A New Restaurant

Sara and Sylvia opened their restaurant last September during Ramadan. Renting a one-bedroom apartment in their neighborhood of Naba'a in Beirut, they started making food that people could pick up after work--mostly single Sudanese men. Today, they are open just on Sundays, but they fill up Tupperwares for people to eat during the week.

They are both freelancers, which means they do not live in the house of a family. They pick up sporadic work cleaning for L.L. 5000 ($2.30) an hour. Now there isn't much work. Since they were sitting at home with nothing better to do, they decided to start a business.

The monthly rent for the apartment is $150 and the ishtirak for the generator is $25. Last month, after expenses, they each came out with L.L. 50,000 ($33.33). They would like a loan to buy a new stove.

Illegal Status

Because Sylvia and Sara are illegal in Lebanon, it is hard for them to move around. If they get picked up by the authorities, they will go to jail. Two months ago, their friend, Mary, was picked up. She's in jail now. Her husband watches their two small children, along with Sara, Sylvia, and the other neighbors.

Two of the members of our church are currently in jail. Their crime is not having legal papers to reside in Lebanon. In order to be legal, they would have to pay fines to the government. Many times, they are directly deported back to their country, after they secure the money for the plane ticket. If they have no money, they end up languishing in jail. This includes mothers with children.

Some Sudanese have refugee status with the UNHCR. But this does not protect them from being incarcerated as Lebanon is not an "asylum" country.

In order to be legal, someone has to pay $600 a year to the government, for the residency permit, work permit, and health insurance. If there is a sponsor or an employer, they will pay this. But many Asian and African migrant workers are freelance, which means they find a Lebanese person to sponsor their papers, but they still have to pay the $600. Sometimes the Lebanese sponsor will make the foreigner pay them a special fee on top, maybe around $200, for going to the trouble of filing the papers. Freelance women charge L.L. 5000/hour ($3.33) for domestic work.

I would say this a clear-cut case of human rights abuses, and straight-up shamefulness on the part of a cheap, corrupt government. Local and international groups are working and pressuring the Lebanese government to change the system. But the Lebanese are purely controlled by sectarian concerns. They cannot be an asylum country. People born on this land will never automatically get citizenship. If the Palestinians became full, equal citizens, the Muslim numbers would outweigh the number of Christians (though the Shia are currently the majority which the government won't admit.) Therefore, no one will get asylum, much less citizenship, or as an extension, basic human rights.

Visiting Ishraka in Prison

Tuesday (the day before the General Strike), I went to the Adlieh prison to visit Ishraka, a Sudanese/Eritrean woman from my church. She's been there for 20 days. The month before, she was in the all-women's prison in Verdun with her two-year-old son. When they moved her to Adlieh, they made the son leave. He is now staying with her Sudanese friend in the Mar Elias Palestinian camp, where she's been living.

Two months ago, an Ethiopian woman ran away from the house where she was contracted to work. She came to Ishraka seeking help. The girl had a phone and needed money, so they went to the neighboring phone shop and sold it to the man. The run-away's "mister" called the phone. When the man from the shop answered it, he told him where the girl was staying. The police came to Ishraka's house. The girl, however, had run away. Ishraka was picked up for not having legal papers. They took her and her son to the Verdun prison.

Last week another American woman went to go visit her at Verdun. There was a huge confusion, however. No one seemed to have that name or know where she was. After talking to as many people as she could, Debbie left in frustration. She called the pastor of the church who called Caritas. Caritas has established a special "watch-dog" group for this specific issue. Foreigners are taken to prison, and somehow get lost in the system. Sometimes people languish for months and even years because the authorities "forgot" or "lost" them.

With the help of Caritas and another lawyer-advocacy group, Frontiers, they found that Ishraka had been transferred to Adlieh. I was the first person to visit her from the church, probably her first visitor altogether.

The prison is located under a main highway bridge. (During the July 2006 War this was a big problem. The government had to figure out what to do with all these people when Israel was bombing all the major highways and bridges.) When I got there, I asked the General Security man where the nearest shop was. I bought her a gallon of water, bananas, apples, chocolate, Nescafe, and biscuits. When I returned, there was a long line.

The Egyptian man next to me told me I could go straight up to the front since I was Lebanese.

"Ana mish lubnaneye." And for some reason, I felt proud and happy in denying that I had anything to do with a culture that treats foreigners and dark-skinned people like animals and commits so many human rights abuses.

