Tharwa Foundation

At first glance, Al-Diabiyyeh doesn’t look as badly off as some of the other districts surrounding Damascus.  Its proximity to Al-Seida Zainah municipality means that is occasionally receives some basic services.  Once away from the main streets, however, the poverty of the district is striking.  The alleys are covered in dirt or mud, depending on how recent the last rain is.  The roofs of the houses are made from zinc and cloth awnings, and leak constantly.

As is the case with too many districts in the poverty belt around Damascus, Al-Diabiyyeh lacks trash recepticles.  It rarely has electricity, has no sanitation system and no clean water.

Ziad, a resident who sells cell phone accessories, told me how the cars driving through the district add to the pollution.  “A truck belonging to one of the governmental slaughterhouses comes from Akraba [another district in the province] loaded with excrement and waste.  It has no awning to keep the waste from falling off the truck.”  He said that residents once stopped a driver and demanded that he be more careful about littering their neighborhood with refuse.  He dismissed them contemptuously.  “This truck belongs to the government,” the driver said.  “You can do nothing.”  The municipality is supposed to send people to clean the streets, but Ziad has never seen such a person.  Municipal employees only show up when they want to pull down a house as illegal, or take bribes for the construction of a new illegal home.

The houses surrounding the alleyways are merely walls covered with awnings.  The children play in the dirt, while the house inhabitants crowd into the little bit of space outside their house.  Often more than ten people live in each of these one and two room houses, protected from the elements by cloth and with no sanitation system.

The people who live in these houses are day laborers, and with the current economy, they are lucky to work one day a week, or one week a month.  “We’re still alive here only by God’s mercy,” Mr. Abu Zuhair told me, standing outside of his home.

One of Mr. Abu Zuhair’s neighbors, thirty year old Abu Muhammed, saw me speaking with him and realized I was from the press.  He hurried over, eager to have a chance to share his complaints with people outside of his own neighborhood.

“We can get by without trash containers, even if the rubbish flowed over our heads,” Abu Muhammed declared to me.  “But a life without water and electricity isn’t a life.”  He grew angry as he continued.  “There’s no house that doesn’t have a hole for drainage in front of it.  The sewage seeps into these holes, and when a car goes over it, the holes open up and stink.  The children play around them all day.”  He told me that two days before we came, a little girl had fallen into one of these drainage and sewage pits.

Abu Muhammed took me around to visit his friends.  One of them, Abu Jamal, made a particular impression.  His house was four rooms, covered only with awnings.  More than twenty people lived in those four rooms.  There is no money to pay for electricity and no way to get it legally even if there was money, so Abu Jamal and his family steal it.  With no way to secure the wiring, however, leaking awning ceilings pose a continuous fire hazard.

Abu Jamal told us that the children in his household don’t attend school, because the family can’t pay the annual participation fees of less than 500 SYP [about 11 USD].  The authorities don’t care that the children are out of school.

As we left Abu Jamal’s house, Abu Muhammed turned to me.  “Even if those children could go to school, for God’s sake, do you think that Abu Jamal could afford clothing or pay a daily expense?  Can a house like this produce a scientist?”  He pointed to a room.  “The municipality pulled down the walls of this room while a wife was in here, lying in during the confinement period [after she had given birth].  They didn’t even give her time to recover.  The municipality doesn’t care about anything.  We’ve gathered many times to ask to be allowed to cement the ceilings of these houses instead of use awnings, but all in vain.”

The story was the same from house to house.  Umm Ismael’s six children survived on charity, and their widowed mother could not afford to pay the annual fees to send them to school.  She told me how one of her sons had been playing on the walls and fallen through the cloth ceiling, landing on his head.  Without any way to pay for care, he has become slow and she fears he is now retarded.  More than once, workers for the municipality have come through and pulled down her little one room house.

Umm Tammam’s five children don’t even have the option of paying school.  Their father can’t afford to register them with the government.  Without registration, they aren’t eligible for public schooling.

Not all of Al-Diabiyyeh is as bad as these alleys.  Some, often the parts closer to the main streets, are much nicer.  Those streets are inhabited by municipal employees.  “Of course, they’re superior to us, so the municipality does supply them with services.  And no one threatens to pull down their houses or fine them.”

“If any of us so much as plants a pillar, though, the municipality and police will come immediately,” Abu Muhammed concluded bitterly.  “For every pound paid for building, there are five more paid in bribes to those greedy guys.  In case you think I’m exaggerating, I can plant a pillar right here and you just wait a half hour to see what happens.”

The inhabitants of Al-Diabiyyeh were eager to give me even more stories of their poverty.  They want to be heard, they want others to know what they suffer.  They want to better their lives, but no one listens.

Click on the thumbnail below to see more pictures of Al-Diabiyyeh.

Some of the names of our contributors have been changed to protect their identity.  The names of people interviewed have also been changed. The opinions expressed in our regional pieces reflect the beliefs of their writers, and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or opinions of the Tharwa Foundation and its members.