Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 31 unstoppable and harrowing. Finally she tells me that she witnessed the sexual assault of a twelve-year-old neighbor through her window. Too terrified to intervene, Roha couldn’t move. She is still deeply ashamed that she didn’t. The act had been a punishment for the girl’s father. As the armed men left, they killed him too. Once she was sure the men were gone, Roha rushed to help the girl. “She survived. But actu- ally they both died that day, in different ways,” Roha says quietly. “I saw this with my own eyes. I can never stop seeing it now.” By now she is in tears. I sit beside her, holding her hand. What else can I do? Roha composes herself. Suddenly she erupts in anger: at those men for what they did, at herself for what she didn’t do. And at her com- munity for refusing to talk about it, for burying such incidents through a sense of shame. “This is the big issue – but no one will talk about it. Why? Why! Because we are ashamed? Let us instead shame those who do this!” She strikes her hand on the concrete floor, brace- lets jangling. Muna, age five, and Tamer, age three, escaped from Syria into Lebanon with their mother Laila after armed gangs in Syria threatened to kill the family. They hope they will find their father, who fled Syria the previous year to avoid being forced to fight. “We used to live in a small village on the mountain,” Laila said. “We owned a big farm, greenhouses, tractors, and a harvester.”She and her children now live in an abandoned cowshed. Photograph courtesy of Save the Children