And Our Life Goes on

On Dec. 2016, there were 2,814,631 registered Syrian refugees in Turkey, according to UNHCR. This displacement crisis generates dramatic levels of suffering, and shattering the lives of many Syrians. I witnessed their struggle to rebuild shattered dreams, despite years of violence and trauma.

While I started to document their life in Turkey in 2013, I witnessed their struggle to rebuild shattered dreams, despite years of violence and multiples trauma.

Everything has to be redone, the landmarks are not the same, neither the daily life. And they must face a fundamental question: how to survive? They have to find a job, a house. Sometimes the whole family has to do it, children included. Many of them works twelves hours in a day, six days in a week for very low wages. The school? They will think about it later. First: survive.

In Turkish border cities with Syria, it is not too disorienting. Same religion, same climate, same lifestyle. But family, community and inter-community links are severed. Syrian young generation has been drastically affected by the conflict with limited access to quality education, protection and limited opportunities to contribute to their communities resulting in growing hopelessness. In Syria, they were going to school, they were brilliant students, they started their carreer. In Turkey, they are dishwasher, sweeper, unemployed.

In cities overwhelmed by the influx of refugees, Turks welcome the Syrians with suspicion, sometimes violence. They have difficulty to tolerate this sudden cheap labors. One turkish worker in Mersin told me: "This country started to arise. Then the refugees arrived. It would be better without them. I am a Muslim, they are my religion’s brothers, but we can no longer pay for them.” Two communities side by side, quite ignorant of each other. In fact, Turks seem to be caught in a tension between the Muslim solidarity and racism. But they also know that Syrians are boosting the local economies and few countries would have done what the Turks did. Europe, for example, has closed its doors.

This issue is so complex in Turkey that it borders on Schizophrenia.

Often viewed suspiciously, Syrian refugees instinctively recreated a community in every large city where they found refuge. There are now large Syrian neighborhoods in cities like Gaziantep, Mersin or Izmir. And their daily life, a new one, began again. Punctuated by moments of joy, doubts, fear, hope.

What about their future? Will it be in Turkey, Syria, or elsewhere? They are losing hope that a political solution will soon be found to end the bloodshed in their homeland. Youth, who have been settled in Turkey for years, does no longer intend to leave Turkey: there is nothing left in Syria. And even if families need more help to send their children to school, to prevent child labor, early marriages, lost generations and women’s empowerment, they are building slowly a new home, a new life, without daily bombing.

Another life begins, a new one. Life always takes over: "And our life goes on".