Wanted: a safe place to call home
Mahmoud Ahmad Hwaidy, 37, is from Deir el Zour, the largest city in eastern Syria. Today he lives in Beirut, together with his wife Hannan and their five children.
The family rents an apartment and, despite being far away from their home in Syria, they have made the most with what they have. To make the place feel homely, they added their own sofas and carpets. The balcony is their sanctuary where they can relax, talk and enjoy time together as a family.
But on 4 August 2020, all that changed. The Beirut port explosion ripped through the apartment, destroying everything that they held dear. It was a stark reminder of what they had fled from in Syria.
Fleeing before the missile strikes
When Hannan and Mahmoud married, they purchased the house next door to her parents’ home and lived there for four happy years.
The war made it difficult for Mahmoud to earn an income for his family, so he moved to Lebanon to find work. Hannan stayed behind with their children. “I had lived there my whole life. It was very hard for me to leave,” she says.
But when active conflict arrived in her town, Hannan knew it was time to go. One night three years ago, carrying her three-year-old daughter, with her two infant twins on her back and her eldest daughter by her side, the young mother slipped away from the place she’d lived her entire life, and headed for the safety of Lebanon.
Her parents’ house and her marital home stood side by side. Two days later a missile strike destroyed them both.
Another home destroyed
Mahmoud was at a friend’s house when the explosion hit Beirut. He was thrown to the ground by the blast. When he recovered his senses, he rushed home to check on his family. His path was littered with destruction.
When he arrived, he found Hannan and his children on the ground covered in glass. “The windows and doors had been flung inwards at them,” he recalls.
“They were all injured, especially my wife. At that moment I thought that I would prefer to die than to see my children in that condition. I started crying when I saw my children covered in glass and blood.”
Hannan credits her experiences in the Syrian war with saving her life that day. Just before the explosion at the nearby port ripped through their apartment, Hannan heard a loud noise, that reminded her of the planes that had attacked her town in Syria.
Instinctively, she gathered her children who had been playing on the balcony, ran inside with them and used her own body to protect them as the shockwave hit seconds later.
“We heard the sound of planes and we remembered Syria, so we knew to run inside. This saved our lives.”
The home where the family had sought refuge was now ruined. The balcony, where the family spent so much of their time, was at risk of collapsing.
“It didn’t feel like a home after the explosion because the windows and the refrigerator were broken. We lost most of the furniture. The apartment was left almost empty, it was nothing like it was before,” recalls Hannan, sorrowfully.
Nestled on the second floor of a corner building in a dense residential neighbourhood, the damaged apartment gave the family virtually no privacy. “I couldn’t change my clothes or take off my headscarf,” recalls Hannan.
The children were scared
For her oldest children, who had witnessed so much trauma during their early years in Syria, the explosion affected them psychologically.
“We saw people running. My children were crying – it had been three years since they had seen such a thing. And now they were seeing it again,” says Hannan.
Hannan struggled to watch her children suffer. “When I saw my children in this state, I felt really angry and felt that I wanted to scream,” she says. “I stayed all night up looking at them worried that something might happen to them.”
“My five-year-old daughter is still affected by the explosion. She’s always alone and down, she’s always feeling scared whenever she hears any sound.”
“Our home is changing for the better”
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) set up emergency housing support following the explosion. Within just two months, we were able to repair the damage to the family’s home. We repaired the family’s much-loved balcony and replaced all the windows and doors.
“Now we feel safer and there’s more privacy,” says Hannan. “We’re more relaxed.”
She has also seen the impact that the repairs have had on her children. “The children keep closing and opening the doors because it is something novel for them! They say the apartment is very beautiful now.”
“My psychological state has changed from before. I dreamt of the windows being fixed and thankfully it has happened. Our home is changing for the better.”
