Canadian authorities are searching for a Saudi citizen accused of sexual assault after he failed to show up for a court hearing in the Canadian city of Sydney, Nova Scotia, the local Chronicle Herald newspaper said.

Mohammed Zuraibi al-Zoabi, a student at Cape Breton University, faces charges of sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats, criminal harassment, dangerous driving and assault with a weapon (a vehicle) in separate trials related to two incidents that occurred in Sydney between 2016 and 2017.

Local police told the Chronicle Herald that al-Zoabi’s passport was given as collateral when the 28-year-old student posted his $37,500 bail in cash, a hefty sum provided by the Saudi Arabian embassy.

“It should be impossible (for him to leave the country or enter without a passport) unless Saudi Arabia furnished him with a Saudi travel document,” Lee Cohen, a Halifax-based immigration lawyer, told the Chronicle Herald.

“They have done this before.”

Asked by the paper whether he was still in Canada, al-Zoabi said “probably not … I can’t tell you that”, adding that he wouldn’t come back for the trial because he feared they might be “unfair”.

“I can’t respect that,” he said of the warrant and charges. “Everybody’s against me just because I’m a (racial expletive) and foreign student despite the fact that we boosted so much money to that island of Canada.”

The Saudi Arabian embassy did not respond to a Chronicle Herald request for comment on al-Zoabi.

Jessica Hines, the manager of Kevin’s Towing in Sydney, Cape Breton, described al-Zoabi as “rude, obnoxious and thought he was above women and the rules”.

“First time I met him consisted of him coming into my office and snapping his fingers because I didn’t greet him quick enough as I was busy,” Hines said.

“I immediately marked my dominance by telling him, ‘I don’t jump for men when they snap their fingers at me’, and made him sit and wait for near an hour.”

Between March 2012 and April 2016, al-Zoabi racked up 34 infractions ranging from speeding, driving uninsured, driving without a valid license, unregistered and uninspected vehicles. Unpaid to this day, the fines amount to $68,967.

News of al-Zoabi’s suspected escape will only serve to further exacerbate Canada’s already poor relations with Saudi Arabia, which last year barred the Canadian ambassador to Riyadh after Ottawa criticised Saudi authorities for detaining female activists.

Most recently, Canada agreed to grant asylum to a Saudi teenager fleeing abuse from her family. 

Rahaf Alqunun, 18, was greeted by Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Saturday, ending an ordeal that saw her stranded at Thailand‘s international airport for about a week. 

Riyadh was already struggling to deal with the blowback from the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul late last year. 

Turkish and Western intelligence officials have either hinted at or directly blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder but Saudi monarch King Salman left his son’s portfolios unchanged in the latest reshuffle.

Kerala, India – Ammini‘s face glows and comes alive whenever she sits at her loom – the 77-year-old’s steady companion for decades.

On August 15 last year, their home in Chendamangalam was hit by waves as high as 11 feet, causing the worst floods since 1924 in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Nearly 500 people were killed and over a million displaced. The total loss of property was estimated at $3bn.

She says she floated to a nearby relief camp in a large metal vessel pot used to make biryani.

“Four others pushed us forward, swimming through the rising water, which was well over their heads by then. We held on to our lives in that vessel. I thought we would drown,” said Ammini.

Once the waters receded, her family returned home to assess the damage: a dead cow, four broken doors, a collapsed boundary wall, and lots of rotting wood.

Among the debris around their small, three-room house, made of hollow cement bricks and surrounded by fields, lay the bits and pieces of an old investment.

“I bought the loom 50 years ago, when I first started, for what would be 40,000 rupees [$560] today,” said Ammini, who began working at 12.

“I was widowed young when my husband died of cancer. I have always been a weaver.”

Some 700 weavers were severely affected by the floods in Chendamangalam on the outskirts of Kochi city, a well-known handloom hub in India for more than half a century.

The craftspeople in the community are part of an industry that India is struggling to survive. The deadly floods compounded the pressure on an already fledgeling sector.

