the stress. In the first few days after the killing of Haniyeh, and now again after the bombings in Lebanon, people said to each other: “If there is a war tomorrow, what will we do? Do we stay home? Go to work?” Sometimes we turn it into a dark joke, but it’s not really funny.
I recently went to the dentist for a check-up. Lately, I have been grinding my teeth at night, and so, about a year ago, I started wearing a guard at night. I told the dentist that it feels a bit strange. He told me lots of his patients have come in asking for similar mouth guards. “I think almost all of the Syrian people are grinding their teeth at night, because of the tension of everything we’re living through,” he said.
“Every single day I ask myself: ‘Should I stay in Syria, or should I leave?’ I am lucky that I can make this choice – 5.4 million Syrians had to flee the country and become refugees, another 6.8 million are internally displaced.”
Local news reported last February that Syria has a high rate of psychological conditions, especially anxiety and depression. For those who require specialised care, the country has an acute lack of psychiatrists. Suicide rates are reportedly rising.
So how do I cope? I talk to people and spend time with friends, which is like therapy for me. I love walking. Sometimes I just drive for a long time, listening to music and thinking. My work is good therapy for me too. I really love it, and when I listen to inspirational Syrians tell their stories, I think we might have a chance at a decent future.
But I’m never sure. Every single day I ask myself: “Should I stay in Syria, or should I leave?” I am lucky that I can make this choice – 5.4 million Syrians had to flee the country and become refugees, another 6.8 million are internally displaced.
But it’s still not an easy question. In many ways, I love my life here. I don’t feel alone when I’m in Syria. But daily life is becoming so hard and all-consuming. I spend so much time on trivial things like getting electricity, filling up my car, not to mention the more serious things, like worrying about the next war. It’s exhausting.
I don’t really know where I would go if I left. To Lebanon? It’s not exactly calm there. And it feels like most of the world doesn’t want Syrians anyway. There’s an Arabic proverb that says, “My water here hasn’t dried up, so I still have a reason to stay.”
So I’m still here, staying and hoping that someday I – and millions of Syrians like me – will get to live a normal life.
This story follows Zeina’s First Person podcast on 29 August: In Syria, waiting for war. Listen here:
If you are dealing with a mental health crisis, click here to find a suicide helpline near you (via the International Association for Suicide Prevention).
Edited by Annie Slemrod.
