Opportunity Call: Delivering Memories

For the past couple of years I have tried in little ways to help my Syrian relatives who are currently displaced by war. When possible, I distribute relief items like clothing, household goods, food items, and even wood to be burnt for fuel. Last year I purchased a Lada Niva specifically to help in this, and it has been quite a boon as I’ve navigated rough and muddy tracks to access refugee tents. Yet among all the many loads of “stuff” I’ve taken, perhaps the most appreciated cargo has been memories.

The horror of being a refugee is that you experience loss at all levels: loss of country, rights, investments, opportunities, identification, security and much more. You lose your home, and with it all the memories made and yet-to-be-made. It’s crushing to hear the laments of those that have lost not only their physical possessions but also life as they remember it. In this state (and displacement is certainly a particularly horrific state of existence) memories are problematic. While they can fill you with the joy of recalling that which was, they can also taunt you with the threat that it may never return. Some of my relatives do not want to look back and think about what they have lost. But some do.

Recently one of my cousins requested that I bring pictures from past visits to our village in Syria (their photographs, like most everything else, were left behind). He wanted his children to see their home. They, like countless Syrian children, have had their life dominated by displacement. They have been born as refugees or left their home before any memories could take hold. There is no personal recollection of the place they’re told is home. It is one of the many painful realities for the children of the Syrian Refugee crisis. They alone can claim innocence yet they suffer the most; denying memory is among war’s cruelest offenses.

During the recent holiday break I uploaded pictures on my laptop and took it to the family. A small group gathered around the screen and revisited scenes from a life that was once familiar but now feels very far away. Some smiled and laughed as they looked back at the past. Others fought back tears. They were looking at houses that no longer exist, fields that no longer produce, and people that no longer live. It may all be gone now, but the children need it to still exist. Memories must be made even if they never happened. The whole story cannot be about bitterness of warfare, loss, and displacement that these little children have traumatically endured.

As they spend these years separated from their homeland, I hope my relatives tell many stories of the life, the land and the people they once knew. I hope they are helping the new generation build memories of home to go along with their memories of displacement. Perhaps my collection of pictures can serve as an illustration to the stories. Hopefully when these little ones eventually return home they will say, “This is a place I remember.”

Memories from the village in Syria