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INTERVIEWS WITH SYRIAN REFUGEES IN REYHANLI - I
ORSAM
ed to my job. My daily wage is 20 TL, and we
have to pay 600 TL for the rent. The monthly
expense of a 7 member family is at least 1500
TL, and I borrowed money from some Syrian
fellows. Currently, we cannot receive my
father’s retirement pension as my father cannot
go to Syria. Going back to Aleppo is the
same with committing suicide. There are agricultural
labors in Reyhanlı, women go to
work in fields but my family members have
never worked in the field. It is necessary to
be used to work in the field to be able to work
in the open in winter from 07.00 until 15.30,
but we had to. They went to work but they
could hardly make through the day, and at the
end of the day, they were told not to come to
work the following day as they were not experienced.
It is January now, and we still do not
have a heater at home, or sufficient number of
blankets. We try to get warm through a small
bottled gas in a cold apartment.
I went to Aleppo without letting my family
know, and I saw that there was nothing left
at our home and also any neighbor around.
The neighborhood was completely abandoned,
everywhere stank, there was a blackout,
no water, namely there is nothing else
other than smoke and wreckages. Syria is
totally destroyed, and Aleppo is unrecognizable.
Troops, tanks and gangs of thieves are
all around, there is no family left and trade life
has come to a deadlock.
I stopped by a village in Idlib province, and I
saw that those who stayed near Turkish border
had problems for not having an access to
electricity, water, flour and bread. Nobody
can find vegetable or fruit anymore, everybody
has tea, sugar, food for breakfast in their
stock, but they can hardly make it through
this season. If it goes on like this, they will
have to migrate due to insufficiency of food
and misery.
* This interview was made by Feyyat Özyazar
in Reyhanlı district of Hatay on 15 January
2013.
ORSAM
Report No: 157, May 2013 77