Two years ago, Maram, then a 15-year-old Syrian refugee living in Shatila camp in south Beirut, had already become passionate about cricket. Asked what cricket does for her, she replied, “It makes me happy, more confident. I feel like a butterfly.” Her friend Wissal says: “As a child I was really shy. But cricket helped me build my personality. I learned to speak up.”
Maram has suffered many deprivations and difficulties in her life, among them a traumatic time under Islamic State at Dier al-Zour in Syria, and her family being forced to give up all they had for the dubious experience of a refugee camp in another country.
But now, after a new opportunity for education and cricket, what a sense of brightness and freedom she conveys! Living her passion for this strange sport, she can now look with excitement and anticipation at a broader range of life’s possibilities for herself and others. Two British secondary schools and a number of universities have expressed an interest in taking her in as a student, but now her future is again radically uncertain.
Alsama, the organisation that was offering this education (including, centrally, cricket), had also persuaded her family and many others to refrain from requiring their daughters to get married at 12.
Alsama was founded in 2020 by Richard Verity and his wife Meike Ziervogel—and their Syrian partner Kadria Hussein, who came to Lebanon in 2012. Richard had previously worked for McKinsey, Meike had written books and run a publishing company. In a mere four years that included the pandemic, Alsama now has four schools, with a total of 880 students. Meike is still living in Beirut; she cannot allow herself to leave the children and the project. Richard, who works in Saudi Arabia, returns every month.
Since the order to evacuate the refugee camps (along with many other parts of Beirut), the Alsama schools, which offer maths, English, Arabic, IT, music, art, chess, yoga, debating and hiking, as well as that core subject, cricket, have been forced to close their physical doors. A missile has fallen on the Shatila cricket pitch. The children have dispersed—some to Christian Beirut, which was less likely to be bombed; others further north within Lebanon. Classes continue online, with 64 per cent attendance. Children still play cricket in carparks and courtyards. A third of the Alsama students, including Maram and Wissal, returned to Syria, where they faced much of the same exploitation and risk that led them to leave that country as refugees years before. Some have recently returned to Beirut.
Since 2020, Alsama has grown exponentially. Before war came to Beirut, it was operating four education centres, two in Shatila and two more in the camp at Bourj el-Barajneh. The overall aim is to condense, into six years’ schooling, the journey from illiteracy to university level, a task that elsewhere takes 12 years.
Thanks partly to generous donors (including Marylebone Cricket Club), teachers, almost all of them local, have been kept on since the evacuation, despite their buildings being unavailable. Alsama has supplied its scattered students with mobile phones and sim cards, and keeps in touch with them. They were (at the time of writing) the only schools in the country still working, although now public schools have re-opened. They were also planning to teach small groups of children in safer areas of the dangerous city.
But why cricket, and what can cricket do for children in a place like Shatila, set up in 1949 for 3,000 Palestinian refugees but now housing 40,000? A place where everything is limited: space, security and, indeed, education?
These young people, all from backgrounds where cricket was unknown, explain the difference it has made to their lives. Maram sent a voicemail to her coach at Alsama: “I can’t wait to return. I miss you, cricket, everything in Lebanon. There is no bat or ball here, but I train with pieces of wood for a bat. I have to practise all the shots my heart loves—cover-drives, leg glances… I use stones to practise my left-arm spin.” Another girl, Ola, said: “When I hit a six, I feel like I’m achieving my dreams. It’s like I’m expressing my aim in life. The ball goes all the way—and so can I.”
Like other sports, cricket offers the chance to stretch yourself and your body—to run, hit, throw, bowl, catch—all these basic pleasures of childhood, so often restricted in crowded and often threatening environments.
The cricket matches the education, both feeding a hunger for growth and expansion that is typical of Alsama’s approach. These young people, for whom none of this is to be taken for granted, grab the opportunity for a fuller life. They can “go all the way”.
More than other games, cricket involves one-to-one contests in the context of the group. There are two protagonists, batter and bowler, but every event, every ball, is framed and influenced by the groups. As in life, we have to learn to be an “I” who is also part of a “we”. Moreover, cricket is a non-contact sport, and everyone can play it with their body well-covered. It is thus a more feasible activity than many other sports for girls from families with traditional attitudes to modesty. Maram’s family initially opposed her playing with the boys until Alsama’s coach managed, over several months, to talk them round.
Wissal, who, like Maram, also escaped (or fled) to Syria and has come back, is convinced she can bring this strange game to her original country. In a few short weeks, she has already got together a group of local boys and girls, videoed in a wide barren space in Damascus excitedly learning the basics of cricket.
There are estimated to be 120m people in refugee camps worldwide. Ninety three per cent of Alsama’s children named cricket their favourite sport. And Maram’s, Wissal’s and Ola’s experiences suggest that cricket could (perhaps even should) become the primary refugee game, globally.
