Tent and garden: Displaced Syria teen recreates lost family home

Displaced Syrian, Wissam Diab, 19, plays the oud at his new home, a tent surrounded by luscious plants, which recreates his childhood home, in the town of Atme in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. (AFP)
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Updated 25 November 2020
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Tent and garden: Displaced Syria teen recreates lost family home

  • Fears over the spread of the coronavirus forces Syrian family to move somewhere more secluded

ATME, Syria: Among the olive trees in northwestern Syria, displaced teenager Wissam Diab plucks an oud outside his new home, a tent surrounded by luscious plants.

Inside, there are more tumbling indoor plants and a collection of tiny cacti, as well as dozens of books lined up on a cloth-covered table from authors such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Haruki Murakami and Egypt’s celebrated Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Syria’s war forced the Diab family to flee their village of Kafr Zita in central Hama province, but when 19-year-old Wissam moved into a tent in northwestern Syria he decided to recreate his childhood home.

“It’s been four years, and we haven’t been able to find a house or go back home,” said the young man with green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair.

“What I’ve done with the tent is me trying to settle down.”

And settle down he did in his own tent in an olive grove in the area of Atme, in Idlib province near the Turkish border, while his parents and two sisters have a separate tent next door.

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A patterned stone path leads up to the front door and wooden sticks top the canvas roof.

All around, plants and flowering shrubs thrive in large plastic pots, or in neat rows in the soil of his front garden.

Indoors, he has hung a textile curtain along the tarpaulin wall, and made a small living room with a floor-level sofa.

An ornate red carpet pads out his tent underfoot.

“Our home was like this. We had a garden, we had a library, we had a lot of flowers,” he said. It “was like this, but much, much better.”

Syria’s war has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced millions since starting in 2011.

In Idlib, a major rebel bastion, around half of the 3 million inhabitants live in tents or shelters, many after losing their homes in other parts of the country now back under government control.

In October 2016, Diab and his family were forced to flee their home further south, as regime aircraft bombarded the surrounding area in a bloody campaign that killed his only brother.

Scrolling through his smart phone, Diab shows images of their old home in Kafr Zita, which he says was blitzed in the fighting.

The family lived in a displacement camp until eight months ago.

But as fears mounted over the spread there of the novel coronavirus, they decided to move away to somewhere more secluded.

When they ran for their lives four years ago, the Diabs grabbed the bare necessities and Wissam managed to save a few of his precious books.

His collection now contains 85 novels and other books, including translated works by Dostoyevsky or Murakami, he says.

“Here I had to start again from scratch. I bought plants and books, and built the library up again,” he said.

To pass the time, he is also teaching himself to play the oud via tutorials on YouTube.

Diab says many of his neighbors were surprised to see how much energy he had poured into transforming his tent.

But the young Syrian says he fears it will be some time before anybody can go home.

“I know we will be here for a while,” he said.

So in the meanwhile, he looks after his cacti collection and waters his creeping jasmine.


38 Palestinians killed in new shootings near food distribution centers, medics say

Updated 5 sec ago
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38 Palestinians killed in new shootings near food distribution centers, medics say

KHAN YOUNIS: Gaza’s Health Ministry says 38 Palestinians have been killed in new shootings in areas of food distribution centers in the south of the territory.
The toll Monday was the deadliest yet in the near-daily shootings that have taken place as thousands of Palestinians move through Israeli military-controlled areas to reach the food centers. Witnesses say Israeli troops open fire in an attempt to control the crowds.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military on Monday’s deaths. It has said in previous instances that troops fired warning shots at what it calls suspects approaching their positions.

Erdogan tells Putin that Israel threatens regional security

Updated 27 min 41 sec ago
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Erdogan tells Putin that Israel threatens regional security

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of threatening security in the Middle East, which he said cannot tolerate another war, in a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday, his office said.
Erdogan was quoted saying: “The spiral of violence that began with Israel’s attacks on Iran has put the security of the entire region at risk, (and) that the lawless attitude of the (Israeli premier Benjamin) Netanyahu government poses a clear threat to the international system, and that the region cannot tolerate a new war.”


