RAQQA, Syria (North Press) – Thiba Muhammad, a displaced woman from the eastern countryside of Homs, can hardly remember how old she is. She first says she is 60, then says no, she is 63, but she finally says that she is 70. “I am an old woman now,” she says sadly.
Thiba Muhammed, who is currently living in a tent made of blankets and grain bags look like tents of the sheep breeders, or what they are known as Bedouins, left her village in Homs countryside in mid-2017 when the Syrian government forces advanced towards it during their battles with ISIS.
The elderly woman is the mother of nine children (seven males and two females). They all were parted due to the displacement.
Some of them live in IDPs camps inside and outside Syria. However, most of them live with their families in random camps in Raqqa.
“The coming of Eid or any other occasions makes me sad instead of being happy, especially when I remember the meeting of my family members, in one house, and the joy that use to prevail in the place,” she painfully says.
This situation changed after the war that broke out in Syria more than a decade ago and scattered its nine children, the oldest of whom is over forty.
At the same time, the mother, whos is a grandmother as well, sees that it is no longer an easy matter for her family members to meet again, after they have become displaced inside Syria and outside Syria.
Two of her children work in farmland in Lebanon, while the others are scattered among the random refugee camps that are distributed in the countryside of Raqqa.
The elderly woman lives today with her old husband and one of her sons. Despite being old, she has to take care of her son’s children, as he and his wife have to work in farmland adjacent to the camp, to earn a living.
The people living in the random camps in Raqqa live in poor living conditions due to the lack of humanitarian aid support they receive from the civil organizations, which sometimes give none at all.
She sadly remembers her days before the outbreak of the Syrian war. “I wish I had died before this,” she tells North Press painfully. Her situation and the condition of her relatives have been overturned due to the war. They became displaced people, leaving everything behind in their areas, as is the case of millions of Syrians whose lives have turned into hell.
Muhammad wishes that she could see her children together one again, but perhaps it has become something impossible that cannot be achieved.
There are about 58 IDPs random camps in the countryside of Raqqa, inhabited by about 90,000 displaced people, most of whom are from the areas of Homs, Hama and Aleppo.