ÎBTÎSAM AXFÎR

Benghazi- Around 46,000 people were forcibly evacuated from the Tawargha town of Libya in 2011 in a day. More than 2,500 families settled in the seven camps built for them in Benghazi. After a year of displacement, these families didn’t have any income to survive. For this reason, the displaced women of Tawergha began to sell handicrafts, desserts, and tandoor bread to make a living.

68-year-old Xezala Al-Tormi is one of the forcibly displaced people from Tawargha. She now lives in a stable and makes a living by baking tandoor bread and selling them. “A year after being forcibly displaced from Tawargha, I began to make date dessert and then bake tandoor bread because the people of Benghazi buy tandoor bread more. I bake 20 or 30 pieces of tandoor bread a day,” she told us.

Xezala Al-Tormi bakes bread according to the order she receives. “I begin to bake bread at 6 am because the morning is cooler. During Ramadan, we begin to bake at 10 am. And then we sell the bread to shops.”

Economic crisis affects them

Xezala Al-Tormi complains about the lack of food staples due to the ongoing economic crisis in the country. “The ongoing crisis also affects our work. We buy a sack of flour for 120 dinars. We buy a baking breadboard for 80 dinars. We buy sugar, olive oil, and yeast to bake bread. We buy many things to bake bread but earn a small amount of money.”

Xezala Al-Tormi told us how tandoor bread is delicious;

“The bread baked in mud tandoors is very delicious. But we cannot buy a mud tandoor because it is very expensive. For this reason, we bake bread in big metal cans used for collecting water in winter.

She lives in a stable

After nine years of her forcibly displacement, Xezala Al-Tormi went to Tawargha and she saw her destroyed house. “Everything in my house was stolen. If the government doesn’t renew the houses, we cannot return,” said Xezala Al-Tormi, who struggles for life in a stable in Benghazi.