My latest piece is on the continuing influx of Iraqi Christians into Lebanon, this time with the Syriac community from Nineveh, who arrived last month. Excerpt: “What did Daesh take from you?” Nour Astifo asked his 3-year-old daughter Sandra, sitting in his lap. “My toys,” she replied. Astifo, a Syriac Catholic, was huddled with two other families from the community who all hail from Al-Hamdaniya, a village in Nineveh Province not far from Mosul, the city which fell to ISIS militants in June. They were gathered in a small room in a building in the northern Beirut suburb of Dikwaneh, where they took refuge last month from the ongoing turmoil in Iraq. Astifo’s tiny apartment is beyond modest, with no beds and just a straw mat to sleep on without protection from the concrete floor. His daughter’s toys are all borrowed, donated by Lebanese neighbors who took pity on a child who left her toys behind as she fled. Their family is one among thousands of Iraqis who have fled to Lebanon amid unending bloodshed in their homeland – primarily Christians who feared forced conversion and enslavement by Daesh forces, Arabic for ISIS. “When I was born there was the Iran war, then a war with Kuwait, then a siege, then the 2003 war and then sectarianism,” said Mazen Bulos, one of the Iraqi refugees living in an apartment in the building with four other family members. “Then bombings, murder, kidnappings, and now this year we have Daesh,” he added. “I swear since we have been born we haven’t had peace, from war to war.”
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 07:25:43 +0000
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