The Tortured in the Huts

A detailed report on misery, disease, and hunger in Beirut

"The hut" is a word that has been striking our ears ever since we devoted ourselves to social studies. And yet we do not grasp its meaning fully, nor do we feel the dread of the grievous reality it contains. Often we have become acquainted with the kinds of life the poor live, and passed by their wretched dwellings — indeed we have often entered them — but we never expected worse than what we had seen until we turned to studying "the hut" and the dwellers of the hut in a deep and unhurried study.

A few rounds in the Syriac camp, and others in the Quarantina and Slaughterhouse quarter, suffice for us to see the horror, the torment, and the destitution suffered by the poor wretches who live in these miserable places.

We shall set before our dear readers the condition of these tortured people without resorting to partisan political notions or philosophical views; we shall present it briefly and clearly. Here we are now in the Syriac camp, a camp we know thoroughly because of our service in the Union for the "Protection of Childhood and Motherhood"; and yet we lately discovered new information about persons who had remained strangers to the circle of our social work — such as this poor man "Karim," a man of forty who lives alone in his hut with neither wife nor child. For that reason we would never have approached him to offer him our services for mothers and children, had not mercy and pity touched some of the neighbors, who said, "You must visit Karim." So we went. We were received by a man almost crippled because of typhoid — so the neighbor women told us — who expresses his thoughts with difficulty, in Turkish — that too because of the typhoid. He lives in a hut that resembles an outhouse, though its outward appearance is not bad: instead of walls built of tin sheets and wood, its walls were of mud and concrete. But how great was our astonishment when we cast a glance inside! For Karim's hut was nothing but a corner of another house or hut whose people had taken pity on "Karim" and left it to him. How could this poor man stretch out in this corner? Karim's house was a meter and a half long, one meter wide, and one meter 75 centimeters high.

As for "Karim's" bedding, it consisted of some worn rags and filthy tatters, and in one of the hut's walls there is a small gap that leaves a way for light, air, and — in the days of winter — rain to seep in. There is, of course, neither electricity nor water. As for the latrines shared with the neighbors, they are a spacious stage for the stray rats that visit them to dance their nightly dances and then set off for a stroll across the chests of the sleepers!

Karim was detailing these sweet tidings to us as he kneaded mud to repair the walls and cut down the rats' nightly dances.

Before leaving Karim and commending him to God, we cast one more glance at his miserable dwelling, and there, amid the manifestations of black misery, we saw two pictures of candidates in the elections — Charles Helou and Moussa Freij — hanging on the wall, smiling in innocence and purity. And it occurred to me that these two deputies may never know that there are men among their brothers and their electors who live as "Karim" lives.

We moved on to other huts and saw that some families, hoping to escape the dampness of the earth and the pits, the hardness of the stones, and the filth of the mud, had built platforms of wood that raise them above the ground, leaving a patch of bare earth at the entrance of the room where they set the old chest of belongings, the pots, or the kerosene stove. Thus lives the family of Salim, which at first lived in the stair-room of a building — a place shut in on every side. Then it moved and settled in this hut, two meters long and two and a half meters high. We may well be astonished to learn that six persons live in this hut: the wife, the two grown boys, a girl of twelve, a child of four, and an adopted little girl of eight. In this hut there is no bathroom, no kitchen, no water. There is, rather, a square 75 centimeters long at the entrance that allows the children to bathe once the door is shut, without the water flooding the wooden platform, the mats, and the bedding. As for the latrine, it is tidy and clean, on the testimony of the wife, who said, "It is connected to the sewers" — and she said it with pride and glory! For all the other huts have nothing but pits in which the filth collects, to be emptied out from time to time.

We come now to a hut like the ones before it. It is Jamila's hut.

Jamila is a woman who lives with her husband, without children. No sooner do you reach Jamila's hut than a feeling steals over you that this couple are not in the same misery as their fellows. Her room is square, four meters long.

In one of its walls is a wide window. Jamila was stretched out on the wooden platform, and her husband was sitting behind the worktable — he is a cobbler. The spaciousness of the room allows him to practice his trade, which does not bring him much, as he says. And Jamila's hut is without latrines, water, kitchen, or electricity.

Do not imagine that this family of Jamila's is happy for all the spaciousness of its room. If it had a little money, it would tear down this room and build two small modern rooms, and so be assured of warmth and comfort. For this big room has tottering walls — it may fall at any moment, since it is built, like some huts in that district, in the form of wooden laths filled in with earth and concrete, and the outer wall is bowed in a terrifying way. Its owners have tried to keep it from falling by bracing it with a long plank of wood. And we found ourselves asking how these people dare to sleep in such a hut. Did we not hear, last year, someone say to us: "Our hut has collapsed, and we are living with our neighbors; perhaps we shall manage to build another"?

We went back and entered the hut of the family of "Khanum," which lies on the road leading to the Hôtel-Dieu.

We used to step into this hut on our way there and back. Here we found a newborn not yet a week old, and an old woman who was a contemporary of Ibrahim Pasha. She is blind and hard of hearing, and whenever we enter the house she always wishes us entry into the kingdom of heaven... As for herself, she did not look at all resolved to cross that threshold in the near future!

This room is inhabited by eight persons; it is a square three meters on a side and two and a half meters high. It has no windows except a gap between the walls, opened so that light and air may seep through. Attached to this room — or this hut — is a passageway two meters long and one meter wide, which the family uses as kitchen, bathroom, and latrine.

And I apologize for my constant talk of latrines.

But I must be realistic in setting out the condition of these wretches and the harsh circumstances of their lives. The truth is that the sanitary arrangements in this Syriac camp give no cause for comfort — though they are no worse than those of the other places we visited.