Fight or Flight الكر و الفر – Making Numbers Humans جعل الأرقام بشر (Part 2: Paul and the bandaged hand)
Paul is just a bit older than me. When he walked into the room, I saw that his right hand was wrapped in a bandage. He was wearing a black leather jacket and glasses. Although a look at his documents had revealed that he was just slightly older than me, the man who grabbed a chair and sat down looked way older. And weary.
In Amman, there are currently, according to the latest UNHCR statistical reports, around 630’000 Syrian and over 50’000 Iraqi refugees (let alone the Palestinian refugees whose numbers exceed 2 million by far and refugees from other Arab and African countries). Living in Amman, however, does not necessarily imply that you will get in touch with these people. On the opposite, the city possesses an impressive ability to provide bubbles and exclusive spaces where those people are circumvented and gently pushed to the peripheries. How this socioeconomic segregation came about and how it can be upheld will require a more in-depth discussion. For now, it suffices to recognise that working and dealing with refugees in Amman is a choice, not a given.
I chose to get in touch with refugees because my job did not require me to exit a limited bubble that extended from an office across the city to universities situated outside the city centre. The fact that I found myself in such proximity to a crisis zone urged me to get involved with an organisation providing assistance to people seeking help. The program I contacted and later worked with was focusing on Iraqi refugees, who had been somewhat neglected after international organisations redirected all their efforts towards tackling the repercussions of the Syrian crisis. This NGO supported refugees in legal matters: Many had applied for resettlement by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) but been refused for reasons often unclear or unfounded. My job consisted in conducting intakes with Iraqis who were facing such legal challenges, transcribe their history and, in certain cases, apply for protection or resettlement on their behalf.
So, there I was, sitting in my first intake with Paul, who had been in Amman for more than seven years. I was nervous. But so was he, it would turn out.
He started where everything began. Soon after the invasion of 2003, the southern city of Basra started to fall victim to sectarian divisions. Gradually, it experienced an increase in the number of purple fundamentalist militia and gangs who threatened and attacked people who they attributed, based on their names, their heritage or some futile criterion, to the orange sect. Paul was unlucky enough to have a name that was used mainly by the orange sect, which made it easy for aggressors to identify and persecute him.
One day, when Paul had went to Baghdad to write exams in his secondary school, he was called by his parents and ordered not to come home. Masked men had come to their house asking for him. Paul then waited a few days before he returned to his neighbourhood in Basra, where things seemed quiet for a few days. By that time, he was 18 or 19 years old and he could not remotely recall anyone carrying any sort of grief against him.
A couple of days later, his neighbours called and urged him to flee as fast as possible. The gang had returned with weapons and pick-ups and they were browsing the neighbourhood for young people who were supposedly orange. He fled immediately to his uncle’s place that was further away and never returned to his home again. During his refuge at his uncle’s place the menaces against him and the visits to his parents became unbearably frequent and increasingly violent, which forced his parents to flee to the north of the country, where orange people formed the majority. Paul decided to escape by car to Jordan where he applied for asylum at the UNHCR office. He was recognised as a refugee but has been waiting for resettlement since 2007.
One may assume that he could just stay in Jordan. However, his life in Amman has been cluttered with obstacles. When he first came he wanted to continue school but was soon obliged to work instead to sustain himself in the absence of social security and family. His work as a craftsman is illegal since working legally without a residential permit in Amman is a physical impossibility. He is facing harassment and threats by his employer and people in his neighbourhood who take advantage of his vulnerability. His right hand – the one that was wrapped up – was injured in the manipulation of one of the machines at work. Accident insurance? Yeah, right.
As for me, this first intake was emotionally overwhelming. On a few occasions during his narrative, Pauls voice broke down and his eyes filled with tears. It was difficult for me to focus on the task and transcribe the history without succumbing to the heavy sadness and the feeling of injustice that filled the room. Even though his strength to persist in such difficult circumstances and not lose hope over all these years was more then admirable, I could not help but feel sorry for and angry about the fact that he had lost over seven years of his young life – waiting for a chance to move on and rebuild his life somewhere else. Unfortunately, cases like his are far from being an exception.
*NB: For the purpose of this story, the person was given a different name. The purple and the orange sect are clearly distinguishable but I will renounce to reinvigorate the sectarian rhetoric that has not proven to be of any particular help to the situation. *