Syria: A Family’s Struggle in Latakia

Syria’s middle class is starting to feel the pinch of rising prices and fuel shortages while their personal safety continues to be in question. Al-Akhbar takes a closer look at the life of one family currently living in Latakia.

Latakia – Like other areas and provinces in Syria, Latakia is experiencing repeated power outages, some as long as 8 hours each day. These outages occur at different times in different areas. They have coincided with the arrival of winter and imposed a new way of life and social interaction on the people of the city.

Before the lights go out in a certain area, young people pack up their laptops and head toward the area where the electricity has just been restored. This is part of their attempt to circumvent the darkness and cold of their homes by chatting and browsing the pages of social networking sites, now their last resort.

Ismail Muhammad, the owner of a cafe in the center of the old town said to Al-Akhbar: “Our work now depends on whether there is electricity or not. I am thinking of buying a generator for the cafe because it is gradually losing its customers.”

The cafe owner complains of the unprecedented rise in the prices of raw materials: “The prices of all basic goods have gone up by more than 30 percent recently. They are still rising, and there is no indication or glimmer of hope that prices in general will go back to what they were before.”

Until now, prices at the cafe are “moderate and suitable for everyone as long as the situation is bearable. But if prices continue to rise, then I will have to raise them,” adds the owner.

Rahaf K. (24) belongs to an Alawi family “but my father was and still is anti-regime, which has made it harder for him to make a living. He was fired from his government job because of his political views and because he belonged to the Syrian Communist Party.”

Rahaf is the middle daughter in a family of six. The father, Abu Khalil, who is a civil engineer, was a building contractor for several years. However, when the situation in Syria began to change, his contracts and projects began to gradually dry up. Recently, he has had to stop all his work.

“Most laborers and artisans working on my projects come from the nearby province of Homs, particularly from Talkalakh and al-Qasir, where entering and leaving those areas has become an almost suicidal act these days. There is also a severe shortage of diesel for construction equipment, so all my work has stopped,” Abu Khalil says.

Rahaf says that she expected to find work soon after her imminent graduation from the English department at Tishreen University in Latakia. “But it seems that the economic situation in the province is deteriorating quickly. It was really difficult to find work before this situation started, but now thousands of workers and employees have been laid off and finding work has become impossible,” she says.

This is also the case with Khalil, the eldest son in the family. He worked as a communications engineer in a joint Syrian-French company, but they terminated the contracts of all their employees and dissolved the partnership.

“The first and last to suffer from this situation are the middle classes,” Khalil says. He adds that all the reforms and new laws offered by the Syrian regime “are still treading water. It is simply like throwing dust in someone’s eyes. But so is everything on offer from the groups in the Syrian revolution, such as the [Syrian] National Council, the coordination committees, and others. They are so far removed from the economic, political, and security situation experienced by Syrian society today, which is a product of their actions from the beginning of the troubles to this day.”

Khalil is now looking for work abroad: “It generally makes no difference whether this is in an Arab or foreign country. But the idea of immigrating or working far away from my family and country, which I have always rejected, is now the only solution for me to repay the debts I have accumulated in the last four months.”

As a result of the violent events and the sectarian fighting in Homs, which is no longer a secret, a number of the family’s relatives have escaped, seeking refuge with family in Latakia. This has placed an additional burden on the family’s finances.

“With the arrival of relatives, the family’s expenditures have increased on many levels, including food and basic necessities. Fuel, whether gas or diesel, was not available anyway,” Um Khalil says.

Um Khalil does not recall ever having to worry about saving or being economical with food. With the number of family members increasing, and with living conditions so difficult, she now has to stretch her budget so that none of the family members or the guests feel that money is tight.

The story of Sanaa, the youngest daughter in the family, demonstrates the changing views among large sectors of Syrian society regarding the crisis. In the early months of the uprising, the medical student remained faithful to her opposition of the regime. She was brought up on these ideas and was convinced of them by the age of 22.

However, a painful and unexpected event was enough for her to reconsider: “As I was leaving Homs University at midday, a number of armed young men stopped me. They asked me which sect I belonged to, and when they found out I was Alawi, one of them held his gun to my head and they told me not to come back to the university.”

It is difficult for Sanaa, who was passionate about the revolution, to forget the moments of terror she experienced.

“I chose not to go back to the university. Even if I lose an academic year, it is better than being killed by those I used to believe were real revolutionaries who believed in freedom, and who did not distinguish between people based on their sect,” she says.

As for Rahaf, she now believes that the hidden struggle between the regime and the Syrian opposition to secure the support and loyalty of the middle class, a majority in Syrian society, “is already lost, because the dictatorship that the many shades of opposition are trying to impose on Syrian society is not so different from the practices of the regime itself.”

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.