“I dare not ask my children what they want to eat because I know that I would not be able to afford to buy the products to cook,” says Faten Maaraoui, 35 year-old Syrian refugee from Aleppo and mother of two children, a boy and a girl, aged 15 and 13 respectively.
Faten Maaraoui lives with her children and her sick husband in a tiny 9-square-meter room in a Beirut suburb since the economic situation in Lebanon deteriorated around two years ago. When her husband started getting sick, her son had to leave school to work helping his family making ends meet. Faten does not know if she will be able to send her daughter to school this year.
“Sometimes I am so helpless that I cannot fully fulfill my role as a mother. I feel that my kids take care of me much better than I do take care of them and that saddens me a lot,” she says.
