The toll of Syria's war

As Syria's war enters its third year, Beirut-based photographer Bridgette Auger documents the lives of two Syrian men living outside their home country.

Auger met Husam in 2008 while both were working with the UN Refugee Agency. When she visited him in Germany in 2013, she could hardly recognize him - "He was hostile, bitter and angry," she wrote.

Husam's best friend, Mohamad, left Syria suddenly, fearing his life was in danger. He fled to neighboring Lebanon and has bounced from country to country ever since.

Both men struggle with the grief and anxiety of war, as well as the guilt of being on the outside. In 2013, Auger captured their troubling experiences in a multimedia project, "This is not me: Enduring Syria's War."

The work is on view at the Gulf + Western Gallery at New York University through August 2013. Read on to see selected images from the project accompanied by text from Auger's interviews with the men.

Both men have requested their last name be omitted.

Mohamad

In Syria, I was working a good job. I dreamed of to be very big businessman. I was only thinking about my future.

Everything was ok until the revolution start. Something inside me push me to go out to go to the demonstration.

Something happen inside me. And I say "Allah ho akbar," it is to start the demonstration. Everyone repeat it. There were like 500 people! It was the first demonstration in the area. Walla it was amazing.

Portrait taken in Damascus, Syria 2003

Mohamad

And then I arrested. I was crazy. But I was like, I was happy. Because I believe in revolution.

I was pushing Husam to go to the demonstration. He was saying "oh no I was afraid." I said you have to come you have to come! I start to blah blah blah in his mind and he change his mind because he is against the regime, but he was afraid and then he come.

Mohamad in his office, Damascus, Syria 2009

Husam

At the very beginning I was afraid. I said "No! Come on, I know my people. Syrians are so coward. The Syrian regime is so horribly brutal so we are not able to do such a change."

Yeah and then I went and I saw what was going on there. It was a different world. In the center of Damascus you are asking for freedom and for toppling the regime. In the center of Damascus! I mean you are not even allowed to say the word "Assad" in the street.

Photo taken in Jordan, 2010

Husam

And that is how I was convinced, "Ok, we can do the change." Actually I was the coward one. Because those people started the revolution and then I joined it.

Photo of Husam visiting Bedouins in Jordan, 2009

Mohamad

I was arrested and the second time they will kill me. Because I was wanted.

I ran away from Syria to Lebanon and then I went to Jordan. I went to Dubai. And then I went to Turkey. I came back to Jordan, I couldn't find anything. I went to Egypt, I spent a lot of time in Egypt looking for something I couldn't find.

I feel like someone following me always, everywhere.

Mohamad

Walla, I have many friends they are die.

Some of them won't speak to me. Some of them are arrested. Some of them are unknown.

I am the youngest, the only boy. My father was in a good health, but when I left Syria he was scared about me. And he was also very scared when the police attacked our house and he start to sick more and more and then he die. Nobody told me after two days. When my father died, everything in my life changed.

Mohamad

When I came to Lebanon, I start something between me and myself fighting everyday why I run away. Why was I alive? I don't wanna be alive.

Husam

When I knew that I got the scholarship and I have to leave the country. I had a kind of mixture of feelings. Feelings some kind of selfish and lucky. Like, ok, saying this change is taking place anyway with me or without me.

I came to Germany in mid-October.

I get money from my scholarship. I can survive with like 35 percent of it. Most of the rest I send to my mom who survives because of this along with my younger brother who lives with her. I work in a restaurant washing dishes because some of my friends needed money so I tried to send them some money.

Husam

I wake up, then I go right away to the university and I attend my lectures. I go back home exhausted and I eat something and then I open my laptop sit there for like sometimes four or five hours.

I was watching every single thing that was posted on Facebook or on Youtube from friends. Many times I woke up at night having a nightmare. I might go to my work and have a normal day maybe some explosion is happening next to my house.

It is like have cancer in your body and you are not sure if you get rid of it or not.

Many times friends ask me, like when they laugh and when they enjoy their time, and they say like what's happening? I say I'm just thinking about my country.

Husam

I feel so lost. I don't know what I want to do. Do I want to stay here? Do I want to go back?

I've spent most of my time in this room. Sigh.

Sometimes I talk with myself.

Mohamad

I had very good feeling when I went to Syria. We went to Aleppo. Fighters. Damages. Bad life. People dying. It's real war. We went to the fight line at the front. It was very very very dangerous.

