Soaring prices of food in Yemen and Nigeria are predisposing more households to malnutrition as both countries face insurgency and weak local currency.
In a city that has not seen electricity for a week, in which the water is cut off for long hours, which awakens to exorbitant price rises for basic goods, how can its people not seek to escape to countries that respect basic dignity and humanity?
Zeina’s family has almost forgotten the taste of chicken and meat. A can of beans costs some 30,000 and a kilo of tomatoes 15,000 Lebanese pounds. ‘These foods were consider to be for the poor,” Zeina said. “Eating them today is a luxury.”
She was a stranger with a strange appearance and a strange request. “I’m not a beggar,” she told my mother. “I just want some old clothes or rags that you no longer need. I need them as a pad for my paralyzed daughter.”
Unable to breathe, Ahmad woke up in the middle of the night suffocating and was in urgent need of hospitalization. Um Ibraheem rushed him to the hospital for ventilation but the economic crisis has severely stripped hospitals of the equipment necessary to treat his case.
As Tripoli suffers, an homage to Lebanon’s only true city, for is there any other city in the country so generously blessed with stories and books, each presenting it with a different scent, a different face?
The Caesar Act has caused the cost of life in Syria to skyrocket. People eat bread with tomato puree and pepper spread over two meals a day. With the streets empty, pockets empty and tables empty, how can the Syrians ever rise up again?
As winter has arrived, Syria is facing a second wave. Across the country the number of corona cases is on the rise. Most people, however, have other things to worry about.
The war was over in Mosul, but other battles were still unfolding. The returnees to the old Iraqi city are still dealing with poverty and disease, and with unidentified bodies buried under the rubble of demolished and mined buildings. Their recovery has become a daily occurrence, no longer newsworthy.
