A&E
Screening of Salam Neighbor portrays Syrian refugee population crisis
By Ghada Emish ’19
April 14, 2016
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On Wednesday, April 6, Muslim Student Association (MSA), COOP and the Chaplaincy organized the screening of Salam Neighbor, a documentary film that examines the Syrian refugee crises under a humanitarian lens.
Salam Neighbor is a film directed by two recent American graduates, Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple, who firmly believe that films should be dedicated to spreading awareness about pressing social issues and helping people around the globe. The shooting mostly takes place in Zaatari camp in Jordan; Temple and Ingrasci are the first film-makers to be accepted into the camp.
Zaatari camp is located five miles from the Syrian borders and it has become home to 85,000 refugees. Salam Neighbor mostly demonstrates that Syrian refugees are forced to leave their homeland because of the atrocious war, rather than as a result of their commitment of any crime in Syria.
Most refugees do not have the luxury of planning their departure: they do not have enough time to gather their most important belongings and they are forced to quickly take in the situation and adapt themselves to their new lives as refugees. Some people travel, leaving behind other family members, and because of a mere seven mile distance to Syria, the sounds of bombardment make them constantly worried about their relatives and people.
Even though Jordan is an Arab country, there are laws that oblige Syrian refugees to remain within the borders of Zaatari camp; it is quite difficult for Jordan to include the Syrian population because of economic and social issues like unemployment and poverty.
According to the United Nations, Zaatari camp is the fastest growing refugee economy. Syrians are quite hardworking; they opened a market in the camp by buying products from Jordanian merchants and selling them to refugees in Zaatari.
Syrian women cooperated to establish the Women’s Center, which helps women take care of their psychological health and remain strong for their families by, talking about their problems and cooperating to find solutions, among other things.
Witnessing war destroy one’s country is harder to forget for the younger generation. Raouf is a 10-year old boy who wants to become a doctor when he grows up. However, the shock of seeing his school in Syria being bombarded has made it quite difficult for him to go to school again to achieve his dream. Temple and Ingrasci became friends with Raouf, they took him to a school where some Syrian children receive education, but, unfortunately, Raouf could not focus his attention on the present moment and collapsed to the ground. War seems to be quite purposeless in light of the damage it can impart upon one individual, let alone an entire generation of Syrian refugee children.
At the end of Salam Neighbor, Temple brought up a very important point that terrorist groups like ISIS take advantage of the fact that these children are traumatized and impoverished and tempt them to join their devastating activities for money. This generation is worthy of help because they are not responsible for any of the complicated political issues that were imposed on them.
Salam Neighbor is available at the Hamilton library. If you are interested in getting involved, an organiation to learn about is called Living On One.