Noura lives in a slum in North Lebanon, with an overburdened parents in a small, dilapidated room, where every day that Noura lives is a battle for survival. One can always see her so confused that it makes it difficult for her to speak what’s on her mind.
The 17-year-old Noura had an accident when she was young, injuring her spine, preventing her from going to school like any other child. The hardest thing for her is the inability to receive a proper education. She’s a young woman who is completely illiterate and doesn’t know anything about writing and reading.
Noura is her father’s companion and his only source of joy, where her mother describes her as a kind and goodhearted young woman, who is always so satisfied with so little despite living in abject poverty and destitution and has already succumbed to the reality that she lives in accepting the difference that distinguishes her from the daughters of her generation, the same difference that prevents her from completing her studies and her obtaining her right to live a decent life and to have access to proper food and medicine.
Noura’s mother says: “I have never heard Noura complain or reject our situation, she has always provided me with patience and strength and has been an example for me and her father where she has endured a lot of hardships, days of hunger, pain and deprivation which no girl should have ever experienced.”
Noura is one of the many girls among the 23.2% poor people in Lebanon who suffer from abject poverty, but what distinguishes Noura is the extent of her patience which she has proved throughout the past years, but for how long will she be able to stay patient?