Paper short abstract:

The paper searches for the existential pattern that connects Palestinian refugee lads to the pigeons they raise, as well as the one connecting them to the researcher. Through this search, ethnography ceases to be just a research method to become a deep human experience as well, based on empathy.

Paper long abstract:

Until relatively recently, the shabab (lads) from Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in the outskirts of Beirut, were highly invested in pigeon-raising. With the possibility of effectively leading active sexual lives curtailed by their economic prospects, which force them to postpone marriage plans, the shabab celebrated the animals' sexual prowess. With their capacity to engage in fights opening perilous paths, due to the probability of fast escalation in light of the absence of any authority holding the legitimate monopoly of force in the camp, they engaged in competitive hunts through their birds. With the perspectives of travelling or migrating impeached because of their status as stateless refugees, they partook in their pets' unencumbered freedom to fly. By searching for the pattern that existentially connects shabab and birds, human and non-human, through the former's desire and hope for liberty and the latter's effective freedom, the researcher was triggered to also reflect upon the pattern that connects himself to the shabab. This time, however, the pattern that connected was through constraints, rather than through freedom. In the case of the shabab, socio-legal-economic constraints. In the case of the anthropologist, constraints derived from the very conditions characterizing research in a refugee camp. Searching for the pattern that connects enables an ethnography understood not only as a research method, but as a deep human experience ultimately based on empathy.