These Female Reporters Bring News to the World's Largest Syrian Refugee Camp

In a tent in the fourth district of Zaatari, the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, dozens of young journalists gather around a conference table for their daily editorial meeting, starting at 9:30 a.m. sharp every weekday morning.

Their boss, Hada Sarhan, is a 57-year-old woman with a petite frame and a commanding voice. She paces around the tent, watching as seats fill with reporters clad in dark blue vests that have “THE ROAD MEDIA” printed in both English and Arabic on the back.

It is summertime in Jordan, and as the team settles in, chatting as they arrive, one young woman slowly rises from her seat, her cheeks flushed from the desert heat. With a small notepad in hand and pen cushioned between the folds of her hijab, she moves toward the head of the conference table, ready to address the team of mostly men seated in front of her.

She glances over at her editor-in-chief standing in the corner, who nods back, claps her hands together, and shouts out, “Yala shabab [Let’s go team],” and with that, the chattering quiets down, and she begins to present the latest findings of her most recent report: a look into the life of a local refugee family in dire need of a rare surgical treatment that is not offered in the camp.

Like the rest of her colleagues, the young woman is a Syrian refugee. Her name is Abeer Al-Eid, and at 20 years old, she is one of the few female reporters for The Road magazine, a publication produced by a team of Syrian refugee journalists for other refugees living in Zaatari. While the camp is home to over 80,000 people, a bustling street market, and several hospitals and schools, The Road is the only news publication to be reported, printed, and delivered to the doors of Zaatari’s residents.

Abeer has spent the past two weeks documenting the struggles of a refugee family affected by dwarfism. Children with the condition risk permanent paralysis in their legs if they don’t get the surgery needed to correct the direction in which their bones are growing. Abeer had spent the afternoon following doctors around in Zaatari’s hospitals, asking questions and digging for details from the hospital staff. Now, she hoped to get advice from her teammates on how to effectively navigate the bureaucratic ladder of the hospitals.

“I like to be at the front row of everything,” said Abeer, smiling. “But that’s new to me. I was so shy before starting at the magazine; I couldn’t really say a single word during these meetings. Now, I’m a different kind of human.”

First published in May 2014, the monthly magazine was launched by Hada Sarhan — a veteran Jordanian journalist whose career has spanned two major Jordanian newspapers. After five years at The Jordan Times and another nine at Al Arab Al Yawm (Arab Today), Hada, who herself has written extensively on the cultural and artistic innovations introduced by Iraqi refugees in Jordan, grew disenchanted with the state of journalism in the Arab world, and had thought about resigning for months before taking the plunge.

“It was getting progressively worse,” says Hada. “The journalists around me were relying more and more on state press releases than actual interviews and investigations. It did not feel like real journalism.”

For Hada, the tipping point during her time at Al Arab Al Yawm occurred when the editor-in-chief didn't allow her to attend meetings with her fellow senior editors, who were all male. “I told the editor-in-chief that I should be a part of these meetings even though I am a woman, and argued a lot with him to let me attend them, but he wouldn't let it happen despite my best efforts.”

As the head of the Arts and Culture section at the paper, Hada tried to rally a group of female reporters to protest the decision, but their complaints remained unaddressed, even when a new editor-in-chief took over. She stayed for a little while after the incident, and left when the newspaper closed down.

Just a month later, Hada stumbled upon a job listing in a newspaper from the Japanese Emergency NGO (JEN), a nonprofit with a strong presence in Zaatari, looking for an experienced journalist to lead a special media project in the camp: a small mini-magazine to be called Zaatari Refugee Magazine. Originally the idea of Cyril Cappai, the head of JEN in Jordan, the magazine would provide a glimpse of what life is like in the camp from the perspective of refugees. But Hada wanted to go bigger, and introduced her idea for The Road, a more extensive version, in her interview. Cyril loved the idea, and they decided to give it a shot.

After laying the groundwork for a course designed to train young reporters, garnering enough interest from prospective journalists in Zaatari, and acquiring the funds needed to print the magazine, the first issue of The Road was published in May 2014.

