How a chess club took on a refugee camp’s darkest forces – and won

Metro’s foreign correspondent Gergana Krasteva reports from Lebanon

When Mahmoud Hashem witnessed two boys fighting in Shatila Refugee Camp, in Beirut’s southern suburbs – one of them threatening to stab the other with a knife – his only solution was to invite them over to his house for a game of chess.

Now, 15 years later, Metro travelled to Lebanon to follow the steps of that incident.

Shatila itself – and its reputation, shaped by history of massacres, scarce resources and exponential growth – have changed little since Mahmoud’s improbable, yet successful, attempt at preventing yet more bloodshed on its streets.

Once a temporary shelter for Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the camp has hardened into a permanent settlement and now houses more than 20,000 people – though some estimates go as high as 30,000 – in less than 1 square kilometre.

Soon after the car passes by Beirut’s Sports City Stadium, rows of concrete walls appear ahead.

Stepping inside the camp, a poster of Yasser Arafat overlooks the sagging rooftops of crumbling residential buildings, adorned with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) flags.

Following Mamoud’s directions, I make my way through the market – this is the main artery of the camp – while dodging speeding scooters, vegetable vendors, and children running in sandals, cheerfully drinking fruit juice from pyramid-shaped cartons.

Several dusty alleyways later through the maze-like city within a city, a door behind an underpass opens, leading to a staircase.

On the third floor, Mahmoud, aged 57, is sitting behind a desk in his office, with a hookah slowly bubbling next to him.

He is now the director of the Palestinian Chess Forum, an educational club for dozens of children who might otherwise be drawn by the camp’s darker pull – competing factions, drug traffickers and religious extremist groups.

‘The environment in Shatila means that there is a need for culture,’ he tells Metro. ‘I wanted to be useful to the community here, so I set up the chess club.

‘Through the game, children can develop their minds and conscience, and learn, and not get drawn to bad things.’

To fund this, Mahmoud sold his car and all his furniture, and moved out of his house to turn it into a space for the club.

Since then, he has been living with his daughter’s family and working in a cafe in the suburb of Ghobeiry to make ends meet and pay the club’s bills and the teachers who dedicate their time.

People told him he was ‘crazy’ but he ignored them after witnessing first-hand the positive impact it made on the two boys he encountered 15 years ago.

After Mahmoud stopped their fight, he continued to invest time and teach them chess for several years until both turned 18 and moved out of the camp.

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Following his footsteps, now one of them works in a chess club in Cyprus, teaching several dozens of children.

The club in Shatila boasts 72 members, both girls and boys. Their daily programme includes after-school support and chess lessons as well as other creative activities.

While Mahmoud’s main goal is to keep children off the streets of Shatila, he also hopes to instill in them a deep love for Palestine.

He says: ‘As Palestinian refugees, all our lives are related to Palestine. To return, first, we need to learn how to be attached to the land while apart.

‘My children have grown to love Palestine even more than myself.’

Behind him, a map of Palestine graces the bookshelves in his office. In the room next door, where six girls are moving pieces on the checkerboard with mesmersing precision, the map and flag are painted on the tiled walls.

Gesturing at the two portraits on the wall – of former secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and former Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who were both assassinated by Israel in 2024, the director says: ‘We are not an NGO, or an official humanitarian organisation. This is why we can have their portraits here.’

Mahmoud adds: ‘Our only rule is that everyone is respectful and ethical.

‘Yes, the club focuses on Palestine, but we have children from many other nationalities.

‘We never ask about that or religion. We do not want to exclude anyone.

‘The relationship between you and your God is for you only, not for us to know. So we do not talk about religion. We fast during Ramadan and then celebrate Christmas.’

Two of his students, Alaa Liddawi, 15, and Zayneb Sayel, 18, did not know anything about chess before joining the club. Practicing the game has now become their favourite part of the week.

Zayneb, a Syrian national who was born in Lebanon to a Lebanese mother and a Syrian father, nods confidently when I ask her if she is a good chess player after a year of learning.

She explains that there is a degree of separation between the realities of life in the refugee camp and the club, where she can just focus on learning.

‘I started coming here after school, every day, and learnt to love it more and more over time,’ the teenager adds, as she adjusts the edges of her cream-coloured headscarf.

For Mahmoud, chess was love at first sight, and provided the same sort of refuge that he hopes to gift to the children in Shatila.

He started learning in 1985, at the age of 17, during the ‘War of the Camps’, a sub-conflict within the Lebanese Civil War, in which the Sunni Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut were besieged by the Shia Amal militia. 

A friend of his family taught him how to play before being martyred in the fighting.

Frequent accidents and the ruthless Sabra and Shatila massacres in the 1980s, during which between 2,000 and 3,500 people were killed by a right-wing Lebanese militia, in alliance with the Israeli army, have left scars on every corner in the camp.

Every next generation continues to bear the brunt of the past, living a life not too dissimilar from the first refugees in the settlement.

Similarly to Mahmoud, Majdi Adam – known as ‘Captain Majdi’ – is working to somehow better the lives of Shatila’s children.

Sat in a plastic chair outside a corner shop, the sports coach points to his chest to draw attention to the red ‘Love Football Hate Racism’ football top he is wearing. It is the message he wants to broadcast to the world.

Beaming with pride, he tells me about becoming ‘famous’ in the camp after launching Basket Beats Borders (BBB) with the help of a friend in 2016.

The project aims to educate young people through sports, and focuses on empowering girls and enhancing their role in life.

The 53-year-old explains that the goal is simple – stop families marrying off their daughters too early and allow them to develop themselves through sports.

He says: ‘I hope to encourage girls to join sports instead. Once they are out of their house, their lives change for the better. They gain more confidence and develop their studies.

‘A woman is not simply meant to get married, become pregnant and stay at home her whole life.

‘And if I help one girl, I will fix a family. If I fix a family, I will fix our society in Shatila. As you know, the conditions that we live in are very bad.

‘I do not know why girls are not given the same chance, as the boys here, to improve themselves through sport.

‘This is how they can achieve their dreams. Through sport, they can travel and continue their education and find out what they want to do in life. It is beautiful.’ 

As Majdi explains, over the years, the project has allowed the team of girls to travel outside Lebanon and physically ‘break the border’ of the ordinary refugee experience.

Since 2016, the project has grown – with an average of 500 players – and he is now coaching the next generation of girls after the previous cohort, who he described as ‘the leaders in the camp’, are in university pursuing their studies.

Palestinians in the country face severe restrictions, including legal barriers to owning property and working in a number of high-level professions, limited access to public services like healthcare and education, and a lack of Lebanese citizenship. 

For both Mahmoud and Mazdi, educating the next generations in Shatila is paramount to change the status quo for refugees.

Christian Aid is one of the charities working on educational projects in therefugee camps in Lebanon, in partnership with the women-focused NGO Association Najdeh.

The UK-based organisation provided microgrants to 59 community groups in 2024, including the chess club in Shatila.

Leila Younes, Christian Aid programme manager for Lebanon, said about its importance: ‘Recently and since the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the club also serves as a lifeline for young people to play and help them contend with the psychological trauma resulted from the assault.

‘The club aims to engage with vulnerable children and young people including school defaulters, educational needs and those who may be at risk of joining organised drug gangs.

‘The club also helps with keeping children safe by engaging in stimulating activity outside of school hours.’

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