Hammamati
I spent the first days of a recent trip to Beirut looking up at the sky, watching flocks of birds chase each other and scatter among the tall, irregular buildings of the city. I saw them describe precise and harmonious trajectories near the cliffs overlooking the sea and around the minarets of the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila, a patch of land one square kilometer in size, where hundreds of concrete buildings overlap, connected by endless electric wires that prevent light from filtering into the streets below. Shatila is just one of the twelve Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which together host about four hundred thousand refugees, nearly 10% of the total population, registered with UNRWA, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees founded in the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948, the irreversible exodus.
In this chaotic little part of the city in western Beirut, more than twenty-five thousand people live, most in extreme poverty, mainly Palestinians, but also Syrians, Iraqis, and Lebanese from the lower classes. Different life trajectories but the same endpoint: discrimination and marginalization, in a country that, due to an unprecedented economic crisis in recent years, has become increasingly harsh and violent, especially towards those living on the margins of society.
The living conditions of Palestinian refugees are particularly dire because they do not have access to citizenship and are considered foreign nationals, even though they were born and raised in Lebanon and have been residents for almost eighty years. For many young Palestinians, envisioning a path to growth, integrating into Lebanese society, or simply planning a future elsewhere are almost impossible challenges, made even more painful by a promise of return to Palestine that has never been fulfilled, yet resonates within family walls, and by the reopened wounds from the recent and ongoing systematic massacres of Gazans. Many of them thus remain suspended in a place that does not want them, with opportunities to explore a city so lacking in public spaces being severely limited.
Among the few places where young Palestinians can find a safe space are the cliffs where the Mediterranean breathes, where they gather on Sundays to swim or fish, and the rooftops of Shatila, among bent antennas and blue tanks: from here, every evening, when the light and sounds of the city fade, Hasan, Mahmood, Ahmed, and the other hamamati let their birds fly free over the sea and reclaim the sky, sometimes as a challenge, other times for fun, and sometimes just to feel a bit of wind beneath their wings.
