Khaled Hosseini witness Syrian refugees’ resilience
Photo by UNHCR/B. Sokol/2014.
Afghan-born American author Khaled Hosseini visits a Syrian refugee camp in Kurdish Iraq and is moved by families desperate to provide for themselves and not to be reliant on the generosity of local people.
“No one I met wanted to be a burden. Every refugee family I spoke to wanted to contribute, to stand on their own feet, to provide for themselves and not to be dependent. Walking through the camps, I saw a busy, active people, resourceful and enterprising, people who had started grocery stores, barber shops, salons, bakeries. Like my fellow Afghans, these people were proud. They did not wish to be seen as a monolithic community of dependent victims.”
Text by K. Hosseini for The Independent on Sunday/6th April 2014.