UN rights chief decries ‘horrifying’ suffering in Gaza and urges leaders to pressure Israel, Hamas

Updated 31 min 12 sec ago
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UN rights chief decries ‘horrifying’ suffering in Gaza and urges leaders to pressure Israel, Hamas

  • The UN human rights chief says Israel’s warfare in Gaza is inflicting “horrifying, unconscionable suffering” on Palestinians
  • olker Türk made the comments at the opening of the latest Human Rights Council session on Monday

GENEVA: The UN human rights chief said Israel’s warfare in Gaza is inflicting “horrifying, unconscionable suffering” on Palestinians and urged government leaders on Monday to exert pressure on Israel’s government and the militant group Hamas to end it.
Volker Türk made the comments at the opening of the latest Human Rights Council session on Monday, in a broad address that also raised concerns about escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, the fallout from US tariffs, and China’s human rights record — alongside wars and conflict in places like Sudan and Ukraine.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has regularly spoken out about bloodshed in Gaza and called for the release of Israeli hostages held by armed Palestinian militants, used some of his most forceful words yet to highlight the Mideast violence.
“Israel’s means and methods of warfare are inflicting horrifying, unconscionable suffering on Palestinians in Gaza,” Türk told the 47-member-country body, which Israeli authorities have regularly accused of anti-Israel bias. The Trump administration has kept the United States, Israel’s top ally, out of the council proceedings.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says that women and children make up most of the dead but it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
“The facts speak for themselves. Everyone in government needs to wake up to what is happening in Gaza,” Türk said. “All those with influence must exert maximum pressure on Israel and Hamas, to put an end to this unbearable suffering.”
The rights chief noted an increase in civilian casualties in Ukraine, nearly 3 1/2 years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. He also denounced executions without a fair trial and “wide-scale sexual violence, including against children” in Sudan.
Without mentioning President Donald Trump by name, Türk likened the US tariffs he imposed in April to “a high-stakes poker game, with the global economy as the bank.”
“But the shockwaves of a trade war will hit Least Developed Countries with the force of a tsunami,” he said, warning of a potentially “devastating” impact on exporters in Asia, and the prospect of higher costs for food, health care and education in places.
Türk expressed concerns about US deportations of non-nationals, including to third countries, and called on authorities to respect the right to peaceful assembly.
The council session, which has been shortened by 2 1/2 days because of funding issues at the UN, is set to run through July 9. The Geneva-based council is the UN’s top human rights body.


Iran says parliament is preparing bill to leave nuclear non-proliferation treaty

Updated 16 June 2025
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Iran says parliament is preparing bill to leave nuclear non-proliferation treaty

DUBAI: Iranian parliamentarians are preparing a bill that could push Tehran toward exiting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the foreign ministry said on Monday, while reiterating Tehran’s official stance against developing nuclear weapons.
“In light of recent developments, we will take an appropriate decision. Government has to enforce parliament bills but such a proposal is just being prepared and we will coordinate in the later stages with parliament,” the ministry’s spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said, when asked at a press conference about Tehran potentially leaving the NPT.
The NPT, which Iran ratified in 1970, guarantees countries the right to pursue civilian nuclear power in return for requiring them to forego atomic weapons and cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.

Israel began bombing Iran last week, saying Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb. Iran has always said its nuclear program is peaceful, although the IAEA declared last week that Tehran was in violation of its NPT obligations.
President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated on Monday that nuclear weapons were against a religious edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s state media said that no decision on quitting the NPT had yet been made by parliament, while a parliamentarian said that the proposal was at the initial stages of the legal process.
Baghaei said that developments such as Israel’s attack “naturally affect the strategic decisions of the state,” noting that Israel’s attack had followed the IAEA resolution, which he suggested was to blame.
“Those voting for the resolution prepared the ground for the attack,” Baghaei said.
Israel, which never joined the NPT, is widely assumed by regional governments to possess nuclear weapons, although it does not confirm or deny this.
“The Zionist regime is the only possessor of weapons of mass destruction in the region,” Baghaei said.


Israel says deports last three Gaza flotilla activists to Jordan

Updated 16 June 2025
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Israel says deports last three Gaza flotilla activists to Jordan

JERUSALEM: Israel said Monday it deported the last three remaining activists from an aid flotilla that attempted to reach the war-torn Gaza Strip last week.
“The last three participants remaining from the “Selfie Yacht” (flotilla) were transferred this morning to Jordan via the Allenby Crossing,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, adding they included one Dutch and two French nationals.