From a refugee camp to Malta to a US university - this is Hourie Tafech's story
When she turned 18, Hourie Tafech would walk four times the length of her refugee camp just to get to and from university as she barely afforded the cost of the course books. Twelve years later she is teaching social justice at a US university after her volunteering work in Malta with fellow refugees caught the attention of an American university dean. But Tafech did not make it because she is the smartest refugee. It was all down to meeting the right people at the right time, she tells Times of Malta as the world marks Refugee Day. Tafech was born and raised in Lebanon’s Ein El Helwe refugee camp after her grandparents were expelled from their home in Safed, Palestine, during the 1948 Nakba. Although Palestinians are allowed to live outside camps, of which there are 12 in Lebanon, not many afford to do so. And her family is not allowed to return to Palestine: there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world because of this. Video: Karl Andrew Micallef '80,000 people in 1.5-square-kilometre Ein El Helwe camp' Over 80,000 people are cramped in the 1.5-square-kilometre Ein El Helwe camp – the biggest one in Lebanon. As a girl, Tafech often...