Life For Syria's Refugees Is Getting Bleak

For Syrians Escaping War, A Muddy Lebanese Potato Field Will Have To Do For Refuge -- McClatchy News

HALBA, Lebanon — The winter rain was pouring down one day this week and it was bitterly cold in the muddy field, but that didn’t stop work for the man who called himself Abu Jassim.

Even as the icy rain pelted him, Abu Jassim pounded nails into boards that he’d pulled from discarded packing crates. He fashioned them into a frame. Then he stretched castoff vinyl banners whose previous purpose had been to advertise a wide range of products across the boards to make a crude shelter. To an onlooker, it was a brutal task whose completion would provide hardly any shelter at all. To Abu Jassim, a refugee from a town near the war-torn city of Aleppo, it offered a little bit of hope that he soon would be able to save his family from Syria’s carnage.

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My Comment: If I was living in a country that was being torn apart by a sectarian war .... I would have left a long time ago. While I never lived as a refugee .... my mother did. She and her family (my grandparents, uncle and two aunts) lived in a cave in the winter of 1942-43 outside of Vyazma, Russia during the German invasion. To her .... being hungry and cold (but safe) was preferable than living in the city. My grandparents did the right move .... Vyazma's population before the war was about 60,000 .... when the Nazis retreated in 1943 only 700 survived .... my mother, uncle and two aunts being 4 of the 700. As for my grandparents .... that is the only thing that my mother never talks about .... but I do know that they are buried in a massive common grave that holds thousands.

Sighhh .... for these Syrian refugees who are living in a muddy Lebanese potato field .... if my mom's experience is any indication .... I would have to say that it is far more preferable than living in the middle of the killing fields of Syria.