Looms, equipment, raw materials and finished goods worth nearly $2m were destroyed, says Chendamangalam Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society, one of the five weavers’ societies in the area.

Kerala, with millions of its diaspora abroad, mainly in the Gulf, witnessed a massive outpouring of assistance to supplement the government’s compensation.

“Handloom operations resumed after a month and many looms have been replaced. They will be steadily upgraded,” says Sojan PA, the weavers’ society secretary.

“About 90 percent of the damages were covered through local designers and concerned people around the world, who came forward to buy the damaged stock and pay off creditors.”

A number of private initiatives breathed new life into the flood-ravaged weaving sector. But many people fell through the gaps of relief and rehabilitation.

Almost six months later, Ammini’s family, like many others, hasn’t caught up.

In September, a month after the floods, Ammini’s loom was repaired by the weavers’ society. But stress took a toll and she had to undergo an angioplasty.

“I think I fell sick because I was forced to rest for one month. Before the floods, I was always working, so nothing happened. The doctor told me to keep working,” she said.

The elderly weaver, one of around 200 homeworkers under the mandate of the weavers’ society, said health insurance and other benefits have helped.

“But I am weak. I could make two mundus a day when I was healthy, now only one. It is not enough,” said Ammini, who makes a little more than $1 for a mundu, a style of sarong specific to Kerala.

It was like what you see on TV, we were waiting in long lines. The first day there was no food, the second day the rice came, shoes and clothes after two days.

Sujitha, Kerala resident

Meanwhile, her son Balu, 42, has varicose veins which require treatment, while her granddaughter, 10, struggles with psoriasis. 

Balu works as a welder for a meagre income of around $12 a day, so his mother-in-law, a nurse in Qatar, sends money home to help. During the floods, Balu was stranded at his submerged home for several days, when a burst vein made him vulnerable to water-borne infections.

“We had five cows. One died in the floods and three had to be sold to finance treatment for my 10-year-old daughter, who has psoriasis. The one remaining will produce milk again only in February,” said Sujitha, Balu’s wife.

“We got around $140 from the government as compensation, but more than that amount went just in cleaning the house,” said Ammini, who claims some of her neighbours – below the poverty level like them – received more government funds.

The Employees State Insurance (ESI) Scheme of India said Ammini would have been eligible for medical insurance if she had gone to an ESI hospital. She said she tried with Sojan’s help, but was unsuccessful.

She is grateful for private charity, however.

“The weavers society sent them a benefactor from the Gulf, who gave me and eight others 5,000 rupees ($71) each,” she said.

Sujitha is calm and sturdy next to her frail mother-in-law. She smiles when she remembers the chaos at the relief camp.

“It was like what you see on TV, we were waiting in long lines. The first day there was no food, the second day the rice came, shoes and clothes after two days.”

Last May, Sujitha started a business venture with nine other women with a $14,000 loan. They buy milk and turn it into curd, but that hasn’t yielded much yet.

All of this has meant a reduced income and tremendous strain for the family. The thrill of survival has given way to a lasting sense of insecurity which Sujitha’s and Ammini’s faces betray.

“How will we keep living,” said Sujitha. “How will we go on?”

Doha, Qatar – Yasser Al Mulla’s colourless, intricately lined drawings chromatically compliment his crisp white ankle-length thobe and ringed black egal.

As a Qatari agricultural engineer, Al Mulla spends his days developing the greenery around Doha and perfecting grass pitches in preparation for the 2022 World Cup. But in his evenings, he delineates themes of Sufism and various cultures with discursive black lines on a vast white canvas.

Though his artwork has been praised for its mystifying attention to detail, some have questioned why Al Mulla, a 38-year-old Sunni Muslim, depicts the philosophies of the Sufi tradition for leisure.

“I get a lot of comments from people asking ‘why Sufism? Are you Sufi?’ which they don’t like,” Al Mulla told Al Jazeera in his studio recently. “They don’t understand that it is a way of life more than a religion, but I don’t mind. It opens the door for them to do more research.”

