Public Story
Al Mafraq:close to home
The government of Assad, United States, Russia, Iran, ISIS are just some of the actors present in a conflict that has caused more than 350 thousand deaths (of which just under one third civilians) and has caused the escape of more than five million of people.
As often happens, the neighboring countries are those that receive more emigrants. This conflict is no exception: Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have welcomed more than 90% of refugees from 2011 to today. In Lebanon there are 200 refugees per thousand inhabitants; in Jordan the ratio is 100 to one thousand; Italy, to make a comparison, welcomes a number of migrants that is 2.4 per thousand of the number of inhabitants.
Jordan, which borders south with Syria, is traditionally a hospitable country. Since the Second World War, this small kingdom has given refuge to Palestinian, Egyptian and Iraqi refugees; now also to the Syrians.
Mafraq is just over 15 kilometers from the Syrian border, the tourist guides call it a “dusty and congested border town”. At thirteen kilometers, the immense refugee camp of Zaatari, opened in 2011 and became a city of eighty thousand inhabitants. Many families, many people who have found a better accommodation in Mafraq have passed through the camp.
Before the Jordanian state, together with humanitarian associations, activated its network of aid, the refugees were supported by neighbors, who gave them food, or medicines, or diapers for newborns.
The project was born with the aim of telling the stories of escape and reception of some of these families. Their testimonies give us a real point of view of what was the Arab Spring, the war, the contradictions that a conflict of such dimensions always carries with it. And what is the reception in a country, Jordan, which saw from 2011 670 thousand Syrian emigrants arrive; a country where, however, language, culture and religion are common patrimony to both populations.
Yahia, Fatima, Ahmed, Ibrahim, Sali and Hassna opened their homes to share the experience of exile and the new lives that had to be built.
There are only a few kilometers between Mafraq and their true home, but an impassable border rises in the middle. What will their future be? And with what eyes, with what hopes are they waiting for him?
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