BBC News
By Eloise Alanna
image captionMaamoul, a festival favourite, is becoming too expensive for many families For Greek Orthodox Christians celebrating Easter, the tradition of making or buying maamoul biscuits plays a key role - but this year things are very different.
The Lebanese take pride in these confections. As well as Easter, they are made during Eid al-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, and Muslims and Druze enjoy them for Eid al-Adha.
Rita Stambouli is Greek Orthodox and lives in Zahlé, a town about an hour s drive east of Beirut in the Bekaa valley. When I visit, she is preparing her maamoul.
The mountainous town of Bsharre, in northern Lebanon, 02/08/2020 (Silvia Mazzocchin)
BEDAWWI In a decade of war in Syria, Nora was displaced ten times. The 42-year-old woman dodged death as bombs fell within earshot multiple times, fleeing between Idlib, where she lived with her husband – now disappeared – and Damascus, her city of origin. “In Idlib, we stayed three years under the bombs; we slept under olive trees, without knowing what would happen to us,” she said.
A year and a half ago, Nora fled to Lebanon to join her two adult children in Bsharre, an idyllic mountainous town in northern Lebanon. “I was able to sleep and rest psychologically. In Syria, we were always afraid that if we go to sleep, we will not wake up,” she said. Nora worked as a babysitter for the neighbors and described the village’s atmosphere as “nice.”
Three months after the Bsharre incident, over 300 Syrian families are still paying for the crime of one person syriadirect.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from syriadirect.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Lebanon’s racism is fanning the flames of violence towards Syrian refugees Frans Timmermans and Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil.jpg (Image by Creative Commons Genérica de Atribución/Compartir-Igual 2.0)
As Lebanon celebrated Christmas, a Syrian refugee camp in Miniyeh in the north of Lebanon was attacked by a group of local youths who set fire to tents amid clashes with residents. The number of violent incidents against displaced communities living in the country has grown steadily in recent months. This has run in parallel with the public becoming apathetic to these acts, and viewing them as normal daily occurrences.