(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
If I Close My Eyes
Directed by: Francesca Mannochi and Alessio Romenzi (in collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) (password for New Age subscribers: 'lebanon')
I remember everything. I remember the street, I remember the chickens, I remember the neighbor. I remember everything, thank God – I don't forget anything.
Lebanon, with its approximately four million inhabitants, hosts over one million Syrian refugees. 300 of the 000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon between the ages of 500 and 000 do not go to school. The public Lebanese schools do not have room for all the Syrian children who need school, despite attempts to extend the teaching hours to several sessions a day. And the many informal schools that have been started are not certified, and therefore cannot issue diplomas.
In the documentary If I Close My Eyes gives Italian directors and journalists Mannochi and Romenzi an insight into one of the informal schools run for Syrian refugees. We follow the Syrian jurist and idealist Suliman Zuhuri in his work to convey a minimum of knowledge to his fellow countrymen. In addition, Suliman's father Nasser, the student Hyam, Hyam's big brother Mohammed and his mother Naziha are interviewed.
Suliman, a charismatic and committed teacher with exceptionally good ability to activate and reach children, explains that the only hope of the Syrians to exist as a nation is schooling. With tireless energy and love, he teases the children with questions and flutters laughingly around the schoolyard in a wild version of the game "hawk and dove". Many of the exercises and homework that students are exposed to are as much as possible to remember as much as possible about the homeland and the devastation of war, and to formulate dreams of a future reunion with the country. In addition, students are required to interview family members on the same topic.
One by one, students and relatives close their eyes and let the images they remember best, emerge in their inner darkness. Details from the houses. The neighbors. The faces of abandoned or deceased relatives. Livestock. River Orontes, people who swim, fish, eat ice cream. Birds in the Syrian sky, grass, peace.
Crying map. Suliman's students represent the lucky minority of Syrian refugee children who have access to school – but the dropout rate in the classrooms is increasing as more and more children are forced to work to earn income for the starving families. The dedicated teacher tries in every way to inject knowledge and hope into his dwindling group of students. He has special care for Hyam, who lost his father in the war and often cries for hours. Suliman believes that many of the children get ripe too fast by losing guardians and being put to work.
The only hope of the Syrians to continue as a nation is schooling.
After his father's death, Hyam's twelve-year-old brother Mohammed took his first job. The brutal work of carrying bricks caused him hand and back injuries, and the boy was tricked and underpaid. When he did not receive salary for several months, he quit, and never got paid the salary. But the boy continued his involuntary career in the construction industry, and after five years of bloodshed, he still dreams of schooling in Syria, which he thinks was better than working in Lebanon, even if it rained bombs.
The film is characterized by a low budget and a somewhat limited thematic focus. The soundtrack is generic, monotonous and repetitive, and the English subtitles are marred by distracting many errors. The clips from the school and the classroom, the main characters' homes and the refugee camps are intersected with director Romenzi's still images from war-torn Syria during the period January 2012 to May 2013. The film's theme had taken into account the film had made great living from Syria, to breathe life into the vital dream of workings.
Syria appears as the film's unambiguous symbol of the future, beautifully illustrated by Hyam's drawing of a crying map that embraces her: “Syria misses us. We need to be reunited. ”Children and adults speak with a near unanimous voice that they were forced to leave home and that they cannot wait to return home. The message is presented with an ambiguity that seems indoctrinated or edited. The result appears programmatic in its lack of nuances. No elaborate or contradictory details are included, no alternative future dreams are presented. The Syrians who close their eyes to better imagine their homeland are involuntarily becoming a portrait of a displaced nation that is closing its eyes to its own future.
Essential idea of life? For although everyone hopes that the Syrian war will end soon, it seems uncertain when and whether this will happen. But what is the alternative to dreaming about the homeland? Other documentaries about Syrian refugees, among others Mahmoud's Escape (reported in Ny Tid in May) and Life on the Border, shows families and children moving across the border to European countries, where they have the opportunity to integrate into communities that offer housing and education. But are many enough countries willing and able to house millions of Syrians? And how can Syria be restored when most of the children are deprived of the opportunity for basic education?
As an internationalist, I reject the idea of the nation-state as an irreplaceable support unit and aggression incubator worth sacrificing for life. But the idea that Suliman plants in his students – about the homeland as the goal of education as a means – is understandable, perhaps necessary for the refugees living in the most deprived conditions. Hyam's mother notes that the war makes no difference between adults and children: "We are alive or we are dying." After all they have lost, the hope of their homeland may be the only thing left for them to live.
Closed eyes. The Syrians' renditions of the nightmare of the war make a strong impression, but the film's strongest situation arises when Suliman seeks out a particularly miserable area in the refugee camp. He is greeted by a few six-year-olds and flirts with welcome kisses on both cheeks. "Why aren't you at school?" He asks a little girl. "Because I'm home," she replies defiantly. "What did you eat today?" He asks further, with innocent eyes and a slight ease, but the worry is left behind. "Salad," she replies. "Not cucumber?" "We don't have cucumber." "And not meat?" "No." He asks some of the smaller children what they are called, who they are siblings to, and whether or not he can get a kiss from them, too. Then he goes to meet an adult man and, with a gentle voice, highlights how unfortunate it is that more and more children are not leaving school. The man nods seriously, obviously has no solution to offer: The families depend on the children's work to survive. The future is a luxury you can only dream of when you close your eyes.
Read the director interview here: Describes the everyday life of the refugee children
