Ten years ago I married my wife Dabha. We went to live in the house of my family on the edge of the village. Here we lived from our cows and the crops. The best place in our house was on the balcony where you had a beautiful view overlooking the fields.

When the war started there was initially nothing wrong in our village. Life went on as it always had. 

But a while later came the checkpoints. It was very strange to have to stop for a checkpoint on a road you have travelled on a thousand times before. For me it was just the normal road to the next village. Later on we were surrounded along with other villages and were threatened. 

I decided to go along with my wife and four-year-old son Zakria temporarily to Lebanon in the hopes of being able to return a few months later. I thought that everything would return to being calm once again.

We gave our Facebook-friends the opportunity to be part of our conversations by posting questions. Dabha, the wife of Hussein, answers the question of Mies:  How do you prepare a meal with minimal resources? (48 sec)

Four years later we are still here in this camp. Zakria is now 8 years old. From time to time I have contact with my father and mother by telephone who are still in our village in Syria. They do not say much about the situation there. We don't think that it is safe enough yet to return.

Besides that the rules in Lebanon have been tightened since January of 2015. Once you travel back to Syria you may no longer cross the border back into Lebanon. There were Syrian ‘refugees’ who saw the camp as a second home and the refugee allowance from the UNHCR as extra income. They commuted back and forth between Syria and Lebanon. But we never did that.

What I hope for the future? It is not up to me to have hope for the future because that falls under God’s will. And if you ask me what I think personally about the situation? I think what God will.

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