Mehdi and Mohammad have never crossed paths. Yet, they have plenty in common. The two teenagers work to help their families make ends meet as well as go to school. Mehdi is Lebanese; Mohammad is Syrian.
«Ouzai», a center created by the NGO Beyond, was set up just under two years ago to help vulnerable children, whether Lebanese or foreign.
Mehdi, 14, comes from Ras el-Ain in Baalbek and goes to the center every day. He comes here every morning to study. He takes non-formal mathematics, Arabic and English classes. A year ago, not having his ninth grade official certificate, he dropped out of school. His father, a newspaper salesman in the morning and a cakes distributor in the afternoons and evenings, was getting impoverished by the day. So, he decided to take his children out of private school. And since he could not afford to pay Mehdi’s tuition fees, the little boy was not able to obtain a certificate that would allow him to be admitted to a public school.
«My sister still goes to school. My older brother works. He sells computers and tinkers with all that has to do with electricity,» says Mehdi, who looks much younger than his age.
So, in the mornings he goes to the Beyond center and comes back home at 1:00 pm. From 2:00 to 7:00 pm he works in his cousin’s hair salon. He is the shampoo boy. Then, he leaves to help his father distribute cakes and comes back home to sleep.
«The hairdresser pays me a salary and customers tip me. Everyday I make 10,000 Lebanese pounds on average, I give them to my mother and keep some pennies for myself,» says Mehdi, who loves to play football with his friends in his free time.
Many of them do not work. The teenager does not envy them. Meekly accepting his fate, he says with a smile: «That’s how it is» «I have to help my father. I worry about him. He can’t provide for all our needs by himself. He’s tired all the time. Besides my brother wants to find him a good job and when I grow up I’ll buy him a house,» he adds with resolution. What does he want to become when he grows up? «A soldier in the Lebanese Army,» he says.
What is his favorite time of the day? «At one in the afternoon, when I come back home to eat and rest a little before leaving back to work.» Sometimes he also manages to make some time for rest and recreation with his friends when he leaves work early.
On weekends, he sometimes goes to the village. «I will go pray at my maternal grandfather’s grave. He died four months ago. He loved me very much. I did too,» he adds.
«Adopt the Lebanese Accent»
Nabaa, main street. Mohammad, 15, is a Syrian refugee who lives with his family in a small apartment, all clean, in this poor neighborhood in Beirut’s eastern suburb.
Every morning Mohammad goes to the Uruguay public school in Sin el-Fil. In the afternoons and evenings, he works as a waiter in a company that provides various tourist services. He is called up when there are weddings or receptions. The teenager has two sisters and a young brother who go to school and do not work and an older brother, who is currently in difficulty. «He has stopped his schooling and doesn’t want to work. He says that there’s no point in working since we’re going to give the money to our parents. I’m worried about my family. We have to pay the rent. My father works by the day, he works intermittently and now after falling from a ladder he has broken three vertebrae in his back,» says Mohammad, who was dreaming of becoming an astronaut before the war in Syria. Today, all that he wants is to get his ninth grade official diploma and learn a trade.
A native of Aleppo, Mohammed’s father worked in construction in Lebanon before the war in Syria. With the war, the whole family moved to the land of the cedars.
«Everything has changed for me. The language, I had to learn the language with the right accent, make new friends, get used to a new neighborhood and the main thing go to work,» says Mohammed.
The teenager’s family is currently helped by the Libami association. «Before taking this new job, I had another pace of life. I would go to school in the morning. Then I would go to the Libami premises where I would eat and where they would help me a little with my homework, and then I went to work. I prepared hookahs in a cafe located below the premises of the association. Then, one day while I was pulling the motorcycle of the delivery boy, because he was late and we had to close, the army intelligence services caught me,» he says.
Mohammed, who was 14 at the time, was detained and beaten. He also lost his job.
«Nowadays, I get 24 dollars a day when there are receptions. It’s good money. I have to work from 2 pm until 2 in the morning, sometimes parties continue into the night. It’s tiring but it’s also quick money in a way,» he explains.
The teenager has also taken other small jobs, for many months, he has worked in Hamra carrying the shopping bags of customers in a supermarket.
Has he been the victim of meanness? «No, never. People are nice. Kids my age that would come with their parent smiled at me and the adults gave me good tips.» Has he ever envied these children? The question surprises him, Mohammed replies: «Not at all. They have their lives and I have mine. That’s how life is.»
Drawing on a sidewalk in Beirut
Nasser and Mohammed-Ali Darwish are brothers. They are Syrian refugees from Aleppo, 11 and 9 years old respectively and they love drawing. Not only that, but on August 8 they will exhibit their postcards with the vivid colors and naïve drawings in Venice, Italy.
It all began a few months ago when the two boys, whose mother died in Syria and father was not working, started drawing in public by setting up a table and two chairs on a sidewalk in Mar Mikhael, a boho neighborhood of Beirut, every Saturday exhibiting their drawings on a clothesline between a tree and a power pole.
The idea was that of the two brothers who were encouraged by the owners and employers of pubs, restaurants and businesses in the neighborhood. A bookseller began to print their drawings in postcard format, restaurant owners put up the small colorful cards and the employers of the pubs and restaurants made them something to eat, whether it is when they were at their table outdoors drawing or when they went inside soliciting customers.
The residents have known them for more than four years. Before beginning to draw, the children begged for money on the sidewalks of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh every evening.
«Even if they wander the streets to sell their postcards, these children are protected by the neighborhood’s inhabitants who are very kind to them,» says Samer Kozah, the gallerist from Damascus who lives in Lebanon, owing to whom the two boys have become famous.
«It was a simple Facebook status post that was shared thousands of times,» he says.
Today, after many articles in the press and various TV reports, the children are sponsored by a printing shop in the neighborhood that prints their drawings, and artists have offered to teach them the various drawing and painting techniques.
Now they go to school and naturally dream of becoming painters, real painters, when they grow up.