Sabeen sat cross-legged on the Istanbul sidewalk, her back
facing the döner kebob stand across the road. Tissue packets were spread on the
ground in front of her knees. Each one sold for three Turkish lira.
Her left forearm had a gray-blue tattoo with “love”
written in Arabic and English, the words slanted on her left wrist and spilling
over toward her palm. Her right arm held her 3-year-old son, Radwan. Sabeen’s
grasp on Radwan was tight, not a comforting embrace, but a claw.
Once pedestrians had bought up all her tissue packets, she
would walk 15 minutes with Radwan back to the hotel where she stayed. In her
hotel room, she kept a cardboard box of 200 packets that she bought wholesale
at a supermarket on the other side of the Bosphorus River, in Asia. After
collecting another 10, she would return to that same sidewalk near Taksim
Square to keep selling.
In Gezi Park, 2 blocks from where Sabeen was selling her
tissue packets, Zeinah stood as tall
as her 5-foot-3 frame could. Her children, Asil and Fathi, tossed water bottles
to each other from the shopping cart that she pushed around Gezi Park. Asil and
Fathi stopped only when they saw the candy in my hand. Then they took turns on
my lap as I sat on the park’s fountain with Zeinah.
Both Sabeen and Zeinah assumed I worked for the Turkish
police. Only government officials trying to rid Istanbul of refugees ever stop
to ask a Syrian her story.
Zeinah’s apartment was right on Taksim Square, which made
it more expensive than Sabeen’s distant hotel. But Zeinah needed a place where
she could keep her water bottles cold. Otherwise, no one would buy them. Four
other Syrians shared the apartment with Zeinah and her two children.
Sabeen barely spoke, for fear of the police. She saw
everyone as undercover police, but she continued selling without a permit
because she was hungry. Her husband looked for a job during the day, leaving
her to earn money for the hotel room in the interim.
She did not know how long the interim would last. Sabeen
could barely comprehend how she got to an Istanbul sidewalk in the first place,
having previously enjoyed life as a housewife with an electrician husband in
Aleppo, Syria.
According to the Turkish deputy Prime Minister Besir
Atalay, there were over 1 million Syrians in Turkey as of June 2014. The
Turkish government believes far more live in the country unregistered.
Zeinah’s husband did not know she was in Turkey. And she did
not know where her husband was. He had enlisted in the Syrian Armed Forces, but
left after basic training. President and Commander-in-Chief Bashar al-Assad
sent a warrant for his arrest on desertion charges. Zeinah did not know where
he went after that or if he was still alive. She could not contact him, and
life in Syria without him became too terrifying to bear.
Life in Turkey was terrifying, too, but Zeinah bore it.
Sabeen did not know any Syrians in the city besides her
husband and son. She felt a loneliness she could not escape or change. Everyone
literally looked down on her, with her tissue packets in a neat row in front of
her.
Sabeen’s son Radwan placed the kebob I bought for him on
the sidewalk, unrolling the pita and picking at the chicken with his fingers.
He fed his mother roasted peppers and onions. She pushed her leopard-print
headscarf out of the way to accept the bites of food.
The Turkish people have grown tired of Syrians driving
down wages and taking their jobs. Bakery lines are longer and hospitals are
crowded. According to Istanbul governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu in a statement on
July 16, 2014, the Syrians wandering the streets of Istanbul “are damaging
their [Syrians’] image as a refugee.”
The Turkish also believe the Syrians have tarnished
Turkey’s image as well, with their dirt and confusion, disease and despair.
The Turkish government admitted in August 2014 that there
was no long-term plan for the Syrian refugees. They are not legally refugees,
according to a technicality in the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, but
“guests.” The government assumes the Syrians, as guests of Turkey, will return
to Syria after the conflict abates. In the meantime, no Syrians receive the
rights and benefits of refugee status, such as protection against deportation
and resettlement aid.
Sabeen and Zeinah do not feel like guests. Sabeen said to
me that she did not want to talk to me anymore because I could not prove my
intentions. The government has begun cracking down on beggars, forcibly
removing them from the streets and putting them in Syrian refugee camps.
Zeinah heard about anti-Syrian protests in Istanbul and
its suburbs in July and did not understand why the people were so angry.
Turkish locals destroyed Syrian shops and cars, threatened to lynch a Syrian
man and injured five Syrian women. Their anger should be towards Assad, Zeinah
said.
Zeinah insisted her husband did not desert. Now she has
deserted him. And the world has deserted her.
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