Twenty-six distinct photos in black and white. Scenes of a ravaged city and the human beings within struggling to exist, let alone to find hope for the future. Gravestones of rubble. Homes looted, trashed. Civilians defending their country. Children aged beyond their years by the horrors they've lived.

Hagop Vanesian, a 44-year-old Syrian-Armenian photographer from Syria's largest city, Aleppo (Halab), was meticulous in his choice of photographs for the exhibition, "My Homeland," which opened at the United Nations Headquarters on January 8 and closed January 16.

In a different area of Lebanon, I meet another Syrian, this time from the Aleppo outskirts. He is wiry, with grey hair though not yet 50, and a bright face, his presence emanating peace and calm...in spite of what he has gone through and lost.

He and his wife and children have been here about a year, leaving behind their home and his work as a tailor. Here, he cleans the simple lodging where I'm staying.

He is a Kurd, from the Syrian village of Ifreen, and while he says he says he would like to have Kurdish taught in schools, he insists that his area was never supportive of the insurgents, nor with the west's manufactured "revolution". (An interesting aside, but Armenians in Syria have founded public institutions to teach their language.)

While I don't follow organized sports, when I got the opportunity to meet the only rugby team in Syria and see them practice, I jumped on it.  I found the fact that these men still meet, train and compete -- in spite of the many obstacles which should prevent them from doing so -- fascinating. What follows are observations and conversations from a morning with Syria's Zenobians:

I live in a very small community, two neighbouring towns with a combined population under 30,000, many of whose families have lived here for generations. Not very diverse, and many are not very politically aware.

This morning a friend of mine, a teacher in my town, and I went to a park in the neighbouring town where every Saturday there is a farmer's market.

We brought my Palestinian flag, a couple of enlarged photos I'd prepared, and engaged with passersby on Gaza and Syria.