Baladi News – Yasser al-Atrash
Dressed in worn clothes, she stood staring at the different types of foods featured at the façade of “Mazaya” restaurant in Pakistan Street in the heart of Damascus. The poor woman seemed too tired and unable to buy what she desired. In the midst of that, a young man approaches her and asks: “what type of food do you wish to eat, ma’am?” Filled with doubt and distrust, she says, “I am just watching”, thinking that he was a waiter at the restaurant. He answers, “Wait a minute please”. Shortly after, he comes out of the restaurant carrying bags of foods and saying with a smile on his face, “Take them please, and feed yourself. Have a nice meal”
Such a story takes place every day and everywhere in Damascus city. However, in other areas, obtaining bread is a big dream. In Yarmouk camp, besieged by the Syrian regime forces, one has to risk their lives in order to get one loaf of bread a day. Since the other choice is starving to death, this deserves to run past the lurking sniper and feed yourself.
Damascus residents… Strangers in their own city
As if it were the owner of everything in the country, Assad’s regime has been assigning a district, town, or even a whole territory for anyone fighting for it, as Syrians are just the one defending the regime in the view point of its president. As such, Iranians, Russians, Afghans, and Hezbollah militants took control over the whole city of Damascus, and the regime did not conceal its desire to naturalize them.
A writer living inside Damascus, who refused to disclose her identity, said “Now Damascus lives in my house, as the damascene faces and dialect have become odd in our own city.”
As for the economic situations, the writer said “I have not eaten a single banana, orange, or apple for 6 months. That is not because I cannot afford to buy them, but because there are more important priorities”, indicating that having her teeth treated would cost her 300 thousand Syrian pounds.
She concluded, “In a besieged area in Damascus, people’s happiness was beyond any description when the daily portion of each person was raised to one and a half bread loaf a day.”
Damascus…the city of beggars
“Damascus became overcrowded with beggars of all ages. Most of the people have become needy. They are not lying. The city now deserves the title of “The world capital of beggars”,” these words were quoted from the writer of Palestinian origins, Marwan Darraj, who refused to leave Damascus despite all difficulties.
The writer describes two twelve or thirteen years old boys quarreling on a roadside in Damascus, meanwhile pedestrians were trying to stop the fight. After the fight ended, one of them said “I am begging because our house was demolished, my dad was killed, and my mom lost her leg, but you are a liar. Your family is safe and your house was not touched”
After witnessing this scene, the writer wondered astonishingly, “Is there more wretched childhood than this?”
The answer is yes…
In a street in the Turkish city, an adorable green-eyed and blonde-haired seven years old Syrian refugee girl stands confused in the middle of licorice syrup buckets, waiting for someone to buy any quantity in order to make her poor daddy happy with a couple of coins.