Hayat: “The beating heart of Nabaa”

A ten-minute walk in the narrow alleys of Nabaa in Beirut will probably take an hour with Hayat, a 45-year-old woman–not because she is slow but because every one wants to greet her.  

Hayat, mother of four, was born and raised in Nabaa. Her mother left her village and sold her only possession, a gold bracelet, to bribe the municipality employee to get her husband a job to work as a janitor.

Yet poverty was not what shaped Hayat’s childhood. It was the Lebanese civil war.

“Please don’t kill” was a scream she heard at the age of three. Those words never spared the screamer’s life nor did the civil war spare her family. “I lost two of my brothers in a senseless war,” she said. As a child, she was never sure every time her father went to buy bread, if he would return or not. She can never forget the sight of her mother begging of armed groups to spare the lives of boys and husbands as she peeked from the bathroom where she was hiding when they entered their house.

“This drove me to work with all those around me in my community to make sure I do my part in averting events like the civil war by raising the awareness of those around me to help each other and work towards the betterment of their community.”

The atrocities of the Lebanese war exacerbated the poverty already present in the area where Hayat lives. Nabaa is located in the northern belts of Beirut, an overpopulated area of 4.5km² forming a poverty-belt around the capital. The Lebanese war resulted in high population increase due to uncontrolled migration, which contributed to the widening gap in the socio-economic situation. In Nabaa, acute health and social problems; poverty and neglect; dismantled family structures accompanied with drug addiction, prostitution, and unemployment, in addition to psychological unrest,low quality education and poor health are all part and parcel of everyday life.

Hayat wanted to help but didn’t know how. A few years ago, she heard that a humanitarian organisation called World Vision would help improve her community. “But I’m Muslim, can I still volunteer,” asked Hayat during the first volunteers meeting. “Yes, so what,” answered World Vision’s programme manager. Hayat’s question did not reflect her true concern. The unspoken question was “but I am a woman, can I still be helpful?”

The truth is, because she was a woman she was able to gain the trust of the community.  People's confidence in her allowed her to identify cases of child prostitution, drug abuse or marital rape that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. She listened. She cared and she wanted to help.

In the Lebanese patriarchal community, it was not always easy to do any community work. Hayat always needed her husband’s blessing, and he did not share her vision. At the beginning he de-motivated her, at times, forbid her to attend any meeting or activity.

“I never ever disobeyed my husband,” said Hayat, who, with her patience, perseverance and astuteness managed to find time to be a wife anda mother that raised a good family– an achievement in itself in a broken area– and devoted her time to the social work.  

By fulfilling her family duties, she left her husband no reason to object to her next meeting or activity.

Her main contribution was to the lives of children and women in the community by making them more aware of what their rights are and what they are entitled to, given the lack of support systems in the area for both women and children.  

For years, she followed up on a group of mothers to address the well-being of their children more seriously.  This group is now in the process of acquiring funds for a project that would provide a safe space for children in the Nabaa area.  This is an initiative that they are leading when several years ago this would have been unthinkable–especially considering the family situation of most of these women.      
 
“Whatever the hardships are, be it abuse, discrimination, poor living conditions, I try to tell those that I have worked with that our salvation is through helping others.”

“My mother who passed away recently was and is my inspiration in life.  I try to follow her in everything that I do especially in her strength and compassion towards her fellow woman and man, her sensitivity and care when it came to other people's suffering.”

Perhaps one of Hayat’s greatest achievements was the way she influenced her husband to look beyond the needs of his own family to help others. “We all became volunteers like her,” said her husband Ali. It might have taken him more than ten years to accept and engage in Hayat’s community work, but for her, this was already another dream come true.

“My other dream is for women in my community to be agents of change, leaders and pioneers that are driven by improving the daily lives of those around them–especially their children.  I want women to take the lead in providing solutions for the things we have to deal with everyday.  The situation is getting worse with rising crime rates and the instability all around us.  Now more than ever we need to be strong for our community to in order to fulfil our unified dream of making this a safe place to live for all our children.”

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