Abdelkader Ibrahim Baluso fled the war in Syria’s Aleppo in 2013 seeking refuge in Lebanon.
He arrived in Beirut with his then three-member family and lived in Sin el-Fil area and worked as a blacksmith in Karantina, near Beirut’s port.
In 2018, he welcomed his daughter Farah, which means joy or happiness, hoping she would reflect its meaning on the family, his wife Fatima told Asharq Al-Awsat.
However, he wasn’t aware that a day will come when Farah would vainly wait for her father’s return from work.
Almost three weeks have passed since Beirut port’s explosion, of which Abdelkader was a victim, and Farah still tirelessly sits at the doorstep and hoping he would return from work to take her out “as usual.”
Fatima told Asharq Al-Awsat that her late husband was in his workplace when he was injured in his back from the explosion.
She said a person helping to transport the injured to hospitals tried to save her husband, but none accepted to receive him, and he died from his wounds two hours later.
It further took two hours to find a hospital that would accept his body. At 10 pm Abdelkader’s body was put at a hospital morgue in the town of Bsalim, in Mount Lebanon.
“We had a roof over our heads. We were able to eat and drink and our children went to school,” Fatima said, wondering how she would be able to provide for them alone.
Fortunately, their house wasn’t much damaged and they are receiving some food and aid from charities. Yet, Fatima has concerns that she won’t be able to pay the LL450,000 rent.
The mother of four has mixed feelings. She thanks God that her children are safe despite wishing that her husband had not died, and wonders what the future holds for her.
Abdelkader was buried in a graveyard in north Lebanon’s Akkar district in a village bordering Syria.
According to Fadi Hallisso, co-founder and CEO of the Non-Governmental Organization Basmeh & Zeitooneh which supports refugees in Lebanon, dozens of Syrian families are still facing problems with burying their members.
They hardly find a cemetery to bury the dead in Lebanon, not to mention the financial cost of transferring the dead to Syria.
Hallisso told Asharq Al-Awsat that some Syrian families don’t afford the fees imposed by the government to enter Syrian territories and the cost of the mandatory PCR test.
Faced with this harsh reality, a Syrian family has resorted to smuggling its son’s body to Syria, he said.
Hallisso explained that the NGO’s legal team used to assist Syrian refugees to register their marriages and births. Yet, it is currently providing the families of Beirut blast victims with financial and legal support to issue death certificates and burial permits.
“However, it has only been able to reach 10 of the 43 Syrians who died in the explosion, which killed 182 people.”
In addition to burial problems, injured Syrians face treatment woes.
Hallisso stressed that many of the wounded are not able to receive the necessary treatment since “some hospitals are not adhering to the Ministry of Health’s circular, which requests treating all those wounded in the port blast at its expense.”
