I find myself repeatedly asking why? Why are these kids unable to attend school? Why does a child try to throw himself off the balcony? Why does he draw tanks and guns? Why does the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ strike him as odd?
We are asking Farida a few questions. Fatoon gets her to stand still as David zooms in on her face…smudged, blackened by dirt. Here eyes dart around the room. Finally she smiles. She is missing her front teeth. Her hair is covered in linen. The braid not hiding the fact that she has not had her hair washed in almost a month. “Hi Farida! Keefik?” “What do you want to be one you grow up?” She stands there. She smiles at the camera. She looks at Fatoon. She seems to be saying ‘what are they asking?’ I don’t think she has ever thought she could be anything…what a crazy question I’m sure she’s thinking. Next question. “What is your favorite part of TYO?” She immediately says, “painting.” She tells us she likes coming everyday. She loves everyone here. She likes playing with other kids. When she doesn’t come, she says she plays with her sister Fazia in their small house. She likes to come everyday.
Suhad, TYO’s psycho-social specialist, described some of the psychosocial problems the kids that attend TYO face…acting out, inability to communicate or express oneself, physical abuse, neglect, trauma…Problems that come from living under occupation, in poverty, and sometimes dealing with sporadic invasions. Problems of occupation are exacerbated by poverty…huge numbers of kids living in two rooms. There is a lack of support in these communities. There are not enough services to help parents.
She tells us a story of a girl from Al-Askar camp. This girl was happy all the time. She seemed like a happy kid. True, she had moments when she would refer to the PLO, but she seemed like a happy person. It was her eyes that gave her away. In her eyes you could see she was a very sad person. One day in art class the children were making cards. She was making a card for her father when she broke down crying. She said, “I am a different person. I am not like this kids at all.” Her father is in prison. She said, “sometimes I dream that we just open the door and he is with us.”
Fazia did not talk. She did not interact with the other kids in her class. But, she would smile. When Suhad approached the mom she learned that school was not important to the family. The kids had tried to go to school but they did not succeed. No one accepted them. They were beat up. They were unable to communicate. They were involved in street disputes. They are called stupid. They call them rubbish because their dad is a street cleaner. They are unaccepted. When you approach them they attach themselves to you. They want to keep you. They see it in your eyes that you accept us. They see that you respect them.
TYO is the only place where these kids are respected both as kids, but also as human beings. TYO provides a space where these kids can express their anger, their frustrations, through structured play. In Nablus, you see kids playing in the street without supervision. You see groups in the street who just play soccer, nothing else. The girls sit at home watching TV. TYO provides games with supervision; for example, with sports you develop more skills and emphasize notions of team. You help kids talk about conflict resolution. You teach them communication. You teach them teamwork. When kids leave here they try to teach these principles to their respective communities.
When your environment is not healthy. When you are surrounded by invasion and poverty, trauma means your sensibility is no longer normal. You don’t see things like a two year old, but like an adult. There is no time for childhood.
They put mattresses on the floor every night. There is nothing. It is an empty home. Empty. Nothing makes you feel stimulated. I respected them more when I visited. It is an empty home.
It is a constant challenge. You have to maintain a fine balance between what you want and what people themselves want. As a Nabulsi I don’t want Fazia to grow up in that kind of environment, but you have to try to keep yourself at a distance and understand that your job is to assist them, not to change them. If we try to change their world the way that we want it to be we will fail. We must assist first. You wish they asked for education or toys for Fazia, but this is not important for them. They grew up without those things. Our role is to raise their awareness. To keep Fazia off the street, that is enough for them.
Mahmoun, he is a happy person. He comes here and we respect him. We do not look at him as if he is a strange person. He wants to run as a human being. He wants to be a kid. Adults think how did the family raise this boy? How do they send him dressed like this, dirty, with clothes and shoes that do not fit him?
I realized that only Rahma could read and write, and even then with great difficulty. Rahma slowly signed all the release forms. She is so eager to learn. But, she had to stop before entering her ninth year. She had to help raise the kids. The mom was in the hospital giving birth to another child. She still wants to learn English. She still wants to know things.
Kids playing, that means imagination. The healthy kid can use his imagination. Imagination also comes from the experience itself. You can’t be superman without having watched superman at least once. In our environment kids play a lot with toy guns. This is their life. This is how they grow up. This is what they see. When kids play with their guns they are expressing themselves. In treatment you need to go with it because he is telling you the story. We are talking about trauma…this experience needs to be affirmed. How are you going to assess trauma if you do not give them space to express their story? If you are going to treat him you need to give him opportunity in classroom to tell us his story through play. The tanks he plays with are tiny, but he is terrified. He is telling us how they invaded his neighborhood or how they demolished his house. Our main job is to help them find confidence and security. Without addressing these things we are not dealing with problems, with the fear.
