My first experience about Syria is from when I was 5. In the downtown of Damascus, three people were hanged. But first they were skinned and their bodies were rolled into newspapers. Their blood was dripping. They were traitors. At least according to Assad Sr.'s secret police.
We are sitting on a bench with Rami in the motor shop Beirut Cafe Racers, situated in Beirut's hip party district, Mar Mikhael. Rami is Syrian, living in Lebanon. Not a refugee. Came to university eleven years ago and got stuck here. He was a refugee when he was 5, when they had to flee from the Iraqi occupation in the summer of 1991 from Kuwait, living there with his parents,.
-I'm from Beirut, but because of the fuss about the refugees, this is hanging in the air a bit now. The Syrians are on one hand too numerous, on the other hand hated for a series of historical reasons. Memories of the years of the occupation are still too fresh- explains Remi, who is worried about his residence permit with what he can work here too. He is from the lucky ones amongst the Syrians living in Lebanon.
Anyhow, Lebanon is kind of an antithesis of everything, that is Europe, especially Hungary. According to official data, 1.4 million refugees are living in the country with a population of 4 million, people who ran off from the civil war that erupted in the neighbouring Syria in 2011. According to unofficial data they are reaching 2 million. It's worth to contemplate for a moment on this fact. 4 million- 2 million. It is as if 5 million refugees were residing in Hungary constantly, as a way of life. Comes to all this, the a totally dysfunctional governance structure that Lebanon has, in which the “political agreement” part has been derailed long ago and ordinary people just shrug if the government is mentioned. The fact that the country hasn't had a president for 19 months by now, could pass. It is not a presidential system. The fact that the Sunni prime minister and the Shiite speaker of the house, the two parties of the governing coalition couldn't reach an agreement over his person, signals more serious problems.
Of course corruption is the biggest problem here too. Lebanese have lived with the thing for a while. Electricity stalls? We solve it with generators. Piped water is does not running? No problem, we'll bring water from elsewhere. The glass spilt on the end of August, when waste removel ceased to operate. The landfill have became full , and there is no more money for it. Because it disappeared. In somebody's pocket. No rubbish disposal. And the rubbish just gathers. It stood on the streets for a while, then local councils have solved it somehow. The collection only. Disposal is still a problem. Under highway bridges, on river- and canalbanks. Now firstly everybody is concerned what happens when autumn rains arrive. From the trash-case emerged a movement, called “You stink!”. This by now is less about waste disposal, a gradual metamorphoses happened and the movement is working against the political leadership and the boundlessly corrupt system.
The crowd is gathering in the centre of Beirut, in the streets surrounding the square before La Gray Hotel. On the day before the crowd (which wasn't only constituted by adventurous youngsters) was dispersed by tear gas and watercannons. Now they came to demand the release of the people arrested previous day. The street next to the hotel cannot be accessed is blocked already. Since the beginning of the protests, the whole downtown has been locked down with barbed wires, iron cordon and concrete blocks. The downtown, situated next to the former Green Line and shot to pieces during the civil war, already looks like a movie set with its brand new buildings, and now hardly a person walks on the streets. Entry is only possible through the gates controlled by the police. The road leading to the building of the parliament is closed by barbed wire too, and a creative fence. This one has trash all over it. The walls have the slogan of the movement “You stink!” written everywhere, along with others such as “Lebanon is not your corner shop!”
We are standing some streets away from the central square of downtown, where government buildings stand, also a clocktower in the middle of the square, in which what else but a Rolex reminds to the passing of time. There is not as big a roughhouse as was one day before. No tear gas, no watercannon. But it is not going to stay this way.
-Nobody thought that all that is happening in Lebanon will overspill over trash- explains Bente Scheller, director of the Lebanese program of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The refugee thing would have been totally obvious. Everything was in place to be the focal point of a turmoil, but people have endured surprisingly well.
Lebanon didn't sign any type of agreement on refugees, but its experiences about refugees are recalled by the collective memory as: bitter. The civil war is also blamed mostly on the Palestinians who arrived into the country and are living in camps, which is of course not true, just part of the truth. What we have now is that in January this year, visa rules concerning Syrians had been changed. Previously they could get a six-month visa by default, without any struggle. Now they can only come for shopping, medical services and to apply for visa. And they get to pay 1000 US Dollars on the border as deposit. Thus huge majority of the refugees living here are here on completely illegal terms. For years children are born in these refugee families with noone registering them. Officially they don't even exist.