Since high school, Al Mulla has been fascinated by the poems and teachings Mansur Al Hallaj, a Sufi preacher who is best known for his saying: “I am the truth.” Many have interpreted it as a claim to divinity, while others believe it to be a mystical defeat of the ego that allows God to speak through an individual.

“I’ve been in love with Al Hallaj for a very long time, ever since I had questions of creation and read for the truth,” said Al Mulla. “The amount of peace and philosophy in his writings have inspired me.”

From a distance, Al Mulla’s drawings resemble inky scribbles. A few steps closer reveal a religious or cultural motif, such as Whirling Dervishes or The Khalifat Visitors of the Abbasid Caliphate, with meandering lines and geometric shapes rippling around them. The figures are doodle-like illustrations, while the lines are contrastingly opaque, undulating and parallel, similar to a moire pattern.

In all of his drawings, Al Mulla attempts to “raise questions” in his art and depict his thoughts through the use of discursive, achromatic lines. “With colours, an artist can say a lot of things,” said Al Mulla, who has a colour-mixed optic condition. “But the line technique is limitless, you can attract people to the ideas inside your brain through endless lines.”

Al Mulla began creating Sufism-inspired line drawings as a 2017-18 resident of the Doha Fire Station, a former emergency services headquarters-turned art hub in the Qatar capital.

His studio furnishings do not deviate from his monochrome theme – the couch is black, the white walls are used as canvases and the floor is sprinkled with ebony black pens that Al Mulla decides not to be used twice. As he commits hours to a drawing after compelling inspiration presses his mind, Beethoven’s piano compositions gently play in the background.

“This is not work for me; it relieves me from the stresses of work,” said Al Mulla.

He studied engineering at Qatar University and law at Cairo University, but did not begin drawing until 2015, at age 35. One night, he had a vivid dream about a tsunami and chose to sketch it with a coal-black pen, and consequently discovered his artistic ability. “After that, I never looked back. I am more balanced after I started art. I am happier than I was years ago because I have my answers now, which I try to put in my paintings.”

He finds his reputation shift to an artist difficult to reconcile with since he was previously known as “the engineer guy”, working on landscape projects from Doha’s Aspire Park to those commissioned by Qatar’s emir himself.

Al Mulla has gained significant popularity for his landscape art, which is an external representation of his artistic ability. His agricultural work for the World Cup beautifies otherwise barren areas of Qatar and was recently profiled by The New York Times. Regardless of his success, Al Mulla does not want his career to be his “only thing”.

He dedicates certain days of the week entirely to his wife and three children, a certain day to his parents as the eldest son and certain nights to his drawings.

“I don’t follow an exact schedule, but I know I don’t want to be consumed by work.” Similarly, Al Mulla doesn’t have an exact plan in mind before he draws, but rather a preliminary abstraction of what to include. “I have an idea, then it will just come to me on the canvas.”

According to Al Mulla, he paints “under the influence of [his] whole life”. He said that all people are “accumulation of knowledge, experiences and culture” and he attempts to present his own through ambiguous thin and thick black lines against a once-vacant white space.

When asked whether he believes in Sufism, Al Mulla said, “People need to have the spirit of the Quran and the Hadith. In Qatar, nobody will ask you why you are Muslim, but we need to be more open to the good things in other thoughts and ideas.”

In addition to the personal motivations behind his art, Al Mulla said the controversy of the Sufi influence in his drawings helps with creating open-mindedness in Qatar.

The colourless nature of Al Mulla’s drawings makes them appear two-dimensional at a first glance. However, Al Mulla claims to hide philosophical messages in his long, contoured lines to prompt viewers to learn.

“People don’t need to change, but they need to read more and know more, and then judge,” he said. “I am opening the door for them to do that.”

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon – Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s east are bracing for yet another potentially heavy storm which is set to bring rains and snowfall on Sunday.

Warnings of a looming winter storm have pushed refugees in Ghazze, a town in the Bekaa Valley, to take precautions against another round of floods, days after the country was hit by Storm Norma on January 6.

Lebanon is home to more than one million Syrian refugees, most of whom live in informal settlements made out of tarpaulin tents supported by wooden frames.

