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Angela Sahoui
On a wooden bench in the Khawla Garden near Bab Tuma Square in Damascus sits a woman nicknamed Umm Youssef. She is watching her car. It contains all that remains of her belongings, the run-down grey Volkswagen that has been parked in the same spot for years. All the cars around here move except for Umm Youssef’s car: to the observer, it seems to be fixed to the asphalt like a lamppost, and the tires placed on its roof make it seem even more solid. In these tires are a few bags of food: bread, bulgur, and some pasta. One only has to look through the window to understand that this car is also where Umm Youssef now sleeps. There is a grey blanket and a pillow where the steering wheel is supposed to be. It’s like this car is destined never to move again.
Harsh milestones in Umm Youssef’s life
With her wrinkled face browned from the sun, her white hair and tired eyes, Umm Youssef watches the passersby. Her features clearly show the harshness of time. It is easy to discern that her life has not been easy. She wanders away sometimes, but customers call her back and she rushes to make coffee in front of her car. Everything she needs is in that car, even the gas cylinder and material she needs to prepare hot drinks.
In her sixty-something years of life, Umm Youssef has witnessed several harsh milestones. They now stand as markers of pain in her memory. “I’ve been a widow since 11/11/2008,” she shares. “Then my son was killed by a shell. I had a younger son, but he died of cancer.” Umm Youssef is unable to remember the exact date her son was struck by a shell and died. “In 2015…” she mutters, “it’s been seven years maybe—no, it might have been nine years since he was martyred.” Calm and composed, her clothes shabby and face visibly sad, the woman narrates the tragedy of her son’s death during the most violent years of the war (1), when mortar shells rained down on the city of Damascus and its countryside, launched by the Syrian regime forces and armed militias that controlled the outskirts of the capital at the time. No one has been able to identify exactly who launched the shells, but two things are certain: first, there was intense shellfire that claimed dozens of lives, including that of Umm Youssef’s son, and second, the shelling was Syrian-Syrian, and the victims were innocent Syrians—in a war that has claimed the lives of more than half a million Syrians. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), about 618,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011.
How did the car, and work, protect Umm Youssef from death?
Umm Youssef continues to narrate the details of that fateful day. “I was making coffee for an officer’s wife, and my son was standing beside me. There were also two Iraqi women waiting for their coffee. Suddenly, a shell fell. My son and the officer’s wife died, and both women were injured. But me, I wasn’t hit by any shrapnel. I was behind the car making the coffee. The shell fragments reached all the way inside the garden. Many died. I remained.”
It seems that the car protected Umm Youssef from death back then, and she returned to work in it after the death of her son. Though it is owned by a relative of hers and her stall is unlicensed, her entire life depends on it. It’s her source of income, and as of late, it has also become her home.
Before all this, Umm Youssef had a normal life, like that of any woman. She had a house where she lived with her husband, who was an employee in a government department, and her two sons. After the death of her husband and then her son from a terminal illness, she took up this work to help out her other son, but then he also died, leaving her completely alone with the realization that she needed to work in order to survive. In any case, Umm Youssef is not the only woman who has had to start working, as the number of women in the workforce in Syria is constantly on the rise. According to the Syria Economic Monitor report issued by the World Bank, female participation in the labor market doubled from 13% in 2010 to 26% in 2021, but the truly shocking number was announced by a Syrian government official to Athr Press (2): he said that for every man, there are seven working women in Syria. This increase comes amid the loss of men—be it due to migration, death, or even arrest, as most young men have headed to Europe to escape military service. There are still more than 150,000 people who have been forcibly disappeared in Syria, including 10,221 women, according to SOHR.
The Square, the link in her memory to her son
Bab Tuma Square, which is one of the seven gates of Damascus, is among the most famous in the Syrian capital. It is an entry point into the Old City of Damascus, which is still a destination for visitors from other Syrian governorates and, recently, for Arab and foreign tourists, after tourism halted during the years of war. But for Umm Youssef, the significance of Bab Tuma goes beyond its historical and touristic importance—for her, it is psychologically important, linked as it is to her memory and personal experience. Although she hails from the Sweida Governorate, located in the south of Syria, 100 km away from the capital, she belongs to the Bab Tuma Square just as much as any Damascene, she who chose not to leave despite the war and looming death. “I did not want to leave before, and I don’t want to leave now,” she affirms. “If I wanted to, I would’ve left a long time ago… but I will not leave the place where my son died. Not until I myself die.”
Umm Youssef’s link to Bab Tuma thus goes beyond the place being her only source of income: the square is her last link to the memory of her son, whom she lost very close to where she works.
Umm Youssef’s attempts to challenge corruption and economic collapse
After the death of her son, Umm Youssef made sure to have a martyr card issued for him. This card, granted by the Syrian government to the families of martyrs, provides them with government facilitations and assistance. But it seems that this didn’t help her get a license for her stall due to long waiting lines, favoritism, and connections. On top of that, Umm Youssef is harassed by the governorate council because of this inability to obtain a license. Governorate and municipal inspectors visit her stall, and others’, and take bribes in exchange for not shutting them down. These inspection tours are more of a legalized means of corruption in the absence of any mechanisms for accountability.
Kiosks, especially those selling to-go hot drinks and cigarettes, are among the most common types of small business in Syria—and the most involved with state institutions, which are overly bureaucratic to make it easier to take bribes. So selling in the street is a real challenge. According to the Transparency International report, Syria maintained its position at the bottom of the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), scoring 13 points out of 100 and occupying the last two places, with Somalia.
With the economic downturn, Umm Youssef later had to leave her house, which she had been renting in the Dwel'a neighborhood. She moved into the car from which she sells coffee.
