This blog has been written at my request by my friend, Keren Roper Willmon. Keren grow up in Jordan as the daughter of missionary doctor, John Roper. Recently she spent several weeks in Jordan, participating in ministries to Syrian refugees, some of the thousands who are living in Jordan outside of the UN camps. Some of these had been in a camp but found life there so degrading that they left to try to survive on their own. Keren spent her time visiting the refugees, sharing material things they needed, teaching and playing with the children and listening. She tells us three stories which she finds to be examples of the many she heard.
The faces are different but their stories are hauntingly the same. Stories of war. Stories of fleeing. Stories of waiting on the border. Stories of desperation. Stories of life now as a refugee. Stories of lost hope. This past month, as I sat on the floor in their homes drinking tea and coffee with Syrian refugees, I listened to the stories they shared.
Abu Ibrahim
His salt and pepper hair makes him seem much older than his 33 years. His five children are gathered around me, eager to learn by copying the alphabet and coloring pictures with the supplies I brought. In the modest one room home with plaster peeling off the ceiling and cracks in the wall, he tells his story.
“In Syria I had a good life. I had a good job with the government. I had my own car and was a driver on weekends. My girls are very smart and they learned 3 languages in school. We lived in Homs and the situation became very bad. They murdered children in the school and people were being beheaded, so I hid my children at home. People were leaving, but we had no passports. I knew that the government would be suspicious if I went in and applied for 7 passports so I waited and got one every two months. We did not know who to trust. I heard that ISIS would demand that I join or they would rape my wife and take my oldest daughter so I knew it was time to leave. The night we left, they set our house on fire and we had to run, leaving everything behind. We saw dead bodies everywhere, and the streets ran red with blood.
We wanted to go to Turkey because my brother was there, but the border was closed. We walked with a group headed to the Jordanian border. His wife shows me her bare hand and arm and points to her ears as he tells us that they had to sell all her gold (her dowry) to buy food and get to Jordan. We heard bad things about the refugee camps but we had no place to go. It took us a month to get to Jordan.
We have been here a year now. Someone told us about the church in Mufraq. They helped us find this room. I do work for the lady who owns the home in exchange for rent. The church gave us these mufrages (couch/mattresses) and Primus heater to cook on and clothes for the children. They have a sewing room, so my wife is able to make covers to sell to make money. I am a strong man so I can pick olives and paint houses but I have to do this quietly. So far I have not been arrested. (It is illegal in Jordan for Syrian men to be employed).
We are better off than many, but we have no family here. We do not know where our family is anymore. The children go to school in the afternoon for 2 hours, but it is not like it was in Syria-they have no books. Many days they clean the building for the Jordanian children the next day. When she turns 12 next year, my daughter will not be able to go to school. There is no future here. We have not applied for immigration because no one wants us. Maybe we will go to Germany if we cannot go home to Syria. It is all in Allah’s hands.”
Hamda
Her three small children are crawling dangerously close to the Primus stove where she is heating tea to serve to her guests. One child already bears the scars of hot tea accidently poured on her by an older sister, but there is nowhere to play in the one room that serves as the living room, bedroom and kitchen. The energetic outgoing 24 year old eagerly greets her guests, her mother, younger sister, sister-in law, neighbor and four American women. The next two hours are spent talking, laughing, crocheting, drinking tea and sharing stories.
Although outwardly she appears happy, in her eyes you can see the sadness and longing for the life she once had. A newly wed with a baby and another one on the way. A new home close to her family and a handsome husband with a decent job. But then the war came. The planes, the bombs, the killings, the fear of ISIS. Her mother and brothers had already left for Jordan, so this young family decided to flee for safety. In the dark, as they were running, her husband fell in a dry well injuring his back.
