The road from Damascus

The men, all from Syria, travel here to find a day’s work. Every day most go home penniless as trucks trundle past, picking up only a lucky few for the lowest paid, most menial and dangerous jobs Lebanon has to offer. All, seemingly, on an ad hoc basis; it’s the purest form of labour capitalism. Yet the potential consequences are disregarded by blind necessity. Still they wait hopefully in increasing numbers for their potential employers’ temporary patronage. 

 

They gather on what used to be the site of the Green Line, a jagged-concrete schism – both metaphorical and literal – that divided Beirut’s Christian and Muslim administrations. Now Martyr’s Square is a car park full of top-of-the-range BMWs and Mercedes; a Buddha Bar opens its doors to the capital’s beautiful people just behind it. Luxury apartment buildings dot the sidewalk under the watchful eye of the yellow-stoned Rafik Hariri mosque, the grand project of Lebanon’s assassinated ex-Prime Minister, a project he never saw completed upon his death in 2005 yet which marks his final resting place. And while Syria was in the international crosshairs for the assassination, helping to spark the Cedar Revolution that saw the Syrian army’s visible presence in the country removed, any occupation that remains is of a mobile and desperate labour force. Anywhere up to 300,000 Syrian workers live here in squalid conditions in Lebanon, an astonishing five per cent of Syria’s working population. 

The Lebanese now complain that the Syrians undercut local workers, keeping Lebanese unemployment stubbornly high and wages low – all for the ability to send money back to their families. And while it is estimated anywhere close to $2 billion of remittances get sent east every year, the Syrians in turn complain they are exploited, beaten and ostracised because of their nationality. 

 

“I am Syrian, Sunni, for al-Karameh and Palermo,” shouts Mohammad, a young man from Homs with a neat hair cut and a forceful manner, giving his allegiances – geographical, religious, footballing – in order of importance. He and his ten friends stand on the same corner, waiting, casting covetous glances at the open backed, brightly painted trucks that trundle slowly past, looking for suitable men for whatever job the driver has been instructed to collect help for. The men stare back in silence. He doesn’t stop.

 

“If you want a photo, it will be $100,” Mohammad insists, hustling for extra cash as his crew gathered. Abdul, another young man from Homs, tries to describe his day over the rapidly depreciating photography rate.

“We have been here since 6am,” Abdul explains.

“$50!” Mohammad interjects.

“But nothing has come.”

“$5!”

“Not today.”

“A manoushi? Maybe you can get us to England, so we can work, just three of us. Okay?”

 

We eventually agree on a price of ten kaaks, the horseshoe shaped flat bread with sesame seeds, usually filled with cheese, that Lebanon’s working classes eat for breakfast. Ten minutes later I scuttle over the road with two bags full of hot bread. The group set upon them, ripping the contents from the bag, from each other’s hands. One fell to the floor, out of its paper wrapper, and in to the gutter. The group broke from the fervour for a split second, looking down at the discarded, now dirty bread, before turning to the rest of the bag to argue over its contents. “When was the last time you ate?”, I asked Mohammad as he devoured his breakfast.

“Yesterday.”

“When yesterday?”

“Yesterday.”

 

The rest of the crowd quickly disperses. The kaak in the gutter is taken too. The cover from the clouds finally disappears, releasing the sun’s rays. Every hour that passed lengthened the Mohammad and Abdul’s already poor odds of earning a $15 daily fee. Before 2005 it was $20.

 

By 9am, still no one had been picked up, yet the numbers continued to grow. At dawn almost two dozen hopefully stood here. Now several hundred took shelter in the shadows waiting for anyone to come. 

 

“We wait until we are bored. I will stay a few hours more or until the police come. Sometimes they come and we have to run away very quickly.”

 

His imaginary shovel then turns into an imaginary baton. Their status is officially illegal but unofficially sanctioned. Only a few hundred work visas are issued each year, an absurdly low number given the reality of the situation, but with no visa needed to actually cross into Lebanon there is no physical barrier to their arrival. 

For the men on the economic frontline, the sharpest end of black and white capitalism, it’s not exploitation or safety or visas that they think of. Just The Master and his truck. And the $15. “Write about Syria, not Lebanon,” Omar says. “Write about why I am here, how poor Syria is.” 

 

He lights a cigarette and joins his friends back on the curbside, squinting into the now-scorching sun, waiting, as always, for The Master to come.  

 

For a full version of this article, see NOX41.