The cost of renting has risen to 900 thousand Syrian pounds, or about 60 US dollars, while the salary of a government employee is equivalent to about 20 US dollars. According to a World Bank report (3), the value of the Syrian pound fell significantly by 141% against the US dollar in 2023, while consumer price inflation is estimated to have risen by 93%. This collapse has forced Syrian men and women to make difficult decisions, Umm Youssef being a prime example. “I left the house even though I lived there for a long time. I just can’t afford to pay that much money. And I recently had to spend four million Syrian pounds, equivalent to $266, on my treatment. I was appalled by the cost, but all I can do is thank God. I was able to pay for it in installments, from my work and some savings. Now, I sleep in the car, I cook in it, I work in it. My entire life is within and around it,” she says. Then she adds, jokingly, “This way, I can keep an eye on it from thieves and vandals.”
She talks of the future, about developing her business in a country riddled with economic crises, labor migration, and the departure of investors. She dreams.
The difficulties of being a woman selling coffee on the street
In a country like Syria, it is no easy feat to be a woman selling coffee from a dilapidated car. It’s a challenge to get the raw materials to make drinks, as prices are high and sometimes raw materials are not available, especially cooking gas, as Umm Youssef prepares her drinks on a portable gas stove. These materials are difficult to find due to the 14-year war followed by an economic blockade, the result of the Caesar Act and successive European sanctions (4). But having acquaintances and friends who love and support her, sellers and distributors of raw materials themselves, has made it a lot easier for Umm Youssef to purchase materials such as tea, sugar, wild herbs, coffee, and Nescafe, permitting her to maintain her small business—which competes with dozens of other kiosks. These types of stalls are almost everywhere, outside and within residential neighborhoods, on public roads, on highways between governorates, and near gas stations or public parks.
But Umm Youssef has other kinds of problems, too, like repeated thefts that get in the way of her work and cause her great losses in light of the economic collapse. Things were stolen from her car three times, the last of which was a few months ago. She found the windows broken in the morning and the gas cylinder stolen along with the boxes of merchandise she had. Given the high cost of gas cylinders and how hard it is to obtain them, this posed a considerable challenge for her.
A campaign to help Umm Youssef
After the gas cylinder was stolen, some of Umm Youssef’s customers organized a social media campaign to help her and collected enough money for a new cylinder and some work supplies. Her kindness and warmth have made her a beloved figure in the area, and some people show up just to check on her.
The woman who organized the campaign, and who preferred to remain anonymous, says, “I was one of Umm Youssef’s customers. One day, in the summer of 2021, I stopped by to check on her, and she told me that there had been things stolen from her car. She came in the morning to find the windows broken and the gas cylinder gone.”
So this young woman started a Facebook campaign, publishing a post calling on people to help Umm Youssef. Messages of support and assistance started coming in, even from abroad. “I was surprised by the amount of love people have for Umm Youssef, by how much they wanted to help her,” she recalls. “It was then that I discovered how popular this woman is. Donations came in even from outside Syria, from Syrians living in Sweden and Germany. It was very touching, and it really helped her out. She was able to buy a new gas cylinder.”
Umm Youssef defends women on the street
It is easy to get a sense of Umm Youssef’s strength. She would rather work, despite the hardship, than ask for help. “I used to work with my son, today I work to stay alive. I work hard to earn my own food by the sweat of my brow,” she says.
Umm Youssef has a good relationship with the people around her. Her customers are mainly bus drivers and members of the police station near her. She only leaves her stall to walk around a little when she gets bored. She repeats this thought—“Since my son died here, it’s like the place has become a part of me.”
It’s not easy for Umm Youssef to work in what is a very masculine environment. Once, a strange man was walking by and asked for water to drink. She didn’t have any water, and she was busy preparing lunch, so she told him to go to the garden, where there was a water tap. But he returned, annoyingly insistent, and when she told him that she couldn’t help him any further, he waved the loaf of bread in her hand to the ground. She took a stick and hit him with it until passersby came and freed him from her. This woman knows how to defend herself.
But women in the street are exposed to various types of harassment, and as a woman who works in the street all day, in direct contact with everyone who walks through this crowded place, Umm Youssef has witnessed a lot of women being harassed as they sat in the garden or had some coffee.
“Some drivers, when they see a woman buying coffee or sitting in the garden, come to me and ask me to introduce them to her or get them her number. But I shoo them away, and I always answer them very harshly,” Umm Youssef states. She tries to maintain the privacy of her customers in a city where it is difficult for a woman to sit alone in a garden without being subjected to all kinds of harassment.
As we conclude our conversation with the lovely coffee vendor, she invites me to come back and have coffee with her. But what is interesting about how Umm Youssef speaks is that she talks of the future, about developing her business in a country riddled with economic crises, labor migration, and the departure of investors. She dreams, she plans to add new drinks to her stall menu. “I know a lot of people,” she says. “I am loved by them, and they sell me material at good prices. People’s love and care make me feel that I am not alone.”
The Syrian War: The revolution began in 2011 with peaceful protests that then turned into fighting between the armed opposition and the Syrian regime.
Syrian women storm the labor market… a source in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to Athr Press: Women are prohibited from working at night except in these cases
Syria: Worsening contraction in growth rates and deterioration of the welfare of Syrian families – World Bank Group
Caesar sanctions and European sanctions: a set of American and European sanctions targeting entities and individuals linked to the Syrian regime and accused of violating human rights. The sanctions include a ban on dealing or exporting a wide range of materials and transferring funds, but they have also had a negative impact on the lives of middle- and lower-class civilians.
This investigation was carried out with the support of the Tunis Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
