80 families: 2 bathrooms

byHabib Battah
Sep 13, 2013

I visited Ayn El Hilwe today, one of Lebanon’s most violent and densely populated Palestinian refugee camps.

The tens of thousands that live in the camp are now joined by thousands more Palestinian refugees that have poured over the border in recent months. An estimated 3,000 families from Syria are now housed in Ayn El Hilwe and the newest arrivals have been put up in ramshackle tents in a dirt parking lot.

I was told around 80 families live on the lot, sharing two bathrooms–male and female–with around four toilets each (see photo). The toilets reek and there are no showers.

All of the stories I heard were heart breaking and I will share them soon. But when I got home and took a shower, I felt a sense of guilt and unease. First because I was “cleansing” myself from the filth that is their everyday life and second because I suddenly felt so spoiled to have access to a shower, let alone a private one.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.