Miret and I are in Syria now, checking in on the Iraqi refugee crisis. We were last here in June, when we met a tough-as-nails Iraqi freelance journalist named Rana.
At the time, Rana was doing better than a lot of other displaced Iraqis. She lived in a rented room in a sun-dappled villa in the lovely Old Quarter of Damascus. She did sporadic work with foreign journalists, so she had some income. She was even able to pursue her own stories and documentary film projects in other countries, returning to Syria with no problem. Rana was never unappreciative of her relatively good fortune and spent most of her free time either arranging for destitute Iraqis to get to Syria, or sending medical supplies from Syria to besieged communities in Iraq.
What a difference five months makes.
The Rana we found this week is broke, working odd jobs, in Syria illegally and crashing with some friends at a dismal Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Her most valuable possession is her laptop, which she keeps in a black backpack that has become an extension of her body. There is no place she feels is truly safe enough to leave her precious computer, especially not at the camp where she lives. She must carry it everwhere she goes -- it's her entire life bundled into one sturdy canvas bag.
Rana's most recent troubles started when she decided to go to Pakistan for a monthlong documentary project. She couldn't afford both rent in Damascus and cash for her work trip, so she had to give up her pretty room in the Old Quarter, hoping she'd find something comparable when she returned.
Instead, Rana returned to find that Syria's open door for Iraqis was inching shut. When she arrived at the Damascus airport, she said, the immigration officials threatened to deport her that very day on a plane bound for the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Shiite Muslims. Rana happens to be a Sunni from the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhemiya, a bastion of resistance to the U.S. and Iraqi administrations. Sending her to Basra would have been tantamount to sending her to the gallows. In a narrow escape, she paid a $50 bribe and was issued a one-week visa, which expired long ago. (She's since been told she was granted Syrian residency, but has yet to undergo the extensive vaccinations and medical checkups that are required before she actually receives her legal status.)
The next obstacle was housing. Her kind Syrian landlady told her she'd already rented Rana's old room. Strapped for cash and desperate to find a place fast, Rana accepted the invitation of some aid worker friends to crash at their place in the Palestinian camp, an overflowing and miserable enclave that is unspeakably depressing for Iraqi refugees, who fear the same future.
Then it was time to focus on money. Rana tracked down Western journalists who'd never paid her for the work she did. She accepted journalism assignments here and there, but it was still barely enough to make ends meet. As of today, she still had no steady job. A powerful documentary she co-produced about the lives of Iraqi civilians during a U.S. offensive on Fallujah will be screened at a film festival in Italy this month. Rana's been invited to attend and give a talk, but she doesn't dare risk leaving her Syrian sanctuary again.
Throughout this ordeal, Rana began to cling to her backback. It is never out of her sight, not even for a moment. She takes it to the grocery store, to the Internet cafe, to doctor's offices. When she's asked about the violence in Iraq, she unzips the bag and opens her laptop to give an impromptu slideshow, the war made portable.
There are files and files of photos of Iraqi suffering in towns such as Fallujah, Qaim and Haditha -- all volatile areas in Iraq's western Anbar province. She has pictures of the grisly aftermath of a suicide bombing, of forcibly displaced children washing themselves in filthy water, of haggard-looking Iraqis lining up at the Syrian border. Perhaps the most chilling is a photo from her own neighborhood in Adhemiya. It shows the corpse of a man jutting out from a trash dump, his arms bound behind his back.
Utility aside, however, the backpack is one heavy burden. Rana is obsessive about its whereabouts, always terrified she'll leave it behind in a taxi. Sometimes, visiting journalists treat her to meals at fancy Damascene restaurants. Rana dresses up in a nice blouse and a skirt, then ruins her outfit by strapping on the bulky black backpack. Even at a modest restaurant yesterday, we watched her endure the humiliating stares of other diners. Rana pretends the whispers don't sting, but it's clear they do.
The backpack bows her shoulders and gives her back pains that keep her awake at night. Her mother warns her she's ruining her posture, her friends beseech her to just hide it under her bed and enjoy one night without the baggage. Rana always refuses, saying she has no choice but to protect the last thing she can call her own.
