In Baherka camp, Palestinians live in limbo
“The difference between the Syrians and us is that Syrians can leave. They can eventually go home. Palestinians in Iraq don’t have anything,” Taha says.
Baherka displacement camp, on the outskirts of Erbil, is hosting nearly 4,000 people, most of them displaced just over two years ago when ISIL entered Mosul.
Among them are several Palestinian families who have been homeless — and stateless — for much longer.
Taha and his wife Basima were both born in Iraq, him in Basra, and her in Baghdad, but they don’t have passports because their parents were refugees who came here in the late 1940s. For Taha, moving from Basra to Baghdad, Anbar, Duhok and then Mosul, Baherka camp is the sixth stop in a life of continual displacement.
“We don’t have any rights,” he says. “People say bad things about us. They think that because we’re Palestinians we’re terrorists.”
The family ran a small shop in Mosul. When violence broke out in the summer of 2014 they fled with nothing.
“ISIL wanted us to be on their side,” Taha said. “I wasn’t afraid for myself, but I was afraid for my children, so we left everything and came here.”
The family has no money and little opportunity to earn an income. Because they don’t have residency permits they are unable to leave the camp to find work.
Taha has a small business repairing heaters in the camp, but it’s not lucrative. “Most people’s heaters are new, so they don’t need repairing,” he says.
Taha and Basima work hard to make a home for their six children who are third generation refugees. Taha built the caravan they live in, and cultivates a garden where they grow vegetables, roses and marigolds. “It wasn’t much to start with,” he says. “But I brought in the soil myself and now everything grows really well.”
The family adopted two orphaned kittens, whom they’ve named Catty and Teymour. “They are like our children,” Basima says. “Teymour roams around the camp, but Catty stays close. At night she jumps up on the bed and sleeps in my arms.”
As she talks, two of her daughters, Hanin, 14, and Sabrin, 15, who’ve been playing with Catty, leave the room to get dressed for school. They come back in grey and white uniforms.
There’s not much for the girls to do in the camp, so when they’re not studying they enjoy watching Bollywood movies. “It’s something different,” Basima says, “They like the fashion, and the music.”
The glamour of Bollywood is one of the few diversions available to the girls, who have not set foot outside the camp in eighteen months. Both also have medical conditions that cannot be treated in the camp — Hanin has problems with her kidneys and Sabrin has tonsillitis. And on top of their essential needs, Basima, like any mother, worries about their mental health.
“I’m worried about my daughters,” she says. “They need to get out of the camp and have some fun.”
UNICEF supports the primary school in the camp and built the secondary school, which is now run by UNESCO. The girls are studying mathematics and science, but their parents fear that their education will be in vain unless they can leave Iraq.
“Our only hope is to get out of Iraq,” Taha says. “Our sons and daughters don’t have a future here.”
Chris Niles is a Communications Consultant for UNICEF Iraq.
For direct donations to UNICEF in Iraq: http://support.unicef.org/campaign/donate-children-iraq