Since then, The Road has trained over 120 journalists and has covered everything from social issues to health care to business and education in Zaatari. One issue included an article about the long-awaited introduction of a water delivery system at the camp. One investigated reports of inflated food prices during the holy month of Ramadan. Another featured a piece about Zaatari’s “Father of Wonders,” a 75-year-old refugee known for handcrafting everything from homemade ovens to chandeliers.

“We decided to call it The Road because that is exactly what this camp has been to all them,” says Hada. “They’re all on the same road home — regardless of how permanent the situation may seem.”

Standing at five foot two, Abeer thinks her petite size and seemingly docile presence has worked to the magazine’s advantage. She once snuck into a school to conduct an interview with António Guterres, the secretary-general of the U.N., after hearing rumblings of his upcoming visit to Zaatari. She has wiggled her way into the secret shops of women who have managed to start their own businesses within the confines of the small, metal shacks they call home. Most recently, she has dropped by the offices of doctors in Zaatari’s two major hospitals, knocking on doors and digging through medical records.

“This magazine means everything to me, every single thing,” said Abeer, who has now been writing for the publication for over two years.

While Hada and the rest of the staff actively encourage the inclusion of women in their editorial meetings and every other aspect of the magazine, the stakes are still high for The Road’s female staff writers. Hada has received criticism from local imams for running a mixed-gender team, allowing women to walk around the camp to distribute copies of the magazine, and including photos of women on the magazine’s cover.

One of their more controversial pieces addressed the growing trend of women in Zaatari using bikes to get around the camp — a popular method of transportation that had previously been reserved exclusively for men. After publishing the story, Hada received numerous text messages from unknown cell phone numbers that depicted images of the magazine issue torn up and placed in the trash.

“A local imam started arguing that when a woman rides a bike she loses her virginity, and that makes her a whore,” said Hada. “I actually resorted to calling a doctor and having him explain that was not the case, and his [the imam's] response was: to hell with you and your magazine,” she added, laughing.

Abeer has not been immune to such resistance. For the first few months, she attended the mix-gendered editorial meetings without telling her family, and when she did come clean, her father banned her from going to those meetings. Hada, who did not want to lose a strong female talent, showed up at their doorstep multiple times to explain the nature of the magazine, and why the work she is doing is more beneficial than blasphemous. Reluctantly, her parents eventually came to accept it.

“Writing is in her soul, I know that, she tells me all the time. But journalism requires freedom. That’s a hard thing to offer a girl in Zaatari,” says Abeer’s mother, as she sits on the red-carpeted floor of her caravan, surrounded by her six children. Her husband sits across from her, nodding along. “It requires total freedom,” he added.

“Back in Syria, you never read what you wanted to read. You read what the government wanted you to read,” says her father. “Owning the wrong book could make me disappear. The concept of journalism did not exist for us.”

Still, Abeer holds fond memories of her childhood growing up in Damascus. Her father sold vegetables in the country’s busiest street market, and they would frequently visit her grandparents’ home in Daraa on weekends.

“Of course I miss it, more than anything. The day I left Syria was the darkest day of my life,” says Abeer. “But my last memory is running barefoot, screaming, with my slippers in one hand and my little sister in another.”

After arriving at the camp at age 16, Abeer was married off to an 18-year-old man upon finishing the 10th grade. The marriage, she said, caused her to miss a year of school. The marriage ultimately ended, and today, Abeer has gone from being a child bride herself to reporting on cases of early marriage and its consequences in Zaatari. While Abeer may have been able to reroute the direction of her life, many of her friends and colleagues could not. Abeer’s close friend Nada, who, at 15, had first introduced her to the journalism training course offered by The Road, had quit just weeks after she first started.

“She got married and was forced to leave. She’s actually pregnant now,” says Abeer. “That ends up happening with most of the girls who join the magazine. It’s a shame.”

For now, Abeer is devoted to putting her curiosity, quick feet, and love for writing to good use. She says the support of Hada and the rest of the team — who she refers to as her brothers — keep her committed, motivated, and prepared to do her part for the sake of the magazine and its readers.

“I remember the first time Miss Hada addressed me in one of those meetings,” says Abeer, who recalls feeling both startled and invigorated as she sat at that conference table. “She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Abeer, what do you have for us?’”

Related: I’m 16 Years Old and I’m a Syrian Refugee