medicine, teeth cleaning, maybe a little hope...

I've been to Jaramana twice now. Located in Southern Damascus, this neighborhood is home to a large number of Christian Iraqi refugees. Most Iraqis exist here in a frustrating state of limbo between the homeland they fled and the fragile hope of either return or resettlement in yet another country. The Iraqis I've spoken with there live in sparsely furnished apartments, woven pictures of the Last Supper and token family photos displayed proudly on otherwise bare walls. Their hospitality is unfailing, despite their altogether too evident hardships.

My visit to Jaramana this morning comprised a tour of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent's Poly Clinic, a joint effort of the SARC and the UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, the organization which has registered over 150,000 refugees in Syria to date. The actual number of refugees is much, much higher - somewhere around 1.2 million). At the Poly Clinic, registered refugees can come and receive different kinds of medical care, from dental work to pediatric, gynecology to psychiatric help. All this is housed in one building, and refugees pay only 20% of the cost of the services. At this clinic in Jaramana, in operation for just a little over a year, more than 30,000 Iraqis are registered; 300-400 patients receive treatment daily.

Iraqis wait outside the Jaramana clinic.
A dental technician at the clinic shows off her equipment.

There's a similar Poly Clinic just fifteen minutes away, right down the street from the Shi'ia pilgrimage site of Saida Zeinab. As busloads of Iranian pilgrims head for the shrine, small groups of Iraqis line up for services inside the SARC clinic. This building seems bigger, brighter, newer than the Jaramana clinic, and I wonder at the disparity between the two; I then learn that the Saida Zeinab clinic has been in operation for 10 years, serving Iraqis who fled Saddam's reign after the first Gulf War. This building is one year old, and the 25 doctors and 65 nurses who work there see a thousand patients on average every day.

The staff who showed us around the clinic were quick to let us know that they had the technology, the medicine, and the personnel resources they needed to help these Iraqis. The queues in the waiting room demonstrated the high demand for the clinic's services - and also the distressing situation in which many of the families find themselves. I am told there are 180 cancer cases that the clinic has seen and referred to a nearby hospital; a disproportionate number of these are skin cancer cases due to chemical bomb explosions. These Iraqis are still eligible to pay only 20% of their care, though the expense is often so great that the UNHCR will waive the fees completely.

The personnel manager of the Saida Zeinab clinic has been there 5 years and seen too much misery in the lives of the Iraqi patients. He is proud of the assistance that his clinic is able to provide - but he yearns for a day when the need for the clinic will not be so great. When asked to speak about the situation of the Iraqis, he refuses - go see it with your own eyes, he says. See how hard we work and what we accomplish; see for yourselves the ways in which these Iraqis suffer.

It's hard not to see it.

outside the Saida Zeinab Poly Clinic.