"Then what are you?"

I sighed, "Amerikaneye." That didn't make me proud either.

"Well, you don't have to wait here."

"That's fine."

He nodded and said, "America is like that. You have laws and systems. Everyone is subject to the same laws. It doesn't matter who you are. Here everything is wasta (connections)."

"Yep," feeling kind of proud of my background.

We talked some more. It turns out he was visiting a Sri Lankan woman, who had been there for a couple months. Her husband and three kids were back in Sri Lanka, and if she doesn't constantly send them money, they don't eat. He met her two years ago, while she patronized his corner shop.

I was so touched. A man is just helping out a family-less foreign woman, bringing her bags of stuff.

A couple of General Security guys walked by, asking why I was waiting in line. "Lebanese can go straight up to the front."

"Ana mish lubnaneye."

Same third-degree set of questions. About five minutes later, they yelled at me to come to the front. The Sanyoura government likes to kiss up to the U.S. They're always trying to make us happy. (Not like Syria, who gives us all a hard time.)

"Why do I get to come up to the front?"

"Do you want to wait in line?" The General Security guy retorted sarcastically.

"How long is it going to take?"

"At least an hour?" So I just gave him my Texas Driver's License and the photocopy of my passport. They found her name in the book and registered my name.

After another fifteen months, I was herded down the stairs with about 20 other men, more than half of whom were Egyptian. We stood behind a metal perforated sheet with metal bars in front of it and a plastic window. The guards moved me out of the middle of the pack to the end, where there was an open window, so I could look directly inside.

This made it much easier to talk to Ishraka when she came out. She was wearing a long red shawl that covered her head and her arms, a very Muslim/African sort of dress, which I never recalled her wearing at church.

She cried when she saw me, and couldn't believe that I came to visit her.

"I am very, very sad here."

I asked about her son. She said her friend doesn't have a phone where I could call her. But my pastor's wife knows where she lives so I could go to the camp and track down her son--maybe take some pictures and a video and show it to her.

Then I asked what she needed.

First, she said a picture of her honey, Becky. Becky is Debbie's two-year-old daughter. (Debbie had been talking to Ishraka about hiring her as a full time worker in her house, and fixing her papers. She wants to do that now for her.)

What else? Pijamas with long sleeves, shirts, bra, and underwear. Soap, Colgate, shampoo, Kotex. Picon (processed cheese), biscuits. Of course, the most important thing is water. An English Bible, and L.L. 20,000 ($13.33) for a phone card. I didn't even have the money on me to give her.

"There are many, many foreigners here."

"Are there any believers? Are you praying?"

"Yes, there are many Ethiopians." And she shrugged. I couldn't tell if that meant she was praying with anyone inside the prison.

And then all the men pounced on me, as I was standing in front of the only open window. As I moved myself to the back, they started shoving their grocery bags and water gallons through the window. After shoving my stuff through, I told her, "God bless you and keep you" a bunch of times. And then I walked up the stairs, and through the line of Egyptians, Nepalese, Ethiopians, and other foreigners.

Yeah, I felt guilty about my special treatment. But hey, I had to get to work. Just like these people, too. Wouldn't they have gone up to the front of the line and avoided the hour long wait if they had the chance? Another stupid thing to feel guilty about.

Sara's Story

Growing up in Juba, in southern Sudan, Sara attended private Christian schools where the instruction was mostly in Arabic. English was given as one subject, and there were no computers. She finished high school in 1990 and got her diploma in Literature. She studied psychology in university for two years because the church paid for it. But when they stopped paying, she had to stop her studies. In 1997, she got married. Her husband has a university degree as an accountant and did an internship-training for a couple of months. He was forced to serve in the military, however, and decided to leave the country before completing his military service.

Coming to Lebanon

In 1998, Sara took a flight from Khartoum to Damascus. She spent four years in Syria with husband. The UN office in Syria had a problem with the office in Geneva, and closed their offices in Syria, and all the files of the Sudanese people who had applied fore refugees status were closed. Since their file was closed, Sara, her husband, and all the other Sudanese started coming into Lebanon illegally.

Having left four months before, her husband had found a job working at a restaurant in Jounnieh, with a house next door. Sara went in a Mercedes with her 6-month old twins, a Sudanese friend, and two others to Lebanon. They left Damascus in the morning, arrived to the driver’s village in Lebanon for lunch in the afternoon, and then left again at two in the morning. They arrived to their place in Beirut around six in the morning.