They are usually required to pay landowners rent ranging from $50 to $200, depending on the area, even as half of the Syrian refugee community in Lebanon already lives in extreme poverty, earning less than $3 a day, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

During last week’s storm, many have found shelter in incomplete housing units, garages, or evacuated schools as the country does not permit them to upgrade their tents to more permanent structures.

‘The tent was our castle’

In Ghazze, refugees are housed in at least 1,500 tents divided over several unofficial camps, according to municipality figures published last year. In one camp, dubbed “008” by the UN, at least 36 out of 48 tents were flooded during Storm Norma.

While some families in Ghazze say they have no other option than to withstand the upcoming storm, others have already sought temporary shelter.

Wessal Al Mustafa, a mother of five, said she simply cannot put her children through a storm similar to Norma, which affected more than 11,000 Syrian refugees across the country. “The last storm was so sudden,” Al Mustafa, who fled Raqqa in 2014, told Al Jazeera.

“I barely managed to rush my children out of the tent, let alone grab a few clothing items before we were completely soaked,” the 32-year-old said.

“To us, this tent was our castle.”

The family lost their mattresses, blankets, food items, and most of their clothing to the floods.

Their tent carried a stench of mold that has forced the Al Mustafa family to seek temporary, yet more expensive shelter in a nearby housing complex until the tent is restored.

The camps lack adequate infrastructure, and given the poor sewage systems, wastewater has overflowed and seeped into the tents, increasing the risk of diseases in the crammed settlements.

Since the arrival of the refugees from neighbouring Syria, NGOs have taken the responsibility of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) efforts, but in Ghazze these efforts have been halted due to lack of funding.

Mustafa’s eldest daughter, Fatma, said she wishes she could have saved more of her clothes from the floods.

“I had to carry my younger sister, who was in shock as the water quickly filled up the tent and reached our hips,” the 14-year-old said.

‘Sheer negligence’

There has been a stark deterioration in shelter conditions for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to a 2018 UN study.

Fundraising campaigns led by NGOs and individuals may bring temporary relief to refugees, but Syrians in Ghazze say more is needed to be done by the government to improve living conditions.

The camp’s community leader told Al Jazeera that he has already mobilised a team of “young men” who will be assisting in evacuating families with flooded tents to neighbouring camps that have remained unaffected, and garages in the area.

“We have called on the local municipality time and time again to at least raise the ground level of the tents here, but they have yet to respond,” Hussam Mansour told Al Jazeera.

“It’s sheer negligence on their part,” he said.

According to Mansour, some NGOs arrived on Saturday to distribute blankets and mattresses, as well as gas for heaters.

The main highway connecting the capital Beirut to the Bekaa Valley had been sealed off to trucks transporting aid, and was only been cleared for the passage of such larger vehicles by authorities on Saturday.

‘Nothing to return to’

Meanwhile, an education centre run by a group of Syrian women will be open as a temporary shelter for families evacuated in Ghazze.

Ghada Abu Mito, cofounder of Dammah, the NGO that runs the school, said the centre has begun preparing for the next storm by clearing classrooms for families who will require immediate shelter.

“We laid out blankets and mattresses in the classrooms, and will also heat the rooms which is important especially for the children,” Abu Mito told Al Jazeera.

Last week, some 13 families sought shelter in the centre, Abu Mito said.

“We had to respond to the crisis quickly and accommodated 75 people for about four days,” she said, adding almost all of those who evacuated suffered flu symptoms and chest infections, she said.

“Their psychological state was a mess,” she added. “Many wondered why no one rushed to help.”

Lebanon’s leaders have urged Syrian refugees to return to their home country, but many refugees still fear being either arrested or drafted into the army upon repatriation.

UNHCR’s Rana Khoury told Al Jazeera the agency has been advocating for either the resettlement of refugees to a third countries, or working with concerned authorities to remove obstacles refugees are seeing for their return to Syria.

