WENDELL STEAVENSON
Ifirst met the Masto family in Lebanon in the spring of 2016. I was reporting on Syrian refugees and met Ibtisam, the mother, at the farmers’ market where she had a stall selling different kinds of kibbeh, the Middle Eastern dish of bulgur wheat pastry, usually stuffed with lamb and onions. She and her six children had fled Jisr al-Shughur, a city in the north of Syria, in 2013 after enduring months of fighting: bodies in the streets, no electricity, scarce food, a kidnap epidemic. Her husband Mohammed worked as a plumber in Lebanon, and after a nail-biting, bone-jarring 24-hour journey of buses and checkpoints, they joined him.