Presumably the vast majority of refugees have left their country fleeing the persistent threat of death as a result of the ongoing conflict, but they did not usually face there the problem of burying their dead, unless they were confined to a besieged area or under relentless bombardment, preventing them from the «luxury» of burying those who passed away.
Things become different in Lebanon for Syrian refugees. There are different factors that affect how easy or difficult this stage is for the bereaved family. There are four main factors: the geographical area, the security situation, the sectarian affiliation and the economic situation.
The geographical area overlaps with the security situation. Syrians in Lebanon primarily prefer to bury their dead in their hometowns for social and economic reasons. But this path may be blocked before the family of the deceased if their area is inaccessible due to the different forces that control it on the ground or because it is besieged and the theater of military operations.
This leads to having to make a difficult decision: to dispense with the burial of the deceased in their hometown and burying them instead in Lebanon. Thus, the search moves to the specifics of his area of residence, the availability of cemeteries, and the ease of the burial process and all matters related to it.
The influence of the religious and sectarian factor is of importance in the case of deciding to bury the deceased in Lebanon. Matters generally seem more straightforward for Christians and Druze, according to those concerned from both groups, than they are for the Sunni community. The reason is simply the low proportion of Christians and Druze among the refugee population, and the existence of «minority sectarianism» that creates a solidarity and makes things easier for the family of the deceased in their affliction – considered one of the humane events most conducive to solidarity. This sectarianism would not have remained as strong if the numbers of refugees of both groups were higher.
As for the Alawites, whose traditional areas of residence in the coastal regions, Damascus, Homs and its outskirts are all accessible areas. In addition, there is a common belief among the Syrians, which is backed up by witness accounts, that the Alawites enjoy preferential treatment at the Syrian border crossings, and as a result they exclude the option of burying their dead in Lebanon.
In the case of Sunnis, who make up the majority of Syrian refugees, i.e. hundreds of thousands of refugees and dozens of deaths daily, solidarity and sectarianism can sometimes be beneficial in outlying areas and the fringes. But in a city like Beirut, this situation seems like a nightmare befalling the family, compounding their affliction.
Adnan, a 71-year-old Syrian refugee living in the al-Rehab area south of Beirut, says that he recalls how in his childhood, merchants and shopkeepers in his hometown of Aleppo would come out of their shops as a funeral procession passed by to read al-Fatihah or participate in the funeral of the deceased. He bemoans his present compared to those days, as he had to leave the body of his brother who died of a heart attack in the hospital morgue fridges for four days, until he found an appropriate cemetery for him. «We transferred the body to Tripoli to bury him and we paid the costs of the morgue fridge, which is equivalent to half the cost of the tomb and funeral, which are already exorbitant,» he explains. «What would we have done if weren’t able to borrow money? Are we to throw the bodies of our loved ones into the sea?»
It is no surprise that the fourth factor, the economic situation of the family of the deceased, plays a fundamental role across all the other factors. Money makes it easier to transfer the body to Syria and to find a cemetery in different Lebanese regions, even in the most crowded ones.
«It’s become a business,» says Amina, an independent woman from Homs, as she describes herself. She tries sell by the side of the road her bunches of parsley and mint, and radishes and other plants, removing wilted leaves and sprinkling them with water. «Just as the sale of bread, food and medicine never stagnates, neither does the trade in matters of death and the deceased,» she says. «There’s no escaping hunger and disease, no escaping death.» She tells a story she heard about the burial of a Syrian refugee in a Bekaa cemetery for free. The following day, the cemetery guard extorted the family of the deceased, claiming that the villagers intervened and expressed their discontent. «Pay up $1,000 or dig out your son’s grave and move his body!»
There is a role and place for honorable and good people, both Syrians and Lebanese, in this story. Some stories are known, but many remain shrouded in silence. Many cemeteries have opened their gates to the Syrians free of charge or for nominal fees, such as the cemetery for strangers in Tripoli, or the one specifically for Syrians in Akkar, and in Saadnayel, the Bekaa Valley, Bechamoun, Daraya and Sibline. However, not all were able to continue operating, either because they reached maximum capacity or because they were limited exclusively to Syrians living in neighboring areas. According to the testimony of a Syrian relief activist in the Bekaa, «As soon as news of a free or semi-free cemetery in an area spreads, refugees from all over Lebanon rush to it.» According to him, this explains the extent of the problem and of the demand.
The cost of a tomb in most cases ranges between $400 and $3,000, and in special cases for the affluent, it can be several fold higher than $3,000. According to Sergios Abed, a Catholic priest and monk in Basilian Aleppians Order, the annual fee for a tomb at his monastery’s cemetery near Jounieh is $250. He explains that the renter of the tomb can use it to bury more than one person over time, and that there is a mass gravesite free of charge for those who do not wish to pay the annual tomb fee. A Palestinian activist working in relief for Syrian and Palestinian refugees explains that the cost of a tomb in Sibline, for example, is just under $400, and the cost in the suburbs of Beirut ranges between $1,500 and $3,000.
In addition to the cost of the tomb, there are also the religious rituals fees associated with funeral, the cost of the coffin or ritual washing, the cost of transporting the body, digging and preparing the grave, and perhaps the costs of the wake, which include renting a space as well as coffee and services. A man who was listening in on Amina’s testimony summarizes the situation with his southern accent by subverting an old saying: «The burden of the tomb on top of death, and the burden of paying for the tomb on the family of the deceased.»
Despite the efforts of some benevolent Lebanese and Syrian individuals and groups, those concerned still hear testimonies about secret night burials, cases of blackmail and bribes, and even cases in which the family of the deceased was forced to hand over the body of their son to strangers to bury him in the vicinity of the city of Arsal, without being able to accompany their son to his final resting place.
All of these stories clearly show that individual and civil initiatives and solutions to refugee problems, including the problem of funerals and cemeteries, are not enough. In a sector where the Lebanese have been suffering from problems relating to availability and high costs, even before the Syrian refugee crisis, especially in cities, the required solutions appear to be at the official and government levels, and it is not enough to demand the return of refugees tomorrow whence they came to solve the problems where they are today.