Resilience in the face of shelter-in-place: lessons learned from survivors of conflict
Living through a pandemic is a traumatic experience. But this is not a war. We are Susan Kornacki and Alix Faddoul, two Master of Public Health graduates from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. To better understand these circumstances, and how to thrive within them, we turned to friends and family who have lived in conflict-affected areas. They spoke about their experiences of being forced into lockdowns in the past.
We spoke with Noha Faddoul, Alix’s aunt, who lived through 15 years of civil war in Lebanon, from 1975 to 1990; Karim Kattan, a Palestinian writer and PhD candidate based in Bethlehem who experienced the second Intifada (2000–2005) as a child; and Mario Patiño, an American-Colombian with experience working on a variety of humanitarian responses in Colombia, Iraq, South Sudan and Syria for about 10 years before moving back to New York City. We offer their thoughts here as a window into some perspectives and coping mechanisms that may be helpful in this trying time.
These are challenging times — and this pandemic is also an opportunity to appreciate safe shelter, when we have it, and to unite against a common challenge.
On March 26th, Noha was hospitalized for COVID-19. As her symptoms set in, her family feared for her life. She described how being a victim of COVID-19 feels very different to her from being a war victim. “During the Lebanese conflict, the enemy could be anyone, from your next door neighbor to the next village. Now we don’t see the enemy, we don’t feel it.” In contrast, reflecting on her experience of surviving COVID-19, “I don’t even know how I got infected.” In other words, there is no one to blame.
Now in recovery, she explained that this pandemic makes it a lot easier to bring people together as we are all facing the same invisible enemy — and to use that realization as motivation to support each other.
To Karim, while wars and pandemic are tragic events, they should not be compared to each other. “When you’re in a war, you never know when your house might get hit by a bomb. Or you might step outside and someone will shoot you.” In the present circumstances, home still provides safe shelter and nighttime remains a sacred moment when everyone can find rest.
Maintaining social distancing is a team effort. We can all play our part.
“Your world gets smaller for a certain amount of time,” Mario Patiño told us. As he recalled experiences living in conflict zones, he observed, “Right now, we are being encouraged to remain home, but we are not being compelled to. We don’t live in a totalitarian environment, at least in the US, and so we depend on the goodwill and judgment of people to stay indoors and do their part.” Such flexibility is not an option in times of conflict.
Access to phone and internet services is a privilege that previous generations did not experience.
Noha shared a memory from her early 20’s, when the Lebanese Civil War raged around her community. Her sister Flavia has just delivered a baby, and so Noha drove over 60 miles and crossed a military checkpoint in order to get to the nearest working international line. Her goal: to call her brother, who had escaped to France to pursue his studies, to tell him the joyful news. Reflecting on the ways she can communicate with family now, Noha said, “I am really grateful for WhatsApp. Even when I was hospitalized and no visitors were allowed, I did not feel isolated.”
Reach for compassion — for others, and for yourself.
Karim has now been living under a shelter in place order for four months. Living under the Israeli occupation, it is not the first time he has had to seek shelter at home. He puts the current situation into perspective: “This is a traumatic experience, for all of us. That includes people whose lives are much more comfortable. We all process trauma differently, and I am learning to be much more tolerant of how people deal with these circumstances.”
Talking about expectations of productivity, Mario explained, “Working in a team, it is important to understand how people’s reality has changed and be flexible with their constraints.” Karim agreed: “You can’t force these moments to have meaning. You can’t force feed productivity. But we can focus on looking for ways to not just survive, but really live.” He encouraged us to remember to look for the beauty around us, and to let ourselves be attuned to the world.
We gathered these stories to honor the experiences of others who have lived through challenging times. Our hope is to share these reflections in a way that can be helpful to all of us, as we find ways to cope and eventually, to learn, from this experience.
We publish this story with great gratitude to Karim, Mario and Noha, for the time they spent speaking with us about their experiences, and the wisdom they so generously shared.
To view this blog post in French, please check out Alix Faddoul’s Medium page.
About the authors:
Alix Faddoul, MSc, MPH, is a French-Lebanese international development professional with a background in improving access to health services in low- and-middle income countries, and a focus on the Middle East. Twitter: @alixfdl.
Susan E. Kornacki, MPH, is a public health professional whose work focuses on food policy in the United States, social determinants of health, and environmental sustainability. She is a fellow with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, and is based in Baltimore, Maryland. Twitter: @susan_kornacki_.
