Photographers
Nawara Mahfoud
Old family photos depict the happiness that filled the first year of
my life. The photos stopped, when my father was forced into hiding for
political reasons. Years passed before I realized the reason for his
absence. My memories of the following years were shrouded in
uncertainty.
My memories about that time come from the stories of others, my own
recollections, and the words of those close to my father. Every time I
saw him, he was living a different life under a different name. Once
he was selling vegetables, and another time he was a scholar on the
verge of losing his mind. In one city his name was Abu Ziad, and Abu
Ali in another. My mother and I saw him only secretly and for a few
hours, wherever he was hiding at the time.
At the age of four, my parents were both imprisoned within three
months of each other. I spent the next four years moving between the
homes of my paternal and maternal grandparents. They were quarrelling
households with nothing in common, except their love for me and their
broken hearts over the absence of my parents. I waited without a sense
of belonging or identity.
I lived in a world of dreams, part of my dream came true when my
mother was released from prison four years later. I still remember
waiting for her outside the bathroom door, terrified that she would
leave me again. I refused to go anywhere without her for a long time.
My mother re-established a home and a sense of belonging for me.
Though I continued my studies, I went with my mother to visit my
father in prison at the end of every month, giving him a dream to live
for, and then being separated once more.
The years passed and I was always alone, because my mother worked day
and night to support us. My father was not only a man, but also both a
cause and a dream. I knew him from the nostalgic words of others and a
few letters snuck out of the prison.
Incarcerated, apart from us and surrounded by his fellow inmates, he
became very sick. I felt deeply helpless, convinced there was no way
out.
I knew my father in person for the first time when I was eighteen,
during my first year of university. One morning I woke up, startled at
the sound of his voice answering the phone. In my imagination, my
father was immortal. When gods and dreams descend to reality, they
die. On that day, the god in him died, and was replaced by a father
and friend.
I changed totally, and was no longer a dreaming young woman. I
descended to the realm of reality and possibility. Making my way
forward with apprehension, I began to search for a new future. Now, I
have completed my studies in English Literature and look forward to
the opportunities life holds for me.
Nawara Mahfoud
Read Nawara's Essay here
Sanaa Abdul Jabar
The school girls of my childhood looked so beautiful in their chadors, which were bright with lively, shining colors. They resembled butterflies wandering through the streets of Karbala'a.
When I was young, I could not wear traditional garb as my father was not religious so he refused to let his girls cover. I lived differently from others, longing to touch the vivid wings of those butterflies. My views and ideas changed when my father took me to the place where he practiced his political work. I began to see and hear things that were different from the atmosphere I had previously known in my city. It was uplifting to meet so many amazing people filled with such confidence and strength.
I believed that in such an environment I could achieve anything I wanted. Happiness did not last very long. My dreams crashed once the government began a series of political arrests. From that point on, my childhood was crowned with pain, fear and oppression.
My fear grew when my parents separated, and my father left Karbala'a to escape the pursuit of the security forces. I found refuge only in the pencil and the small pad of paper with which I began to draw my future and my dreams. Years passed and I left Karbala'a to study painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Baghdad University, where I met people from different religions and ethnic groups. My life with them was great.
Yet things deteriorated again once the reckless Iraqi government drove us to war against Iran. I was forced to return to Karbala'a, where I faced miserable isolation. I married and lived a wretched, love-less life. My personality was suppressed. People only saw me as an extension of my husband. I felt like I was only a machine used for birth, another's pleasure, or even as a rubbish bin.
I lived a married life, but did not know what marriage really was. I never knew affection or mercy, and I could not find a way out. After the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein, hope started to circulate through my body once again. Political parties returned to Iraq, and with them the savior of my childhood: the party that again embraced me with tenderness.
This new openness played an important role in my eventual decision to divorce my husband and break out of the cage that my marriage had become.
Sanaa Abdul Jabar
Read Sanaa's Essay here
Azah Makhlouf
I vividly remember the feeling of my father's fingers when he used to
catch my small hand and hold it with love. I can picture sleeping with
my twin sister in the arms of my grandmother, a woman who always
treated our dreams with love and tenderness.
Although most of my memories are happy, there were sad times too. The
most painful moment of my life was when I returned from school one day
to see that black was spread throughout our house. That morning before
I went to school, I had said goodbye to my twenty-seven year old
cousin, pain was clearly hidden behind his small smile. He died before
I came back.
I did not go to his funeral, neither did I go to the funeral of my
aunt who died of grief for him. I overcame my sadness with the help of
a spiritual father from my church. My life went back to normal again,
but I became very aware of death and life.
I continued my life in a religious environment full of prayers,
religious meetings, choir rehearsals and performances. My friend's
nicknamed me "hermit crab" because they thought I was too innocent; I
could not join in naughty teenage conversations, my face would turn
bright red.