They lived in Jounnieh for about a week when her husband found a new job in Jenna Restaurant in Beit Meri. They lived next to the restaurant. For those first two years, Sara didn’t work because of her small children. When they were two years old, she found out about Dar Al Awlad School and Nursery and was able to leave her children there. She immediately found work cleaning in two houses, one time a week. Then she found work in Fanar. The next year, the people left for Saudi, and she didn’t find other work. They lived in Beit Meri for six years.

Because the UN has not reopened their file, they decided that her husband should try to go to Greece through Turkey, and then maybe find a way to resettle somewhere in Europe. Two days before the July War of 2006 ended, Sara’s husband went in a van with other Sudanese, Ethiopian and Indian people. They got caught in Syria, where they were beaten and had their money and things stolen from them. They were all sent to jail to be sent back to their countries.

Her husband called her from the Syrian jail. He stayed there for four months, trying to call her every two weeks. Sara called his family and they sent him money to get a ticket to Sudan in December 2006. It cost $300 for the one-way ticket. The Philemon Project helped covered these costs. Pastor Wilbert sent the money to the Sudanese Embassy in Syria, and they got his papers in order. He had to make a new passport.

Almost two years later, her husband is still in Sudan. But he is trying to come back to Lebanon now. He’s staying in Juba, where he’s from. He has a problem with the government. Because he didn’t finish his term with the army, they can conscript him at any time. He can’t go to Khartoum because he could be picked up at a checkpoint. In the village, it will be harder for them to pick him up. He also has another problem in that he has converted to Christianity from Islam. If his community were to find out, they might kill him.

He isn’t working.

Her Current Situation

Six months ago, Sara moved with her three young children to Nabaa in Beirut. She kept her work in the two houses in Beit Mari. But because transport was costing her L.L. 5000 ($3.33) to go and come, she wasn’t making enough money. She would work for three hours at L.L 5000 an hour. And she was spending all her time traveling. She hasn’t found any work in Beirut.

Now she’s scared to move around because she doesn’t have legal papers. Her friend, Mary, who has UN refugee status was caught by the authorities and has been in the Baabda Prison for the past month. She has two small children who go to Dar Al Awlad with Sara’s children. Their husband watches them, along with Sara, Sylvia, and the other Sudanese in their neighborhood.

The International Community Church

Father Martin’s church in Tabaris which is popular with many of the Sudanese is all Catholic, and Sara wanted to worship in a Protestant church. About four years ago, she started attending the National Evangelical Church in Beirut where she met Pastor Wilbert. She has built up a strong trust with Pastor Wilbert. She says he regularly calls her to pick up food parcels, that always include milk and Pampers. The Philemon Project has also helped her with rent and school fees.

Her Business

Sara and her friend, Sylvia, opened a Sudanese restaurant last September. Currently, it is only open on Sundays. They are trying their best to pay the rent for the place, and the opening costs. The rent is $150. Electricity is between $20 and $25 a month. Food is expensive. At the end of the month, they might each end up with $35 each. Sara would like to be able to do some business importing and exporting goods between Sudan and Lebanon.

Her Future Plans

Sara would also like to study English, like her friend Sylvia who has received a scholarship from the Fellowship of Sudanese Congregations in Lebanon.

She says Sudan is full of people with education who can’t get jobs, because there are no jobs. But she’s heard that, starting recently, some work has been starting to pop up in Juba. When her husband is able to come to Lebanon, she wants to go to Sudan by herself and see if there are any possibilities there.

Because of her husband’s precarious political and social situation, she has more freedom to move around. She wants to assess the situation. But the children would stay with their dad in Lebanon. Now that the twins are in second grade, it’s not so easy to move them around. Sara doesn’t want them to miss any school. They are enrolled in a good school at Dar Al Awlad and have strong English and Arabic and are learning computers. Sara says she would never be able to find or afford such a school in Sudan.

Right now, her situation is precarious because she has no legal papers. The only real future she can see for herself is in a third country. All of her family went to Egypt in 2003 and were resettled by the UN. Her father has died, and she has 3 brothers and 2 sisters. The oldest brother in Canada put his mother and their youngest brother on his file. A brother and married sister are in Australia, and another single sister is in the Netherlands. Since Sara is married, her siblings cannot put her on their file. Because she went through Syria, where the UN closed all the files, it seems that she missed her chance. Now the UN has stopped giving out cards.

