I come from al-Quassayr’s countryside, from a village called al-Burhanya. I arrived to Lebanon on the 21st of May 2014, oh 2013, sorry, I forgot. I came to Lebanon pregnant. I wanted to give birth to my child away from war and destruction.
My daughter Zeina was born in Lebanon while I was in the camp. They took me to al-Rahmah hospital where I delivered the child. Nobody examined her there when she first came into the world. However when we came back to the camp I noticed that she started showing some strange symptoms. Her feet were turning blue. They told me it was either liver failure or an enlarged heart. I took her to Arsal. We asked a doctor for a prognosis and he said she had an enlarged heart due to the toxic gases I had inhaled back in Syria. It was the poison that infiltrated me from the bombings and shelling, and the air strikes I had witnessed. Zeina passed away after 2 months. These 2 months I had spent taking her from one doctor to another trying to find a cure for her.
I lost my daughter after knowing her for 2 months and I lost my husband when I was 5 months pregnant. We had had a small mini market in al-Burhanya that we were running. When the incidents began, and the regime’s strikes on the countryside of al-Quassayr came along, I asked my husband to leave but he refused. After I had been pregnant for 4 months I asked him again to leave, and once more he said no. He suggested that I should go before him to my family who had migrated to Lebanon. He promised to follow me after he had sold the mini market and the herd, and I agreed. I found out later that he, his cousin, and even the lamb we owned died. People were trying to hide the news from me in fear of what could happen to me, since I was pregnant, but I found out eventually. I lost everything: my home, my husband, and my grocery store.
The Free Syrian Army was in charge of smuggling people across the border and they arranged for the truck that took us to Arsal. We were around 200 people in that truck; stacked on top of one another, piled on top of each other. No seats to sit on. One person would throw up on someone else. I came over with my husband’s relatives and some other people from the towns around us. Some people were paralyzed, others in wheelchairs. I do not know how to express it. It was as if they came in all shapes and colors. From al-Burhanya, I went to another town called al-Husseinya. Then I moved to Hassya and from there to Arsal. When I was there I called my relatives in Batlya near Baalbek where they were staying with my brother. I went to see them and stayed there for about 2 months. In the end we all moved to al-Faour.
I ask today for this humiliation to end and a possibility to go back to Syria. I would even take this very tent and set it up there. At least there, nobody can tell me to leave one place and send me to another since it would be my own land.
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