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STORY: IRAQ / KHALED HOSSEINI
TRT: 2.27
SOURCE: UNHCR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ARABIC / ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 23 - 24 MARCH 2014, KAWEGOSK REFUGEE CAMP, NORTHERN IRAQ
1. Wide shot, boy running with a kite
2. Wide shot, boy and girl following kites with their eyes
3. Close up, kite in the sky
4. Wide shot, young writer Payman walking around the camp
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Payman Jeto, Syrian refugee:
“I don’t like the word ‘Refugee’, even just hearing it bothers me. A refugee is a person without a home, he lives in country foreign from his own, he is just a stranger living in a tent, I really don’t like this word, I don’t want to even think about it.”
5. Wide shot, Payman sitting overlooking camp
6. Wide shot, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini walking in the camp
7. Wide shot, Hosseini shaking hands with Payman and her father
8. Med shot, Khaled and Payman sitting inside the tent
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador:
“So many of my own people had to leave and my own family cannot go back to Afghanistan because of war and so I feel a kind of personal closeness to people in the same situation. When I go back to the US, I am going to write about what’s going on about what’s going with all the people who are coming from Syria.”
10. Wide shot, Hosseini and Payman sitting inside the tent
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador:
“You know writing is just something that you do because, you can’t imagine not doing it and so I get a feeling that you are writing because it’s in your heart.”
12. Wide shot, Hosseini walking in the camp with UNHCR staff
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador:
“This is a huge humanitarian crisis, it’s important that the whole world be aware of it, all our responsibility to do something about it, but I think it’s important to tell the stories because people don’t connect necessarily with statistics and metrics and numbers but they do connect more with human stories and even just a brief visit to this camp and sitting down with few people has made this situation so much more understandable and intimate for me.”
14. Various shots, young boys playing marbles
15. Wide shot, refugee camp
16. Wide shot, Payman walks and then sits down on edge of ground overlooking camp
17. Various shots, Payman writing.
International best-selling author and UNHCR goodwill ambassador Khaled Hosseini made his first visit over the weekend to see Syrian refugees living in Northern Iraq. Hosseini, a former refugee from Afghanistan is the author of bestsellers such as The Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns.
He met a number of refugees on his visit, they included 16-year-old Payman, a young writer full of ambition but with much frustration at being unable to go to school.
At the camp, school classes run until age 14, and so she attends her younger sister’s classroom, just to stay in education.
She says that she cries about missing school everyday.
There are over 226 thousand Syrian refugees living in Northern Iraq. Over 2 million and half million in the region.
Payman is 16 years old. She never imagined replacing her childhood home in Syria for a tent.
She arrived to Kawergosk camp in Northern Iraq with her family in August last year.
She cried when she first saw the camp. She still struggles to cope.
SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Payman Jeto, Syrian refugee:
“I don’t like the word ‘Refugee’, even just hearing it bothers me. A refugee is a person without a home, he lives in country foreign from his own, he is just a stranger living in a tent, I really don’t like this word, I don’t want to even think about it.”
Payman writes to forget.
She writes about Syria and about the struggle of women in the region
.
When best-selling author and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Khaled Hosseini, visited the camp, he heard about the young writer and asked to visit her.
SOUNDBITE (English) Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador:
“So many of my own people had to leave and my own family cannot go back to Afghanistan because of war and so I feel a kind of personal closeness to people in the same situation. When I go back to the US, I am going to write about what’s going on about what’s going with all the people who are coming from Syria.”
Once a top student, Payman hasn’t gone to school since leaving Syria.
It is a something she finds hard to bare.
This is Hosseini’s first trip to see Syrian refugees fleeing the three-year old conflict.
SOUNDBITE (English) Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador:
“This is a huge humanitarian crisis, it’s important that the whole world be aware of it, all our responsibility to do something about it, but I think it’s important to tell the stories because people don’t connect necessarily with statistics and metrics and numbers but they do connect more with human stories and even just a brief visit to this camp and sitting down with few people has made this situation so much more understandable and intimate for me.”
Over two and half million Syrians are now refugees in the region.
Around 12,000 live in this camp alone, one of seven scattered across Northern Iraq
.
Payman says meeting Hosseini inspires her to keep writing. That is what she will hold onto, to see her through these difficult times.
