AL-RAMA, Lebanon — Mohammed Bakkar spends his days with his father and son in a small classroom in Lebanon near the Syrian border, where they cook, eat, wash and sleep, waiting for the day they can reunite with the rest of their family.
Bakkar’s mother, wife and four other children are hundreds of miles away in Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp, squeezed into a white prefab trailer of corrugated metal. When they fled to Jordan after government attacks in their village in Syria in 2013, they thought it would be a few weeks until they were reunited. It has been more than two years.
The family’s story offers a snapshot of the human tragedy caused by the Syrian civil war. Marking its fourth anniversary this month, the war has resulted in more than 220,000 deaths and has driven more than 11 million of the prewar population of 23 million from their homes.
Of those, more than 3.8 million have fled to neighboring nations. They make up what many fear will be a new semi-permanent diaspora, scattered around the region.
Some languish in organized camps or shelters. Some scrounge on their own for housing in cities and towns. Others wash up in impromptu tent camps with little aid or support. They live hemmed in by lack of money or documents or by state restrictions.
“My suffering is strong. I haven’t seen my family for two years, and sometimes I fear that I will never see them again,” said Bakkar, 44, tearing up as he sat on the floor of his room before a metal bench lined with cooking pots, a jar of olives and other food.
The school where he is living in the border village of al-Rama houses 22 Syrian families, who share toilets and one room with running water where they can wash pots and dishes.
“I don’t know how we live. We don’t enjoy food or drink. … Every day that passes is like a year,” said Bakkar, sitting next to his 80-year-old father Ahmad in a humid classroom.
Syria as well is being reshaped by the war, which has escalated into a sectarian conflict between rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, and the government of President Bashar Assad, which is dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Separately, Sunni militants from the Islamic State group, an al-Qaeda offshoot, have seized a third of the country last year, declared a self-styled caliphate and imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law on the territory they control.
The Bakkars were farmers in the Syrian village of Eastern Bouyada, near the Lebanon border. The region was predominantly Sunni but most of the community fled as Assad’s troops and Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas overran the area in 2013, while Alawites, Shiites and Christians remained. The Bakkars fear they will never return and that the government wants to permanently change the area’s demographics.
Separated by war, the two halves of the family are struggling to get back together. On a recent day, Bakkar and his wife spoke on the phone. He told her he didn’t have the money to be smuggled into Jordan — 15,000 Syrian pounds, about $80, per person.
Lebanon recently imposed visas on Syrians, making it all the more difficult for refugees to re-enter if they leave.
As they spoke, their daughter Rukaya cried. “I miss my father very much,” she said.
