Scenes of humanity from the Syrian border

Kızıltepe / Mardin: I had never seen a child suffering from meningitis before. He was lying motionless on a bed made up on the floor at the corner of the room. His eyes were fixed at the ceiling; there was no movement in his eyes. I could not understand during the 10 minutes I was in the room whether he noticed me or not.

Three-year-old Halid emigrated to Turkey with his family one and a half years ago from  Serekaniye right across Şanlıurfa’s Ceylanpınar district after their town was bombed for days. With his mother, father and three siblings, they first went to the refugee camp at Ceylanpınar, but Halid’s illness was noticed while there. They were sent to a hospital in Diyarbakır, but the treatment did not yield any results. The family took the child to Mardin Kızıltepe’s Şenyurt.

Şenyurt is a small settlement of 2,000 people, one of the two border gates of Mardin to Syria. Halid’s family has rented a room in a village house here, paying 100 Turkish Liras monthly. Father Şiar was a butcher in Syria; he works daily jobs now. He said he works for 20 liras daily, but jobs are not available all the time. “Sometimes, I cannot find work for 10 days,” he said.

Şenyurt is an important observation point in terms of seeing the dimensions of the Syrian refugee problem at a micro-scale. Even a short tour of Şenyurt is enough to understand the seriousness of the situation.

A crowded family with children is waiting at the park right next to the border to return to Syria. Because they have missed the closing hour of the border post, they have to wait until the next morning.

While we were talking to the soldiers at the post, a small Syrian child accompanied us...