For Aglaia Haritz and Abdelaziz Zerrou, going to Beirut to meet Syrian women refugees made sense in 2015 to give another image of these women whose lives have been shattered by the war. They encountered women through the Syrian NGO based in Shalita Palestinian refugee camp Basmeh wa Zeitooneh, which means smile and olive in English.
There, an embroidery workshop was opened by the NGO at the beginning of 2014, when nearly 1.2 million Syrian people had sought shelter in their neighboring country Lebanon, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They were fleeing from war raging in their country since 2011, and more than half of them were women at the time. At the end of 2017, there were less than 100.000 refugees, data that is considered incomplete as many are unregistered in the country.
It is worth noting that Lebanon doesn’t recognize the 1951 convention concerning refugees and this status, preferring to call them “displaced”. It is due to their history with Palestinians, who ended up sheltering in Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that seized their land and houses. Today, they still can’t access the Lebanese nationality except if their father is Lebanese, are denied many jobs and mostly live in camps. Shatila is one of them. With the war in Syria, it started welcoming many Syrian refugees who were drown by cheaper prices of rent and life of this very poor neighborhood in Beirut. Most of these refugees are Syrian Palestinians, which make them even more vulnerable in times of conflict and in a country that generally despises Palestinians.
Women are the most vulnerable of all, especially when they have no man to protect them and their children anymore. Many of them face daily violence and rape, and initiatives such as the embroidery workshop helped them recover dignity, pride and independence through paid labor and, most of all, contact with other women and a steady activity.
I met these women a lot through the years, and it was indeed hard to consider them as victims. They often made me laugh and cry at the same time, making jokes on all circumstances, criticizing their men and at the same time realizing that things would never be as they knew before the war. Something that also noted Abdelaziz, who found them “very strong and nice”. “At the beginning only five women wanted to participate to the project”, Abdelaziz said. “They were afraid of being used. But we reached 17 pretty quickly, when they trusted us and saw we didn’t want to use them as circus monkeys. We just wanted to bring light on their situation and share it with the world, give them a voice, about what they have been through in Syria but also in Lebanon, where their situation is sometimes worse. These testimonies are for people and History.” They kept only the first names of the women to preserve their identity, and paid for their time and work.
With the Embroiders of Actuality’s project, Aglaia and Abdelaziz sensed in these women a strong sense of identity, as women, as Syrians, as Palestinians and also as exiled people. To exist and survive the present situation, these women needed to identify themselves with strong links to their past because they usually don’t have any identification document. They then spent time recording and taking pictures of the women during embroidery time, getting to know them better and make them express what they had on their mind. “With videos, we asked them their story and what they think of the situation”, Aglaia said. “It was a bit hard, I felt a bit like a voyeur, but it is too important to make people aware of what is going on through personal expression, that is the goal of this work. And when we showed it in Switzerland and Spain, people were really touched and interested, it sparkled deep discussions. I think art ‘s role is to direct the population’s gaze.”
They mixed the embroideries women had realized with contemporary pieces. Therefore, “Embroidered Identity” consists in portrait pictures drawn on fabric that the women embroidered, choosing colors and stitches that were able to describe their stories, opinions and fragility of life the best. “Naively, we asked them to bring passport pictures but not everybody had one so they brought selfies or old pictures that we transferred on fabric, adding then a stencil”, Aglaia explained. “They had to stitch their portrait. One of them didn’t want because she was from Sudan and didn’t think she was pretty. She had migrated to Syria and then had to flee again, her story was very strong and herself was beautiful. We ended up convincing them and they were happy with the result. I think it was a hard work because they had to focus on themselves, question themselves and work on their identity.”
The artists also printed on fabric an image made from a collage of destroyed Syrian houses’ pictures for “Piece of sky over Syria”, a big piece on which the women embroidered the sky on top of the collage. They were doing it all together, each of them with her own style, talking at the same time. Finally, the women could have their own personal story superposed with their drawings in “Pink Women”.
And they had tons of stories, anecdotes to share with the artists. Like Khalida, who told Abdelaziz that in her former place, when the Islamic State had taken over the area, they asked all the women to wear the niqab. Khalida was carrying water from the well, and a fighter asked her to cover her eyes as well. She then argued with him, fearless, to explain that she would fall if she couldn’t see. Of course, she told this story with laughter, as if all of it was a joke.
Art is often the best way I saw Syrian women and their stories depicted since I started reporting about them, as it allows sensitivity and poetry while avoiding sensationalism, while having the subjects being actors of their own representation. It is often a strong feeling for women in hard situations like them, who can feel for some time important and worth of attention, which they often lack in their daily life. Whatever might happen to them in the future, they will still have their personal print on pieces that will outlive them, making them look strong forever.
Florence Massena is a French freelance journalist covering women issues, environment, society and culture in Lebanon and the rest of the region.