October 6, Patricia Falcón, a 56-year-old Canarian aid worker, receives a message by guasap from her friend Afif from Beirut, then in the middle of the Israeli bombardment: “The situation is getting worse, I am thinking about taking my family and fleeing to Syria ”. Patricia and Afif had met in January 2021, when, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, she was confined to a hotel in the Lebanese capital. A Spanish friend living in Beirut put them in touch and Afif became their link to the outside world.
Despite his university degree in information management systems, the young Lebanese has to earn a living as a driver. Fortunately, he has a car. Patricia’s other missions in Beirut, in which she always has the “kind and discreet” Lebanese driver, cement a friendship that keeps the guasap umbilical line alive.
On October 6, the day of that desperate message, the attacks had already occurred with the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie talkies belonging to members of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and since then the situation had only gotten worse. in the region. The images of Beirut under the bombs worry the aid worker, now in Spain, who fears for Afif and his family: his wife, Layan, and the couple’s children, Nour, 13, and Hadi, 5.
They contacted again four days later. “On the 10th I wrote again because I had heard on the news that their neighborhood in Beirut had been bombed.” When the bombing destroyed some buildings a hundred meters from where the family lives, Afif made the decision to flee to Syria. His reason is powerful and can be understood by any father and mother anywhere in the world: “What made me leave Lebanon were the children, I was terrified of what could happen to them,” he would explain days later.
Meanwhile, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Patricia feels helpless at not being able to help her friend. “In the end he had taken his family and gone to Syria, but he planned to go to Iraq, because it was safer and because the situation in Syria was tremendous. “I didn’t dare ask the details.”
The family of the Beirutian driver spent two days and nights packed into buses to finally take refuge in Iraq. The guasap of October 10 does not receive a response until the 13th, when the family finally arrives in Baghdad. Iraq treats Lebanese refugees very well – “like guests” – Afif emphasizes. But “the situation drags on,” savings run out and it is not easy to live in a place “where you don’t know anyone.”
In one of Afif’s messages from Iraq—“you have kids and feel also moral and material pressure”—Patricia glimpses a request. “The signal is not explicit, but for me it is clear coming from a person who had never asked me for help.”
The days go by. On November 26, Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, announces a ceasefire in Lebanon after two and a half months of open war and 3,800 deaths. First, it attacks Beirut, which has been living through horrendous hours due to the bombings.
The news of the ceasefire provokes a new contact through guasap. The family will try to return to Beirut. Patricia is desperate to help her friend, but it was not possible to send money from Spain to Iraq. “Furthermore, the amount I could have sent would have been irrelevant.”
They decide that the money for the trip could be a loan from a relative in Lebanon, which would be paid with what was sent from Spain. “That’s when the idea of writing to my friends took shape, even though it made me feel a little shy.” Just when the Canarian aid worker finishes sending the message to her friends in Spain, she receives another from Afif from Baghdad: “The border with Syria (the country she must cross to reach Lebanon from Iraq) has been closed due to the advance of the rebels. ”.
Patricia sinks into “dark thoughts,” but almost at the same time “the barrage of bizums begins.” Friends of Patricia, but also their friends, react generously and quickly: they raise 2,955 euros in 54 bizums.
At this point, Afif’s benefactors in Spain already receive almost daily news about the difficulties the family faces through Patricia, the aid worker who now works with a cell phone and whom her former driver calls “habibi” (friend).
The money is already there, but we still have to leave Baghdad. On December 1, Afif spoke hopefully of returning to Lebanon, but eight days later, a new turn in the region’s politics shook the family again. Al Assad falls in Syria and the plane definitely becomes the only option. Finally, on December 16, after an agonizing wait, Afif, Layan, Nour and Hadi get a place on a Middle East Airways flight, the only company that was still operating between Iraq and Lebanon at that time.
The family is already in Beirut, the situation is not easy, but they are at home. The operation launched by Patricia will have one more positive consequence: Afif gives 10% of the money raised in Spain to Dalia, a woman dedicated to helping children in Lebanon, whom Patricia met years ago in Tire in one of their missions. For Dalia, the call from Afif, a stranger until then, and what he has to tell her are real surprises. “The butterfly effect,” says Patricia.
“War is something so terrible that feeling safe is the greatest blessing,” says Afif. The friendship continues by guasap.
*The names of the Lebanese family are fictitious at the request of the protagonists.
#bizum #guasap #return #Beirut