For those who would like to go to school are bad news that the public education has an astoundingly low quality, private education is unaffordabla, there is no Arabian curriculum. Some NGO-s are dealing with children and primarily try to focus on integration. Waterdrop in the sea of course. The majority of the children over ten years are supporting their family with working as child workers and boosts the economy as cheap labour force. Some sources estimate the number of school-aged refugee children to be around four hundred thousand.
But still, opposed to the four million Lebanese are two million Syrians, as refugees. In Lebanon, not just the political balance but also religious composition is part of political deicisions. And if that many Syrian refugee gets recognised, balance will be lost. Two million, mostly Sunni, would easily turn everything. And maybe not even the Lebanese Sunnis want that wholeheartedly.
What is remarkable though is that this refugee mass has integrated into the fabric of Lebanese society in a way that it is hardly noticeable. Of course Beirut's real estate building fever is served exclusively by Syrian manual workers working undeclared. If something is built, they are there. For half the many the Lebanese would cost. They are the ones who build Beirut in its ghastliest shape. Once completed, it will be like the memorial of the unrestrained, all-subduing capitalism, a memorial that would be abadoned even by those who have built it.
Of course refugee problem is the one that overrides now everything, although not as noisy as here in Europe, despite they would have every reason to. We are riding a car to North in the Beeka valley. It is a Hezbollah territory, pictures of Nasirullah and quotations from the Quran alternate alongside the motorway. Jackson, my Armenian-American friend, a known figure of avantguard music and media life of Beirut, is explaining the situation to me. We are passing by Beduin camps. Then on the way home it turns out that some of them weren't actually Beduin but Syrian refugee camps. The most vulnerable are living in such places. The pieces of the tents and some equipment were given to them as aid years before, but they have to rent the territory from its owner. Who gladly rents it to them, since thus the land earns him more money than if he would produce anything in it.
The Lebanese government, whose Foreign Ministry is officially called Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigration, would like to commit anything not to have any camps. They are afraid of the Palestinian example. They think in this way, people would move sooner, if leaving is possible. And of course it is always possible, and many are fed up with uncertainty and go home, regardless of Islamic State on one side, Assad regime on the other.
From Charles Helou bus station in downtown Beirut, the scheduled bus leaves at 19:30 to Raqqa, to the Islamic State's, or Daesh's capital in East Syria. And the bus is filled every day. Maybe the most dangerous bus service, which covers the distance between the two cities between twenty and forty hours. It depends on whether are there fights, is the bus gets chased by all kinds of militias, how long the thorough checking takes for the men of Daesh, will they pick someone for having a beard that's not long enough. The ticket can be bought for fifty dollars.
Triopli was used to be a colourful, mixed city. Now Sunnies are in majority. The Lebanese authorities are quietly organising ship routes towards Turkey from there. They come in from North, next to Tartus, not much of a visa is needed and in the night they sail off towards Mersin. Not for free of course, but that few hundred dollars for the ticket well worth it.
Canada pushes its resettlement program in a similarly silent and effective way. Their embassy at Beirut has to conclude this year seven thousand successful immigration out of the ten thousand which is the number determined in the present quota.However in the election campaign, the parties are competing in who can promise more than the other. Not in who can chop down more refugees verbally but in who will be the one to raise the quota. So it now seems that whoever wins, the quota will be raised. (The Liberals won by the time of the publication- the translator's note) Settlement program has two channels. One is the Regional Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees, where information and recommendation comes in from those who are in the most disadvantaged situations. The other channel is the so-called sponsored immigration. In this case, individuals already living in Canada take also financal responsibility for those who are appyling for immigration permit. This is just an example of that it can be done this way too. Naturally not everyone is satisfied with this either, because according to them, the war should be stopped instead of relocating the Syrians and the Iraqis who are -and little can be heard about this- living in Syria as refugees.
-My father is sixtyeight years old. He works as an engineer in Kuwait but can't retire because he would immediately lose his residence permit- says Rami. -He has built the home of his dreams in Damascus, which he may never be able to move to. They told me too: go to Germany now! You will surely get refugee status. But come now, seriously, should I live in a community home?! Take every terrible job? I can afford to stay in Lebanon so far. Question is for how long?

(The project is part of the Transatlantic Leadership Initiative” (TLI) and was made possible by support from the German Marshall Fund of the United States.Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.)