Displaced Syrians break their fast in Ariha, Idlib. File/ AFP

The roofs are missing, the walls are missing, the pillars are missing and also missing are the doors and the windows, but what isn’t missing is faith and an enormously deep one at that. In God, they trust as recommended by their religion. The picture, showing them break their fast, establishes that beyond doubt.

Nothing other than faith could have brought them back to what used to be their home and where many dreams must have been woven.

Destroyed but not defeated, hammered but not nailed, bombed but not buried, they feel, I am certain, that God, not horrid politicians, will help them fight their way back to normalcy.

They feel the fireplace will once again warm their lives, pots will once again clink against pans in the kitchen, windows will once again come up and keep the dust away and roofs will once again be laid and keep them safe from lightning and rain.

Destroyed but not defeated, hammered but not nailed…

They are convinced their faith in their benefactor will help them clean up the filth that flowed out of man’s sewer of hate and politicians’ storeroom of abominable machinations.

They feel, and they are right, they paid for being ordinary, but they also know that His ways are extraordinary. And that gives them hope and the reason to continue their mortal journey.

But unfortunately we really don’t know when religion — the greatest source of hope — transformed into the biggest source of turmoil. Religion, as it grew, left a highly splintered society for us to deal with.

From Russia to New Zealand knives are being wielded, bullets are being fired and bombs are being dropped in the name of religion. Mosques, temples and churches are falling victims to the menace of terrorism and unalloyed fascism.

Anyway, the family in the photograph and tens of thousands of such families will continue to bend before their faith to seek relief because men, who are supposed to look after them, are perennially found to be high on the hooch of power.