“We’re advocating for these two solutions because the government does not allow for permanent resettlement,” Khoury explained.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unable to work, and can only obtain work permits to work in agriculture and construction to sustain themselves in the country, which has suffered economically over the years.

The prolonged political deadlock over the formation of a new government has also worsening the situation.

Still, for people such as Wessal Al Mustafa, staying in Lebanon amid challenges such as the harsh winters, is the only option.

“I love my country … but for now, there is nothing to return to,” she said.

Washington’s top diplomat said he was “optimistic” an agreement with Ankara could be reached which will protect Syrian Kurdish groups while allowing Turks to “defend their country from terrorists” following a US pullout from Syria.

“We are confident we can achieve an outcome that achieves both of those,” UnitedStates Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told journalists on Saturday in the Abu Dhabi.

The Gulf emirate is his latest stop in a regional tour aimed at reassuring allies after a shock December announcement by President Donald Trump that US troops would be withdrawn from Syria.

Pompeo’s remarks follow tensions between the US and Turkey over the fate of Washington’s Syrian Kurdish allies in the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters.

Turkey had reacted angrily to suggestions that Trump’s plan to withdraw troops was conditional on the safety of the US-backed Kurdish fighters, seen by the Turkish government as terrorists.

US-led operations against ISIL in Syria have been spearheaded on the ground by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.

Ankara sees the backbone of that alliance, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long campaign against the Turkish state.

Pompeo said that Washington recognised “the Turkish people’s right and (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s right to defend their country from terrorists”.

But, he added, “We also know that those fighting alongside of us for all this time deserve to be protected as well”.

Pompeo said he had spoken to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, but did not elaborate on how the protections would be achieved.

“Many details (are) still to be worked out but I’m optimistic that we can achieve a good outcome,” he said.

Threatened assault

Multiple operations including American-backed assaults have ousted ISIL fighters from most of the swathes of Syria and Iraq they captured in 2014.

But Trump’s announcement raised fears of a long-threatened Turkish assault against the Kurds.

On Thursday, Cavusoglu repeated that threat, telling NTV television: “If the (pullout) is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision.”

That came after a tense meeting between Turkish officials and Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton in Ankara, aimed at coordinating the pullout process after Bolton set conditions that appeared to postpone it indefinitely.

The terms included the total defeat of ISIL – still active in some parts of Syria – and ensuring protection for Kurdish fighters.

The US-led coalition launched operations against ISIL in September 2014, forming the SDF a year later with some 25,000 Kurdish fighters and 5,000 Arabs.

Backed by US arms and air support, the YPG-dominated group has overrun the de facto Syrian capital of ISIL, Raqqa, and a large part of Deir Ezzor province.

But that stirred Turkish fears of a breakaway Kurdish state on its border.

As well as fighting ISIL, the YPG has also battled pro-Ankara forces in northwestern Syria.

Trump’s announcement last month prompted the YPG to call on Syrian government troops to deploy alongside their own forces in the north to help counter a potential Turkish offensive.

A spokesman for the US military said Friday it had begun “the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria”.

But US defence officials quickly sought to clarify that while gear was being pulled out, “we are not withdrawing troops at this stage”.

In an interview with US broadcaster CBS on Saturday, Pompeo said “the president’s guidance is incredibly clear” on the withdrawal.

Syria’s devastating conflict began in 2011 with anti-government demonstrations that were brutally crushed, sparking a complex war involving multiple foreign armed groups, as well as regional and international powers including the US.

The withdrawal announcement had also sparked concerns among Arab states and Israel that it could open the way to growing Iranian influence.

Pompeo has pledged to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria, and on Saturday sought to downplay the impact of the US pullout on this goal.

“The fact that a couple of thousands of uniformed personnel in Syria will be withdrawing is a tactical change,” he said.

“It doesn’t materially alter our capacity to continue to perform the military actions that we need to perform.”

The US is looking to create an anti-Iran front – the Middle East Strategic Alliance – bringing together Gulf countries as well as Egypt and Jordan.

Washington is set to convene an international summit in Poland next month focusing on stability in the Middle East, including countering Iran’s influence.