The women from Syria are becoming close friends. We have an increasing closeness. They always smile and laugh, whilst you know full well there is a daily struggle and background of loss. I am struck by their hospitality and openness. Here they invite us to their homes, ones which have the bare essentials since everything has been lost and left behind. Nevertheless all that they possess they open to us, a strange contradiction in the light of the struggle to be here, in place that is in name ‘ours’. I trip over myself in circles and circles of confusion, wanting to invite them to my home and worries that this is outside of protocols of volunteer groups. That aside I worry that I am too safe, too comfortable, to priviledged and am embarrassed at confronting them with my good fortune. So it is their generosity that makes us at ease, their experience that engages with all those that they meet.
I went with dishes and a teapot to K and A has done my hair. They are enchanting and wonderful women.
They have stitched these trees, so distinct in style, so precious and so so beautiful.