They found a ride on the back of a bumpy truck to the Jordanian border, but when they got there it was closed. For three months, they lived under a tree waiting for the border to open. The only food they had were the leftovers the border guards would sometimes share with them. Many days they went without food and she could no longer nurse her baby. Then they heard the border between Iraq and Jordan was open so they began the weeklong trek through the desert, only to find that it too was closed. She went into premature labor and her second daughter was born under a tree at the border, weighing 1.5 kilos. She had not eaten in 3 days and had no milk to feed the infant. Due to the critical condition of the infant and her husband’s back, the family was finally taken to the military hospital in Jordan.
From there they went to the Refugee Camp outside of Mufraq. They finally had a tent to live in and food to eat, but the conditions were unbearable with 2 babies and the harsh winter so after a year they left the camp and moved to the outskirts of the city near her mother. They found one room to rent in the back of a partially constructed home. Her husband was told he could never work again due to his back, yet he is determined to support his young family. Today, he was in another town picking olives for harvest. He has already been arrested twice for working. He will be put in prison if he is arrested again. She constantly worries for his health and what will happen to their family that now consists of 3 children under 3.
She gratefully accepts the fruits and vegetables, dolls and toys, blankets and hats brought by the Americans, but generously shares her gifts with her family and neighbors who are there. During the visit, a planes flies over and you can see the fear in their faces as the mother and children duck for cover. As she cradles them close, you see the resilient spirit of a family who have experienced unspeakable horrors of war yet are determined to make a new life.
Um Saleem
The woman neatly dressed in black covering everything but her face, fights back tears as she share her story. With her last dinar, she has taken the bus to the Community Center with her two youngest children to plea for help in what seems a hopeless situation.
She begins by telling that she lived in Damascus, a beautiful city. Her husband had a high paying job but was put in prison during the war and was beaten to the point he no longer has use of his arm. Fearful for the lives of his family, he paid a taxi driver to take them to Jordan with promises to follow after he was out of prison. The family was robbed and she was left on the side of the road with her 3 sons and a daughter.
The Christian workers call her a “woman of peace” because she has responded eagerly to the message of Jesus. She turned to the church for help when she arrived in Jordan. A family offered them free housing in a nearby city. However, this area is known as the drug capital and the situation has been unbearable for the family. The two older boys without a father’s influence are beginning to hang around the bad crowd she fears they may be using drugs. The nearest school is 2 miles away so the younger children have to walk there and back. They are taunted by the Jordanian children. With the rainy season beginning, it will be even more difficult to make it to school. There is no church in the town and she wants her children to go to the Syrian Sunday School class. Even though the rent is free, she is having to sell her food vouchers to pay for the water each month. Many days all they have to eat is stale bread.
She is desperate to return to Mufraq for the safety of her children. She is willing to work to be able to provide for them but there are no jobs. She fled Syria for protection from the war, but now wonders if it would have better to die there than to continue to live like this in constant fear. She says, “I want my children to have a future but I have little hope.”
WHERE IS THE HOPE
Over and over again I heard the stories of these refugees who have escaped the war in desperation only to find they have been left without hope. One Syrian man looked into my face and said “We have No Hope. My children have no future. We have been forgotten. There is no hope.”
I don’t know what the answer is to this great humanitarian crisis, but what I do know is that each of these refugees I met are real people created in the image of God. He is the only one who can offer them the true hope they seek.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
I also know that the Jesus who I know, reached out to the tax collectors, Samaritans, prostitutes, lepers, and “the least of these” during His ministry, and today He would be right in the middle of these refugees offering them Hope and expects us to do the same. As the many pictures of this crisis flood the news, I urge you to look at refugees through the eyes of Jesus with love and compassion, not hatred or fear. Before you dismiss them as just Muslims or Arabs, take a minute to really listen to their stories and see them as human.
As I visited in their humble homes, they extended hospitality to me and offered me their best whether it was watered down tea or a feast of grape leaves. What are we offering them?
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in….Truly I say you to the extent you did it to one of my brothers of mine or even the least of them, you did it to me.” Matthew 25: 35 & 40