There is the possibility that Dar Al Awlad will be able to get her a residency permit, since her kids can have residency permits when they are enrolled in an officially-registered, private school. If she had a residency permit, she could have some sense of security, and be able to find more work, take some classes, and hopefully build her business.

Ben's Story

Ben is from Nuba in southern Sudan. When he was 19, he went to Syria, hoping to earn enough money to start studying at university. In Syria, he stayed at a friend’s place. After three weeks, another man came to stay with them. It turned out that he knew one of Ben’s relatives who had been living in Lebanon since 1975. It was one of his mother’s cousins who no one really mentioned. The man, James, told him that if he still wanted to earn money, he should come to Lebanon and work for a couple months. Painting a “beautiful image” of Lebanon, James said Ben would easily be able to find a cleaning job that would pay good money. It would be “a way out” for him.

Ben asked about getting a visa, and was told that Sudanese could not get visas to Lebanon. But by knowing the right people, they could get a person in. Back then, there was a Syrian military presence in Lebanon. They had a military route. By paying a military intelligence officer $200, a person could pass through without being checked.

They dropped him off in Beirut with James, who he stayed with for a while, and he immediately started looking for a job. Lebanon, however, didn’t turn out to be the “beautiful” picture that James had painted. It took him four months to find a job. It was waiting tables and cleaning at a fast food restaurant. It started at $200 a month. Then he started working double shifts, making $350. After a while, it became $450, with bonuses and tips. So the money turned out to be all right. He wasn’t able to save money, however. Instead he sent money back to Sudan so he could support his brothers with their studies.

Prison

After one year, Ben was arrested by the Lebanese authorities for not having legal papers. They put him in prison, and he stayed there for one year in Halba in Tripoli. No one knew where he was. He was in the Roumieh Prison for two weeks, which is where he was supposed to be. Because there were too many illegal immigrants, however, they transferred them to other prisons in Lebanon. When they transferred Ben, they didn’t write down his name. “They lost track of me. They didn’t know where I was.” There was no lawyer following it. “It was just a catastrophe, and I was unlucky, unfortunately, to be there for a year. Eventually they realized where I was and they released me.”

Losing Time

When they released Ben, the government gave him 15 days to fix his papers, or he would have to go back the same way he came. So he left and went back to Syria. That was in 1998. He stayed in Syria for three years. He found work as a translator, but he didn’t want to stay there with a low-paying job. He still wanted to find an opportunity to study again. Sometimes he would send money home; sometimes he wouldn’t. His family wasn’t depending on him for money. But it wasn’t enough for him to save any for himself. It was just enough to live. In that situation, there was no future.

He had contacts with a Lebanese man who had been living in Saudi Arabia, who had moved back to Lebanon and had opened a small shop. He asked Ben to go back to Lebanon to help him with his new business. He told him he’d be able to save some money. Since Ben was still looking for ways to pursue a degree, he decided to take the opportunity. There was a customer in the shop who invited him to church. In getting to know the pastor, he expressed his desire to study. The pastor worked out a deal with a local seminary, managing to secure him a full scholarship. For four years, Ben studied full time in Beirut and completed his undergraduate degree. In the fall, he will start graduate work at a seminary in the US.

Mohamad's Story

43-year old Mohamad is from a family of 11. When he was 33, he walked to Saudi Arabia from Sudan. His friends had gone and come back and told him he could find work there. Sudanese would work as sheep and goat herders in villages. After 1 year and 2 months, he had earned 7000 riyals=$1800. He went on the Hajj.

About four months after returning to Sudan, in the year 2000, Mohamad took a $75 flight from Khartoum to Damascus. In Damascus, he was told that many Sudanese stay at Hotel Ziad. He came with $65. (1 month’s salary in Sudan is $20.) After spending three nights at Hotel Ziad, he coordinated with a group of other men to come to Lebanon. He promised a man $200 to get him through the border. The man kept his passport until he paid him. Many men packed into a Mercedes, where he was put in the trunk. They let them off before the border, where they walked for about three days and slept in farms.

He said he knew he was in Lebanon when he bought something at a store, and they gave him his change in Lebanese currency. He found work making bricks in Saida for $200 a month. They gave him a place to stay, but he had to pay for his food. To buy groceries, he had to walk to a store 15 minutes a way. After a month or so of working, Mohamad paid the man $200 and retrieved his passport. After he got to know the country better, he found another job near Saida that paid him $250 a month. It was a good job as a doorman at a school. There, they gave him a nice room and meals in the cafeteria. He was there two years. Every month he saved $150.

