Playing basketball is my favourite sport. I'm really good at it and I have so much fun playing with all of my friends. They're just like me, my friends I mean. We're all good students and like to get good marks in our classes. We look alike, talk alike and we even eat the same food. I think it's because we were all born in the same country. I'm proud to be Lebanese.
I only have Lebanese friends.
Me and my friends were told to stop playing and talking to the kids from Syria.
I was taught to stay away from Syrians and to be careful, because: they are aggressive, they don't take showers and they think differently.
They're not like us.
It was weird to act this way at first, but then I got used to it.
Recently, Right To Play held a Play Day at my school. They put the Lebanese and the Syrian kids together, on the same teams for all of the activities What were they thinking? I refused to join in and decided to organize the water bottles, instead.
My friends left me and joined the games. This was really confusing. We're not supposed to play with the Syrians; I was doing the right thing. But I felt so left out, standing on the sidelines and just watching everyone else have fun.
At the time I thought: this is what Syrians must feel like when they are in a strange country,
away from their home.
So I decided I would join in the games. At first it was a bit awkward for me because I had to play with the Syrian kids and I just didn't want to. I think Ziad, one of the Right To Play staff noticed I was being pretty aggressive, because he made a big point of talking and laughing with a Syrian Right To Play volunteer. He did it right in front of me, too. When I asked him if he was really friends with this guy, Ziad said: yes, that he was friends with a lot of Syrians.
This made me think.
Why was I choosing to be exclusive and unkind?
All of the games I like to play, particularly basketball, require teamwork and coordination. Things I'm really good at. I noticed this when I was shooting hoops with the other kids. It made me realize that I had to accept the other kids and talk to them while we were playing if we wanted to work together to get a basket.
The more I played the more I started to feel empathetic towards the Syrians. Maybe it's because some of them shared their experiences about the Syrian war and how they didn't want to leave their country and come to Lebanon, but they had to. It made me remember the stories my dad used to tell me about our country's civil war. I know it's different, yet somehow it feels the same.
Maybe I can be nicer to the Syrian kids.
I liked passing out the gifts and food to everyone at the end of the Play Day. And some of the Syrian kids were even pretty good at basketball.
I have a lot to think about.
