It’s the middle of the day. The temperature reaches 300 C and we try to fight with it cold water, but being Ramadan it’s forbidden by law to drink and eat on the street, you can get a fine or even go to jail for breaking this law, not because you make a cultural mistake, but if you break it intentionally then you pay the price. We feel the heat stronger because we wear long trousers – it’s disrespectful to walk on the streets with shorts.
We took the food bags and with a young Syrian from the church we made our way to a Syrian family. They are two minutes away from us. We met the husband at the street corner, he sells cotton candy trying to make some money to take care of his family. He leads us to their apartment, at the first floor, where we were greeted by his ten years son and his wife, a middle age woman full of life and chatty.
Our guide began talking with them, actually the first 5 minutes were congratulating each other. We got use to that, it’s a part of their culture to say good things about each other and to bless him and his house.
“Why have you come here?” I asked him. I seems a dumb question in that context, but actually I found out that it’s a very good question because they can say more easily what they been through. Why have we come here? We ran from war, the husband answer us. Before everything started I was a truck driver. We were doing pretty well, we had it all and we were a thankful family. Even when it started we were doing pretty good, even if we were from Homs, the most affected city. But things started to get worse. In the beginning there were only peaceful protests, after that it escalated in violent protests between the law enforcement and the protesters and later they began shooting people. The wounded didn’t give up and they formed an army, that’s how the whole thing became a war.
“How did you decide to leave Syria?” I asked him. “One day a few people came to our neighbourhood. They entered our neighbour’s home, they got them out and beheaded them.”
“You saw that?” I asked them terrified. “Yes, we’ve seen it with our own eyes, it was that moment when we decided to leave Syria. After many challenges and the journey we came here.”
“Will you go back?” I asked like curious child.
“NO” came a firm and quick response from the wife, “as long as the president is in power, NO, but even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t be safe because there are many people with guns that could still do bad things.
Actually now is worse. In the beginning I knew that the fight was between the governmental forces and the free army, but with time many groups of soldiers appeared, now there are more than ten groups, nobody knows who is fighting who. That’s why it’s hard to make peace.”
“I think is great blessing to be let in a country as Jordan and be helped” I concluded. “Yes” came the answer “and Christians helped us a lot, more than others” We said goodbye, we left the bags of food and entrusted them in the hands of the Almighty.
How can someone who seen such things can still believe in kindness and love? Only if kindness and love touches him.
– Testimony from YWAM Romania
(names have deliberately been omitted for security reasons)