Read Azah's Essay here
Khayria Sulayman
My older brother almost went to Turkey to study medicine, but he decided to stay to take care of my family, as my mother had passed away and my father had abandoned us for his new wife. My brother forced isolation upon us and prevented us from socializing with other people. Our only time out of the house was going to and from school.
When I was 16 years old, I married a man who was 12 years older than me. He is humble and belongs to a conservative and religiously extreme family. My husband and I moved into his family's house in a distant northern part of Syria. I had to leave my family, my friends and Damascus.
For six years my husband could not find a job that paid enough for us to buy our own house. As a result, we returned to Damascus. I taught my children and let them continue their education. I supported my husband and he supported me in what I wanted to do.
Khayria Sulayman
Read Khayria's Essay here
Lobna Sharif
I have loved praying since I was a child. My prayer is not just a religious exercise, but also a time when I enter a state of ethereal and spiritual bliss. Prayer has been especially important for me when some people put me down because I am a woman and a divorcee.
Since I was a teenager, I have lived in a sea of contradictions. I have tried to live as a religious women but the religious mask that parts of society wear to hide their true nature, creates illusions that confuse me and make it difficult to find the right path. I was always afraid of committing mistakes, as most of the people around me insist that I be religious in appearances but do not care about what is going on inside.
The restrictions imposed on me were like shackles. When I broke free and requested a divorce, I felt like I had been expelled from society. Prejudice took me far away from the religion I love.
The pathetic looks and stagnant views from those around me made me lose my self-confidence and my self-esteem. I was always defending myself. I have lived for three years in a society that I feel is trying to drown me. Each time I tried to work, love and be happy, my feelings conflicted with intense sadness and fear.
When I pray and speak to God, I believe he listens to my whispers without accusing me or becoming bored with me. He has the capacity to help and listen at all times. He makes me feel loved and safe. I think that love is God's blissful gift to humanity.
I believe that a person's humanity is her soul, mind and body. She must take care of them in order to achieve balance.
Lobna Sharif, Peace
Read Lobna's Essay here
Malak Qadbeh
The last moment of my mother's life was in a small hospital in Damascus. I washed her face and hands, I touched her hair and kissed her, thinking that she would remain alive.
She left us at the age of
38. She was like an olive tree - her heart and mind were limitless. I
could not accept what happened, and I did not know where to go with my
brothers. My memory of her stayed in my heart as a lighthouse urging
me to find my way.
The slow passage of time after her death was depressing and horrible.
Our family overcame some problems but could not deal with others.
A year and a half later, my father remarried. Problems increased, and
our house changed into a discordant, noisy place. My sisters got
married, though I persisted in my studies and received my masters
degree. However, I always tried to seek a balanced life. I worked in
many places including a publishing house. I met new friends, and I
stressed that life should be lived happily, with balance and harmony.
I now work as a guidance counselor and have found meaning in my life.
Everything that I have experienced has brought me to a place where I
am finally myself. Many people find themselves through religion, but I
found myself through my work.
Malak Qadbeh
Read Malak's Essay here
Saber Hasko 
Growing up, I often went to the Syrian-Turkish border near my Kurdish
village. The border was lined with wires and guard towers. It divided
the land unnaturally and was considered a dangerous place for
children.
I grew up in a diverse neighborhood, where Arabs, Kurds and Armenians,
Muslims and Christians, lived together. We used to play and run
together in the neighborhood; the differences between people provoked
nothing in us except friendly curiosity.
When I was twelve, we moved to a new house in an almost deserted
neighborhood in the suburbs. In response, I retreated into myself and
began to read books - books that ultimately changed who I was. The
more I read, the further I drifted into isolation, eagerly absorbed in
my reading.
My opinions and ideas changed with every book I read. This rapid
change and the swirling ideas in my mind made me a skeptical person. I
looked critically at everyone, from myself to God.
Land and borders,
humanity and religion, are words that occupy everyone's vocabulary,
yet the perceptions of and explanations for these concepts are
drastically different.
All of these different explanations heightened my awareness and I
began to wonder about the relationships between a number of pairs of
words: the general and the specific, the whole and its parts, the
permanent and the temporary, fear and security. I am still wondering.
Khadija Al-Saadi 
I was driven out of my Iraqi homeland in late 1978. I fled first to
northern Iraq, and then to Iran. I crossed borders, mountains, and
valleys on foot, and riding horses and donkeys.
Yet, I could not live in Iran because the religious fanaticism was
unbearable. Consequently, I headed to Syria.I was self-sufficient in nearly every way.
My sole brother was
executed in 1983, and both my younger sister and her son died violent
and senseless deaths, caught up in the events of election day in Iraq
on January 30, 2005.
Even so, today I feel at peace. A sense of joy envelops me and I am
optimistic about the future.
