1/3. ”Until this day I still don’t know why she left. I was three years old when it happened. She took my little sister with her and left me and my two brothers with my father. I was nine when my dad remarried. My dad’s new wife would hit and punish us a lot. She never wanted us so my dad ended up putting the three of us in an orphanage. The first night in the orphanage was horrible. The supervisor would yell at us if we cried. I was separated from my brothers. I shared a room with a lot of kids and we were all scared. At night they would turn off all the lights. Until this day, I don’t like to sleep in the dark. Every day in the orphanage I would cry and I would barely eat out of stress. After six months I could not take it anymore and I walked away. When my dad found out that I escaped he was furious. He took the three of us out of the orphanage. He rented a room in Aleppo nearby where he lived and that became our new home. He took us out of school and he said that from now on we needed to work and make money. We started working as tailors. The money we would earn we needed to give to our father. At the age of fourteen, I decided that I wanted to be far away from my family so I moved to Damascus. I found a place to live and I worked there as a tailor. One day I received a phone call. It was one of my friends from Aleppo. He said: ‘’I only have a few minutes to talk but I have some bad news. You have to come home right away..”

“I am lucky because unlike many Palestinians I have a Lebanese passport. My grandparents are Palestinians from Haifa who fled to Syria. That is why I lived most of my life in Yarmouk, a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Syria. I left a few years ago because of the war. My mum is Lebanese it was quite easy for us to move to Beirut. Life here is also difficult but we feel blessed because we are safe. My dad had trouble finding work so I am doing my best to support my family financially. Sometimes I feel really bad for everyone in the camp. A few weeks ago I raised money to buy food and supplies for the people in Yarmouk. I just came back from my trip to Syria. I feel responsible for everyone left behind. I just wish there was more I could do but at the same time I know that I have to start building my own life.. Welcome to life in the Middle-East.”
(Beirut, Lebanon

“I was born during the Civil War here in Lebanon. I remember spending most of my early childhood underground in shelters, hiding from the bombs. Being outdoors was always considered a dangerous thing. When I was 21, a friend invited me to hike in the mountains. It is hard to explain but coming from war, the feeling of being in the mountains gives me such a sense of freedom. When the 2006 war started, I was 22. I could not handle the stress so I left Beirut and I went to the only place where I felt safe: the mountains. As the years went by I started to climb more and higher mountains. Physically I am not the strongest or the fastest mountaineer but it has always been my passion that has given me strength. In a few days I’ll be flying to Antarctica to climb Mount Vinson. People have told me that I should get married and have children instead. I had to break a lot of walls to get where I am today. I have climbed 26 mountains and I am the first person in my whole family to get their PHD. I want to show that it is possible, as a Lebanese woman to climb each of the seven summits. Some have called it rebellious, I call it following my heart.”
(Beirut, Lebanon)

“For a long time I thought that I was unhappy because I was living in Lebanon. I have left Beirut many times. I travelled a lot, mostly to South America and I discovered a spiritual side to myself. Every time I came back to Beirut, I thought of it as a place with negative energy. Maybe it has something to do with the war and everything we went through here but last summer that changed. I went to Amsterdam to get my NLP practitioner certification. NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. learning NLP is like learning the language of your own mind. I learned so much from that experience and also from the Dutch culture. Amsterdam was an eye-opening-experience. It is a city with so many different people with different ideas and ideologies but they all co-exist. It made me realize that it is not Beirut that is the problem, it was me. I was keeping myself from being happy. All I gotta do is just live my life, be myself and the rest of the world will catch up. Eventually.”
(Beirut, Lebanon)

2/2 “I could never admit that I was an addict until that horrible incident. I had returned to Lebanon after graduation and one weekend, I went to the mountains to a rave with my friends. I was supposed to go with my girlfriend but she was so fed up with my addiction that she broke up with me. At the party I saw her kissing another man. I was hallucinating and in my mind she was looking at me while kissing him. After four days of partying and using drugs without any sleep or food I was exhausted. I tried to find my friend who I left my car keys with but I could not find her. When I called she said that she was already back in Beirut. I asked her to come back to bring the keys but she refused. Never before did I experience such a deep sense of loneliness. I started to cry so intensely and everyone who passed by started to cry as well. There I was, an addict, alone without any help from my friends, without my girlfriend. I ordered a cab, who brought me my car keys. I went straight to my mother’s house and I said to her: ‘’I am not leaving the house until we find a rehab.’’ It was the first time I admitted that I was an addict. The next day I quit my job and I went to a rehab in the mountains. I went to rehab for 1 year and 3 months and for the first time I started to mourn my father. I started to talk about my feelings and everything I had been through. Slowly I got my life back on track. I am now an art director and I love my job. I still go to weekly meetings organized by the rehab. I can not describe how thankful I am. I got a second chance to life.”