By Ammar Johmani
Among the hundreds of homeless people crowding the streets of Damascus after their living conditions deteriorating due to the war, a homeless woman in her eighties stands out.
She wears a black Jalabiya, dress, and has a black band on her head as well as she sits on the pavement in front of a building in Bab Touma neighborhood in the middle of Damascus. She pleads with passers-by, but her low voice denies her the possibility of gathering the amounts other beggars gather on a daily basis.
Other than her shabby appearance what draws our attention is that she opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue as if she is dying other than muttering incomprehensible words at times. Despite all this, people pass her by without caring or paying attention, some throwing her ten Syrian Pounds and others a hundred Syrian Pounds.
Ammar Johmani discovered some details about this old displaced woman by contacting some people who wanted to help her.
Farid Yaghi recounted the story of the old woman who came from Homs a few years ago, as he understood from her. She suffers from a nervous disease that causes a trembling in her upper limbs and forces her to bend her back.
Speaking to Ammar Johmani, Yaghi explained that he wanted to help the old woman and tried to carry her, but he failed. When he asked for assistance from passersby, they refused to help him. He said he wanted to wash her in the street, buy her some shoes to wear since her feet were bare and get her something to eat, but after that, he wanted to do more for her.
He explained that he called on a laborer working for a wholesaler in the area to carry the old woman to Yaghi’s house in the building opposite where the old woman sat. He managed to convince the laborer to help him carry her to the fourth floor by offering him a large sum of money.
Yaghi said that his parents were surprised when they saw the old woman at their door but allowed Yaghi to bring her in. They brought her food, washed her and gave her some decent clothes. After the mysterious woman had relaxed, she asked Yaghi to take her to Homs because she felt embarrassed. She repeated that she felt embarrassed everytime she was rejected or repelled by others. She also repeated that she did not need anything one as she has a house and her life in the destroyed city and she is not a beggar.
In an attempt to lessen her pain and entertain her, Yaghi took to singing a famous song, “Ya siti ya khityara (my grandmother the old)” only to find she was memorizing the words. Yaghi learned from the old woman that her son and her husband died in the bombing on one of the districts of Homs. She has two sons working as teachers, but she has forgotten their names. She said she could not even remember if her name was Zlikha or Fatima. Yaghi tried to find an old people’s home among charitable institutions or imam mosques including al-Ashmar mosque, but they all refused to welcome her or shelter her. Yaghi finally managed to find her a space in a center for the displaced in Damascus. There she will sleep “on a pillow more comfortable than the pavement and less comfortable than Homs,” by his description.
Farid Yaghi is a Syrian writer and poet who was born in 1991. He studied business administration at the Syrian University. He is writing a daily diary of Damascus city during the war through the movement and stories of its people, its displaced people, and its homeless. Yaghi carries the diary around with him in his pocket at all times.