I read books about pedagogy and
philosophy, as well as academic studies of religion and human freedom.
Even though I am disillusioned with politics, I still believe in
dialogue.
I come from a shiite family of laborers from Karbala. This is what
motivates me to defend workers rights and work for the good of
humanity. I love journalism and writing because it enables me to serve
those less fortunate.
Religion is not an obstacle for me, since I have been able to
distinguish between true and false aspects of religion. I embrace all
religions, and often repeat this phrase to myself:
"All the knowledge
I have gathered about religion has created a beautiful bouquet of
flowers for me to hold."
Khadija Al-Saadi
Mona Swied
The little girl became happy when she saw a white line in the blue
sky. The girl then realized that this wisp was the smoke of a fighter
plane whose sound had scared her and made the window of her old house
shake. This two year old girl was me, living in Lebanon in 1982 - a
place and time filled with scenes of people fleeing in fear.
My father died when I was a year old. I found temporary security in my
grandfather's house in Lebanon, away from my family in Damascus.
I spent five years living in the midst of the Lebanese civil war,
belonging to three countries at once: Lebanon, my mother's homeland,
Syria, the refuge of my mother and two brothers, and Palestine, the
home of my ancestors, a land geographically close and yet very removed
from my life.
I have so many scenes of fear and anxiety stored in my mind. I can
still see the concern in my grandmother's eyes when her sons left for
the war that was crushing Lebanon. Days passed before she could be
reassured that her sons were safe.
I remember the expression on my
mother's face while moving her three children between Lebanon and
Damascus. She wanted a place where she could work, take care of her
children, and give them reasons to live.
I remember the nightly
discussions of a family whose members all belonged to the world of
politics - discussions about the meaning of victory and defeat, our
right to fight injustice and build a world of our dreams, and about
the distant homeland - the place that was snatched from me before I
had seen it or had played with its soil, as I longed to do in my
childhood.
I chose to study journalism as a means of translating the events,
people and ideas of those days into words. There is so much to say
about this region - its pains, its people and their suffering, its
wars and occupations, the poverty that stretches to men, women and
children, and the young generation whose hearts burn with dreams.
There is much to be done to eradicate ignorance, disguised as customs
and traditions, that constrains free thought and alienates people from
each other. This ignorance makes everybody fear each other, even
though we all share the same earth.
I still feel happy when I see the white color fading on paper as I
record my dreams about a world that has more justice and less bullets
pointed at my people. I still dream of this region full of white, a
white that demolishes the traces of the fighting plane. The white of
my grandfather's scarf in which I buried myself to hide from the sound
of the plane.
Mona Swied
Fadi Aho 
Since childhood, the source of my problems has been bad customs and
traditions.
as a teenager, I became more aware that the people around me wear
masks. My questions multiplied, but the answers was unsatisfactory and
limited.
As I sought answers, the society of the church was not enough for me.
My relations with my diverse friends matured, we exchanged views and I
developed a new state of openness and critical thought, and an
increased acceptance of others.
During this period, I lived with Kurdish friends, who became later my
best friends. Together we broke many of our bad social restrictions
and evolved in a rich and diverse city like Qamishli
I finished high school and moved to Damascus to study English
literature.
Damascus is a vast city with a myriad of people and opportunities. These things helped me break the walls around me. I
acquired valuable experience and made acquaintances that I used in my
work in journalism and civil society.
Fadi Aho
Mirvat Adwan
Life is bitter when fear motivates you. I was consumed with fear when
I imagined myself confined to an isolated village, removed from the
world in which I yearned to live.
As children, we were all afraid of going into the village's Druzi
shrine, the teachers told us inside there was an ogre who ate little
children. I imagined the ogre was totally green. It made me want to
believe there had to be a better world outside my small village. I
became determined to get rid of the monster of fear that haunted me.
When I was still a child, I learnt the hardship of labor behind a
sewing machine. I hated my reality as a woman. My father refused to
let me go to school. I felt enormous cold hands restricting me.
My most important challenge was to continue my studies. Without my
father's knowledge, I broke free, and spent 4 hours everyday traveling
to and from Damascus to attend university classes.
Despite my fear, I was strengthened by my determination and my faith
in education. Education was the one thing that could give me a better
and broader understanding of life and knowledge.
In the face of my fears. I took a fast confused leap and moved to the
suburbs of the large, strange and terrifying Damascus, a large city I
knew nothing of. Coming to Damascus, I again found the monster of fear
that I had wanted to escape so much.
People cannot understand each other because they are ignorant about
each other's situations. Civil society institutions help bridge this
gap and solve a big part of this problem. I hope one day understanding
will prevail and love will triumph.
Mirvat Adwan
Eugenie Dolberg, Photographer
M/ +44 7956 998 474
H/ +44 208 940 4106
9b Adelaide Rd, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1XW