Batting for hope
Sporting life
by Michael Brearley
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLARA NICOLL
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.
Like other sports, cricket offers the chance to stretch yourself and your body
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.