She describes the moment of realization “it felt as if someone slapped me on the face when I realized that there is something wrong with my leg. I do not walk like everyone”

In Lebanon, being xxxxr, set against the backdrop of Arab culture, isn't just challenging; it is deemed forbidden.

In the Lebanese Penal Code, we see article 534, criminalizing “unnatural” intercourse, which some judges take advantage off to criminalize xxxxxxxxx relationships.

When we discuss the nursery founded by Tema, we cannot but associate it with her child, Karim, and her motherhood.

This place offered her comfort during hard times when she was deprived of her child for two years. Whenever Tema missed her son, she hugged a child there, with heavy pain in her heart.

It is 2014. A bus clandestinely carrying young men and women across the Syrian-Lebanese border stops in the Marj area.

Sousou, 20 years of age, stepped off the bus, then waited for her uncle to pick her up and drive her home to one of her brothers who had preceded her to Lebanon.

She looked at my mobile phone and asked, “Will you not record my words? I want to share my story with others. Yes, life is hard, but I will tell you about the difficulties and how to overcome them.”

Who is Tala?
Tala is the daughter of Roumouz.
And who is Roumouz?

Roumouz graciously welcomed me, inviting me to sit beside her on the floor, close to the bed where Tala, the four-year-old girl, lays.

It’s an unsafe world for us all.

We cannot exist if not to pander to men and their muses, to be made to look even when we don’t want to.
Cling. Cling. Cling. Cling.
The metallic sound of his belt loops rang feverously.

What if we could embrace our childhood? Would we alleviate the injustice and loneliness? This cold house requires warmth, while we did not have the supplies to provide that warmth.

The alley, where we grew up, was fraught with difficulties, and we named it “hope” versus our fear, as if we we’re saying “we are here.”

Nada says: “I never felt that my disability, or specifically these three centimeters, prevented me from doing anything in my life, except wearing high heels. This misfortune stopped me from marrying a man I loved”

“I did everything in my power not to get in that car. I knew for a fact that if I went in, everything would be over. And if he doesn’t kill me, I thought, then for sure he will forbid me from going out my entire life”, she says.

“If you ask me about the light, I tell you it's inside me and greater than the darkness outside. I was born without the ability to see light, but I planted the light inside of me”

During her childhood, Joy was convinced that she, just like all her friends, had the Lebanese nationality, but she soon understood that things were not that simple, and that her belonging to this country was nothing but an illusion that had no tangible, administrative or practical meaning.
She is a foreigner living here with a residency permit that allows her to live and work within harsh limits.

To be loved, supported, and understood in your frexxxm —a space where you can simply be yourself, a place that allows you to mess up, and still ask for help.
“Call it nuclear family”

As for “mama papa” Flavia, as the girls call her, she is always present, with her serenity and determination to provide answers.

In the ethereal realms of Eden's journey, art emerges as both the mender and the mirror. The concept of “healing” doesn’t represent his relationship with his art, he thinks that a lot of what we perceive as “healing” are just narratives to push us away from collective or political problems causing us to be in such pain or trauma.

The Syrian Regime detained her father in 2012. A few days later, they executed him and dumped his body in one of the groves. Later on, her uncles were martyred in their bombarded homes in the region of Al-Qusayr.

“It was too difficult for me to absorb all this death at once”, Alaa revealed.

"You can report me but how long will they imprison me? One day, two days, a month? Two months? a year? I will come out and kill you”. These were words Malak, 43, heard over and over from her abusive husband even while pregnant.

Farah was born in Beirut in 1995, to a Lebanese mother and a Syrian father. Her mother used to obtain student residence permit for her and her 3 sisters on an annual basis. Back then, the information issued by the general security regarding Lebanese mothers and their children were very ambiguous, so Farah’s mother used to ask for these annual permits, until she discovered by coincidence that she could ask for the infamous courtesy residency permit.

“No words express the extent of the injustice that befalls us as women. What is this country that treats me as an incomplete citizen and rejects my daughter and deprives her of her right to be Lebanese?" With these words Theodora begins.

Heba's father used to work in the Palestinian National Crescent, and in the early nineties he had three options: either to immigrate to Europe, or to stay here and obtain Lebanese citizenship, or to stay here while refusing citizenship. He chose to stay because he was attached to this land, but he refused the Lebanese nationality as a principle related to the Palestinian cause.