I was planning to stay there because I don't want to depend on anyone anymore. I went there because I was feeling guilty. I can live in my country without depending on anyone.

Mohamad

My family doesn't has anything. I didn't send any money. I didn't take care. I really wish to take care about them, but how? I am asking myself "how?"

Mohamad

When I went there I saw these people, like tradesmen, some of them fight, some of them work to bring flour. They left everything, families, business, studying, everything and they went to fight because they want to protect them cities and me, for me, I run away! I didn

Husam

Sometimes when I want to sleep and there was snow in Zaatari camp, wallahi, I couldn't sleep for like two hours because I was thinking and I turned the heating off. I don't want to sound like idealistic, but seriously this is what I did. I turned the heating because I want to feel how they feel. Because I saw how the refugees were living like in a kind of a desert on the borders between Turkey and Syria. They were having a tent made out of blankets between trees. Only blankets! Thin blankets on the ground and that was the tent and two or three year old children sleeping with this snow with the spiders with the snakes.

They have no food, no education, they are being massacred.

Husam

What do I believe in? Am I really a pure Muslim? Without even investigating it? Just believing it because they told me this is the right thing?

Because now I see how Bashar Al Assad controlled Bouti, who was killed, he is like the most prominent Sheikh in Syria.

Bouti was considered like a holy figure for the Muslims before the revolution. Bashar was controlling him and asking him to announce jihad against the revolution. Jihad in a secular state against the revolution! And he did it! He made the fatwa, like a motivation for Muslims to join the Syrian army to fight the rebellions.

Do I really believe in everything that my society taught me?

Husam

A friend of mine is dead now. Basil Shehada.

We got the scholarship together. We were trying to convince each other that "Ok, let's go abroad and get educated and come back to the country and let's help the people. It is not selfishness if we go out and we get educated because we have a chance now."

I had a very weird feelings a mixture of feeling guilty, selfishness, sad. I didn't know what to do. Why am I here and why he went back?

I was so shocked so so so shocked. I was like three days not believing this. Because it's like me going there and getting killed. And that

Mohamad

I am lost so I can do anything. I am fed up.

I always have the choice to go back to my country my city. I will not fight, I will go to free areas, sit with my, staying with my friends, doing something I don

Mohamad

I will not fight. I don't want to kill anyone even if he will kill me. I don't know, I don't know if someone will want to kill me I am sure I will protect myself. But I don

Husam

I wanted to go back to Syria and I went back. And maybe there I had figured out that it would take more than I thought and if I got killed this would not change anything. This would be no contribution. I have a commitment because of those who was killed because of Basil and because of others.

Husam

It has been a really long time and I haven't laughed.

Only sometimes to be honest when I talk with my mom and she makes these very nice jokes because I remember her and I laugh from my heart. But other than that, wallahi, you know, it is not easy to laugh, it is not easy to smile even.

Husam

Now my family is used to the violence. One day I called them and they were at a restaurant. I told them what are you doing?! It is being shelled in the area! And they said, "Yeah, what shall we do? Shall we stay at home for two years not doing anything?" My younger brother wants to get engaged. And I told him, "Man, you are crazy! It's a war! He said, "Yeah, I know it's a war. I might get killed tomorrow. And no one knows when this war will end so why not?" And I think, yeah, he is right.

They're dead economically, socially, they have lost everything so they don't want to lose like the last good thing which is feelings.

Mohamad

I don't care about anything. I just care about my family and I will tell them. I will tell my mom I am going to Syria. I am sure she will cry maybe she will die before I will die because of afraid, she will be very afraid, very scared about me. Really she will die because I am the only boy in my family.

Mohamad

But I don't have any other choice I can't stay in Beirut.

As Syrians we are not welcoming in any country, nobody help us. I came from Syria and I will come back there. It is the only country that they welcoming for Syrians because it is Syria.
You know like a human that came from soil and they came back to soil.

Husam

I am so alone. The anger inside me. It is not like I'm angry with the people, maybe I am angry with myself.

Because I am lost. I am lost in all aspects. I am lost culturally, I'm lost regarding my faith.

I'm not angry. I am desperate. I am not angry.

Husam

I always try to convince myself that I am so strong and that I can overcome it like this but from inside I am, I am not doing well. I am not happy with what is going on and I am not happy with how I react to this unbelievably bad circumstances, but still, my reaction is so weird.

I would never react the way I am reacting now.

This is not me.