Play is part of treatment. I wish no kids were killed in street. I wish no fathers were lost. But this is their life…
My kids grew up away from the camps, but Israeli soldiers invaded once. My sons still repeat the experience. Repeating means healing. If you don’t express yourself it can be disastrous. It can destroy your life. It makes you vengeful. It makes you want revenge in a stupid violent way. We don’t want violence. We don’t want anyone to be killed. We validate their story. We believe them. We hear them. We heal them. We don’t want violence.
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“It is so difficult,” the mom tells us. “There are ten of us. My husband is sick. We want to fix the house. There is no source of income. My husband’s salary is 2000 sheikles. It is not enough. During the intifada, two of my sons were shot by Israeli soldiers. One was shot in the back of the head. He was in the hospital for ninety days. Nobody helped us. I am afraid to send my kids to school. I don’t want them to be shot by Israelis.”
Rahma, Wallah, Farida, and Fazia are all sitting, listening.
“Rahma stopped going to school in her ninth year. She had to be with the children while I was pregnant in the hospital. Ali, my son, was shot in his head. He was only seventeen. Mahmoun is thirteen years old. He no longer goes to school. I am afraid to send him after the intifada. Our situation is so bad that my brother has to help me. We have to spend a lot on my husband’s medical expenses. He has problems in the head. He cannot speak properly, something is wrong with his tongue. I want to fix this house.” She stops.
“We don’t have any money right now.” She doesn’t have the hundred sheikles to send Fazia and Farida to school. She decides it is better to cover home expenses than to send the girls to school.
Fatoon explains that TYO’s target groups are the most marginalized. It is those who are suffering most. She speaks of a big family who live in the neighborhood. They are illiterate. They have speech problems. But after they came to TYO their pronunciation improved. They started to smile. They started to act out which can be healthy. They realized there were people who love them. They were no longer afraid of others.
I ask, “Is this Farida and Fazia’s family?”
She nods. She elaborates. Farida and Fazia live in a very poor family. Their home is tiny. The mom and dad are simple people. The kids adopted the parents’ speech problems. The girls were very shy. They didn’t talk. Once they started to come to TYO, they started to change. She started to notice that Fazia is not the same Fazia that came last semester. Fazia now is smiling. She is talking. She is pronouncing letters better. “I hope we can reach all the kids who have such serious problems and have them join TYO.”
One of the reasons kids like TYO, Fatoon tells us, is that it is a safe space. At TYO kids feel that they have a space psychologically and physically. Psychologically they have a space where everyone accepts them and physically it’s a space where every child can run. Compared to houses, houses in camps are very small — nine or ten all are living in the same family with mom dad and kids maybe in one room two room — the kid does not have the space to talk, to play, to express himself, or even to ask a question. There is no privacy in these neighborhoods. Everyone knows everything. The furniture is very simple. They all sleep in the same room. They wake up in the same room. They do things in the same room. It is not healthy. Space is important, even solely on a physical level.
TYO now is like a precious town, a refuge for the kids, the moms. TYO is a different place, in the physical building itself. It is a building outside the camps. Moms, kids, young people, the whole time they are in their houses, streets, or at school. They are ready to go out of their camp. TYO is like a spot of light, a place outside the camp where they can fulfill their needs, enjoy their time. TYO now is a place that it welcomes different people from different camps. It is a chance to eliminate all the borders between the camps and the old city and Nablus. It is a place for everyone where everyone is equal here. It is a place where trying best to fulfill the needs of moms, kids, young people. They are happy coming to TYO. They know it is a welcoming place.
Annie and I ask the mom, “How did TYO help your family?”
“It helped Fazia in reading and writing. She needs more work, but it certainly influenced her pronunciation.”
The father is home. The mom motions to us that he is not right in the mind. Everyone moves to one side of the room. He sits down. He mumbles. We continue.
“They come home very happy. They play games together there and love it. Before kids played in the streets – haram. They took Fazia and this is the best thing they did.” She doesn’t want Fazia to be like that. She wants her to learn. She prays for a good future, Ench’allah.
“There are many wounded people in this family, but no one will help. God willing it will be a good future.”
As we leave Fazia jumps on me. She cradles my head in her tiny arms. She yells, “stay with us!” I rub her back. I don’t know what to say. “Stay with me!” She wouldn’t let go.