Not just a mobile phone

​

About three days ago, I had a small conversation with a Dutch friend over the situation in Syria and the newly felt presence of Syrian refugees in the Dutch society.
 

During that conversation, my Dutch friend asked what I thought was a very rude and strange question, he inquired about the reason why Syrian refugees seem to prefer to spend their social aid money on luxury consumer items giving the mobile phones as a clear example of this tendency.
Regardless of the rude and derogatory nature of the question, I found myself compelled to find the real answer. 

Like many others, I myself have in fact noticed this new Syrian obsession with the latest and greatest mobile devices, and having lived in Syria almost my entire life, I can testify with certainty that this has not always been the case, and that Syrians before the war have shown little or at best moderate interest in acquiring advance mobile phones. 
So what exactly triggered this new trend, and why would someone living in a shitty refugee camp in Jordan or waiting for his monthly social aid payment in a European country be ready to cast aside a great chunk of his income just to enjoy a cutting edge piece of technology.

 

The more I thought about it, the more profound and obvious seemed the reason. Answering this question made me realize just how deeply the Syrian catastrophe has affected us all as Syrians.

 

The sad answer is that we, as Syrian refugees scattered across the world, no longer have real lives and real existence. On the outside, we may appear as real souls living in the real world. Yes, we sure eat and drink and buy our needs from the supermarkets and local shops, we even go to language schools and exert some sincere efforts to integrate in the society. But our real life is not in this world, it is there in the cyber planet, in a place occupied by giant social media providers like Facebook and WhatsApp. There, we meet our friends, chat with our brothers, see the photos of our newly born nieces and nephews and watch our fathers and mothers as they grow old and the signs of aging become more evident on their faces.

​

​

 "mobile phones have become the metaphorical windows to our real life"

 

​

That is the world that occupies our thoughts, it is the world in which we dream every night and its inhabitants are the ones we talk to most of our times.

​

Those mobile phones have become the metaphorical windows to our real life, the life that we lost in the physical world, yet it continues to haunt us in the cyber space.

​

Until now, Syrians refuse to accept the fact that the world as they know it no longer exist and that they have to move on and begin a new life from scratch. They will hang on to their precious mobile phones as it is their last window to world that they once had.