Mohamad drives with one hand, squinting at the afternoon sun as his phone rings for the fifth time in the past half an hour. The lanky 25-year-old Syrian shrugs the mobile to his ear with one shoulder, scribbling numbers on a Post-it as he repeats them out loud: "$1,000 to Tripoli; $200 to Hiba's family; $300 to Umm Hanan; $10,000 for the operation."

We're in eastern Lebanon, a 90-minute drive from Beirut, a one-hour drive from Damascus, and just five minutes from the Syrian border. Sun beats through the windshield as we thread through the Bekaa Valley, an area known for its poverty, high crime rates, sectarian tensions, and, since 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. I watch Mohamad count out $10,000 in cash.

"It's for an open-heart surgery," he tells me. "It took us three months to raise $14,500 for this kid. The operation is tomorrow. Alhamdulillah."

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On Aug. 18, Gaziantep, a southeastern industrial city close to the Syrian border, was in a state of panic over a rumor that Syrians had poisoned the drinking water. Last month in Gaziantep and other border towns, protests were staged under the banner “We Do Not Want the Syrians.” The protests led to clashes with the police, physical assaults and vandalism against Syrian-owned businesses. Among the slogans heard were “Tayyip resign,” “City residents do not sleep, retake your city” and “We are the people of this town.” The media is full of sad stories about desperate Syrian, Iraqi and Yazidi refugees, but there is almost no coverage of mounting anti-immigrant sentiment or the increasing frequency of violence against immigrants.

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