Northern Aleppo countryside – Dijla Khalil – North-Press Agency
Displaced women from the Afrin region in northwestern Syria were forced to rely on food baskets provided by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to prepare Eid cookies, amid the high prices in light of the deterioration in the value of the Syrian pound.
Afrin’s women used to make Eid cookies in their homes in Afrin during the holiday. After the third year of displacement, three or four women gather under each tent in Sardam camp in the village of Tel Sosin in the northern countryside of Aleppo to make cookies and share them with each other.
"We used to meet and help each other in making cakes in an atmosphere full of joy and happiness in Afrin. Here in the camp, I also met with my neighbors in the camp to make cakes," said 54-year-old Samia Habash, an Afrin IDP who lives in Sardam camp.
The situation is not the same as it was in Afrin, where they prepared cookies and sweets for a number of neighboring houses.
1,765 displaced families from Afrin, consisting of 7,044 people, live in five camps in the northern countryside of Aleppo (al-Awda, Barkhwadan, Sardam, Shahba, and Afrin), according to the latest statistics of the Social Affairs Authority in the Autonomous Administration of Afrin.
The preparation of cookies was a ritual they were accustomed to in Afrin; they baked sweets such as maamoul (cookies filled with dates), cakes, and ghariba (shortbread cookies), which are popular sweets in Syria. These times were previously associated with folk songs and jokes, but now they work with feelings of sorrow and memories of their region, which was invaded by Turkey and Turkish-backed armed opposition groups more than two years ago.
Samia Habash’s neighbor Alif Hassan is busy preparing dough cakes and shaping them before putting them in the oven.
"We are making cakes in order to bring happiness to our children and make them feel the joy of Eid. For us, Eid is no longer a joy after we were forcibly removed from Afrin.”
Most of them depend on ingredients from food baskets distributed by the Autonomous Administration to make Eid pastries. They do not care about their low quality compared to the items sold in the markets, because the most important thing is to reduce the cost to be able to offer something to the children on the holiday.
Fidan Ali said that the high prices in the markets pushed them to manufacture cakes with the help of a number of women in the camp. "A small packet of cakes is sold for 1,500 Syrian pounds, and this amount will not be enough for my children."
Food baskets distributed by the camp administration this month contained materials such as sugar, oil, and butter, which are used by women in the camp. The women buy flour, which was not included in the baskets.
Ali told North-Press that some of the IDPs who own electric ovens lend them to all the families in the camp. "We share the ovens between us, and the oven moves from one place to another.”
A box of popular barazek cookies is sold in the camp’s market for 2,000 SYP, while a kilo of maamoul sells for 1,500. Preparing five kilograms of cakes, depending on the components of the food basket, requires about 2,000 SYP, according to women in the camp.