When he was working at the Coral Hotel he met his wife, Almaz, who's from Ethiopia. Later, he started a job as a doorman, near the Kuwaiti Embassy, and then they found work at a hotel in Faraya, but it was only for the winter. They have two children: four-year-old Mustafa and twp-year-old Fatima.

Once, when he was coming back to Beirut, he got picked up at a checkpoint at Dawhat Qaramoun. Because he had no papers, they detained him at the General Security for 21 days. Then he stayed a month at Baabda, before going in front of a judge, where he got sent to a prison in Tripoli. At this point, he had to pay at least $5000 in fees, since the government charges 105,000 L.L. = $70 every month a person resides in the country illegally. He was sentenced for one month, but he stayed in prison for six months. Every month while he was in prison, they would put him in the back of a truck where he would spend the whole day traveling to Baabda, to stand before a judge, where they told him to pay the fees that he couldn’t pay.

When Mohamad’s mother got sick, he left for Sudan. He was there for about eight months, and just returned to Lebanon a month ago. He had to come in through Syria illegally, like he did the first time. Now, it’s much harder because of stricter border controls. Again, he walked for about three days and slept outside. With him were seven Sudanese, one Libyan, two Egyptians, and one man from Sierra Leone. One of the guys got tired so they had to carry him on a donkey.

Mohamad has friends who have gone to Australia, Sweden, and America. He hopes to be able to go to one of these places some day. He applied for a UN card, but then something happened to the file, and it became closed to Sudanese. He had to start the process all over again. He filled out papers, and is waiting to hear from the UN.

Visiting Wani in Prison

Last Saturday, we went to Batroun to visit Wani. What did he do? He’s Sudanese and doesn’t have legal residence in Lebanon. Even though now he has been granted status as a refugee by the UNHCR, he is still sitting in prison. It’s been over six months. Batroun is about a 40-minute drive out of Beirut. The prison is located in a small annex of the main municipality building in the middle of the town square.

The first time I met Wani was at Starbucks. Some American missionaries had a music night every Friday, where they played guitar and sang songs they wrote and popular Christian worship songs. It wasn’t all straight-up religious music; some of it wasn’t that obvious. (Can people do this stuff in the U.S.?) Next to the white, Lebanese-American guy and his Thai-American wife was Sudanese Wani, playing the guitar. He sang a cover of a Bob Marley song.

Wani is from southern Sudan. His father is Muslim; his mother is Christian. The first time he applied for the UNHCR card, he was rejected. The UNHCR doesn’t usually give refugee status to Muslims. When he was arrested, he was living in Sin el Fil, in a run-down cabin, guarding a place. Part of his job was to drive a truck, delivering diesel. This is not a good situation for a man without legal papers. In moving around, a person can easily be stopped. Wani had already spent some time in prison for being illegal, which is when he became a Christian.

The General Security says they will release Wani if he has a passport. But he doesn’t have it. A former employer says he has it (though it is probably a fake) and will give it back to him for the $600 he claims Wani owes him.

Now he’s in Batroun. We talk to him through a perforated metal sheet. The guards seem to be fairly friendly with the prisoners, which wasn’t the case in the bigger prison, Roumieh, where he was for three months. There might be 100 people in Batroun. When his dad died in February, he wasn’t able to speak to his family. He claims that this is one of the various restrictions of prison life, that has nothing to do with the particular guards.

A regular rotation has been set up at church to make sure someone visits him every Saturday. Clean water from the outside is necessary, along with toiletries, clothes, and food. We brought him batteries for the walkman we brought him the first time. He regularly listens to Christian radio shows. The guards gave him a hard time about the batteries, because they can be used as some sort of weapon. But they see that he’s listening to his radio. Wani has also been studying the Bible and praying more. He feels like he is getting closer to God, and he knows that God has put him there for a reason—to make him grow closer to Him.

Wani has a lawyer now with Frontiers, who is following up his case. His UN status might help him. But in the meantime, without a passport, it seems that he cannot be released. The other option is deportation, which requires money for a plane ticket. Wani hopes he will get resettled soon in a third country through the UN. In the meantime, he makes it seem that he has it better in the prison, than struggling without work, with illegal status, outside.