Tuba
Tuba talks about the link between home improvement and the ability to withstand the harshness and uncertainty of camp life:
"To be able to live here one has to recreate a home as much as possible. We spend most of our time here, correct? So you have to do things to achieve that (sense of homeliness). In the beginning it was hard, but even when we were at the tent, I used to pile the mattresses up and cover them with a colored blanket to simulate a bed."
For many Syrian women, recreating home in the camp begins with steps to decorate the interiors of tents and caravans with fabrics, as textiles are portable and easy to fix up to give a sense of 'homeliness' within a space. In this conversation as part of the Thread Bearing Witness project, two Syrian women - Lama and Amal - talk to textile artist Alice Kettle about the centrality of Syrian textiles in Syrian dress, tradition and culture.
