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'Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots', a popular proverb in the Levant, means, “In your dreams.” For Syrian refugees in Jordan, the burdens of violence are present in their scant belongings, heavy mementos to remind themselves of those they lost in the war. Sometimes there are brief moments of levity in a life that has come to be defined by a vicious cycle of poverty, isolation, and pain. The draw to Europe seduces entire families,...
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'Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots', a popular proverb in the Levant, means, “In your dreams.” For Syrian refugees in Jordan, the burdens of violence are present in their scant belongings, heavy mementos to remind themselves of those they lost in the war. Sometimes there are brief moments of levity in a life that has come to be defined by a vicious cycle of poverty, isolation, and pain. The draw to Europe seduces entire families, but most often because of the high risk and financial cost, it is often the fathers and brothers who first make the journey.
The women keep their mobile phones like talisman, they carry within them voice messages of love, lullabies, and hope. Habjouqa's photos explore these complicated intimacies of everyday life of Syrian women who have been left behind, clinging to a hope that soon their family will be reunited once again and, in too many cases, grappling with the knowledge they will never see them again.
But for the Syrian women in refugee camps and in urban centers of Jordan, often just miles from the Syrian border, the gamble for a better future leaves women in an even more acute cycle of poverty, isolation, and anxiety as they wait. Many watch their under age sons toil for scraps to help the family survive.
Some families say the men who stay become more broken by the day—unable to legally work or risk being deported, they stay in the houses chain smoking with a slow decent to despondent madness. For the men who make the journey to Europe on their own, the guilt is often present on the stricken faces of photos they send back to their families. Haunted faces and hunched shoulders in the green of forests.
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