Every time Fadel Shaker’s name returns to the spotlight, the same narrative is more or less reproduced: a famous Lebanese singer who withdrew from the music scene, embraced an increasingly hardline religious discourse, and later became associated with a sectarian confrontation that shook Lebanon.

Caught between condemnation and nostalgia for the singer’s voice and stage presence, more profound and perhaps more uncomfortable, questions are often overlooked. What do we do with children before we judge them as adults? What does institutional care leave behind in the psyche of a child raised to feel that their existence is a burden, that love is temporary, and that parental care is a privilege rather than a right?

What does it mean to grow up with a sense of orphanhood while both parents are still alive?

 I am not concerned here with holding accountable the family that decided, more than four decades ago, to place a child named Fadel Shaker in institutional care. The question of accountability lies elsewhere: in the nature of care institutions themselves, the criteria by which children are admitted to them, and the state’s responsibility for shaping and overseeing this trajectory. 

As the final court ruling in Fadel Shaker’s case remains pending, following a series of testimonies that have exonerated him of crimes previously attributed to him, crimes for which he has already paid a heavy price through self-imposed exile from public life, forced separation from his family, and years of marginalization, this is not an attempt to absolve anyone or to diminish responsibility for the harmful, and perhaps even violent, choices he made along the way. 

Rather, it is an attempt to read a human trajectory beyond the confines of simplistic security narratives and to return to a point often overlooked or dismissed as a marginal detail. Yet, from the perspective of understanding institutional care systems, it is a pivotal moment.

It is a life experience that reshapes the relationship of those who endure it, even for a limited period, with the world around them: their understanding of concepts and values, their sense of belonging, and, perhaps most profoundly, their perception of their own worth.

What does a childhood built within the walls of a care institution look like?

The docudrama Ya Ghayeb attempted, however cautiously, to shed light on this dimension of Fadel Shaker’s life. That effort is one of the production’s strengths. It helped revive questions that had long remained in the shadows and contributed to shaping a public conversation that became increasingly receptive to the narrative of his innocence.

In the series, Shaker speaks with unmistakable pain and reproach about the lasting impact of being treated as an orphan, singled out from among all his siblings despite not actually being one.

Brief scenes depict the moment he entered the orphanage after his parents decided to place him there because of the family’s poverty. Shaker recalls with striking precision how, in that moment, it felt as though the world had closed in on him. There is the scene of him stealing food from the institution’s storage room to share with a fellow child in care, and his account of struggling with the compulsory bedtime imposed long before sunset.

These are experiences that Fadel Shaker shares with many children who have lived in institutional care, where mealtimes, waking hours, and even bathroom visits are regulated according to the supervisor’s schedule.

Perhaps the true weight of the orphanage experience emerges most clearly in a scene where Shaker returns to visit his family. On that occasion, he remained alone in one room while his mother and siblings shared another. In that moment, his loneliness seemed complete. He curled up by himself, just as he had learned to do in the institution.

Did Fadel feel then that some bond had been severed? Did he see himself as a burden on his family? Or did he choose loneliness and orphanhood as a way of preparing himself for the inevitable return to the orphanage?

How is a child expected to carry such sorrow alone? How can a child make sense of the contradiction between being loved and having a place within a family, yet being placed in an orphanage? How can food satisfy hunger when the deeper losses are those of belonging? Who compensates for the need to be held, for the dignity that has been taken away, and for the wounds left by exclusion?

Fadel Shaker’s experience is neither unusual nor unexpected. Rather, it aligns with a substantial body of research documenting the impact of institutional care on the formation of personal identity among those who have lived through it.

In repeatedly challenging the widespread notion of charitable work, which assumes that care institutions “saved” children simply because they fed or sheltered them after their families could no longer care for them, it is necessary to examine how this flawed understanding shapes a child’s perception of themselves and their self-worth.

The problem lies not only in the absence of family but also in the nature of systems that produce children who grow up feeling indebted to life itself. Children who learn, from an early age, that they must be grateful merely for surviving, even when that survival is accompanied by loneliness, fear, and silent humiliation.

Institutional care, particularly when it is grounded in charity rather than rights, produces more than social vulnerability. It creates a form of chronic hunger that extends far beyond the need for food: a relentless search for the answer to a deeper question, Why am I here?

A child who grows up within an institution that manages every aspect of their basic needs learns that love is conditional, belonging is fragile, and acceptance depends on obedience and adaptation.

This is where what might be described as the “gratitude syndrome”begins.

It is not a psychological disorder in the clinical sense, but rather a structure of feeling that develops when a child is raised to believe they are perpetually indebted to those who provided them with the bare minimum of care. Gratitude becomes a burden. The child grows wary of objection, fearful of rejection, and deeply attached to any space that offers a sense of worth, recognition, or belonging.

In many care systems, children are never explicitly told that they are a burden. Yet they come to feel it every day. It is embedded in small details: in the gratitude expected of them, in constant comparisons, and in repeated reminders that someone has “generously” chosen to care for them.

Over time, some develop a profound sense that they are not worthy of love for who they are, but only for what they can offer others. This idea is central to understanding some of the more complex trajectories that may emerge later in life.

A child deprived of secure attachment may grow up searching for a larger meaning that can contain their pain. They look for a community, a cause, or a worldview that can provide what was once denied to them: recognition, belonging, and certainty.

In this context, commitment to the cause of the oppressed can become more than a political or moral position. At times, it may evolve into an unconscious attempt at self-repair. Defending others becomes a way of defending the abandoned child within.

It is as though a person tells themselves: If I can save others, perhaps I, too, deserve to be saved.

It is precisely here that one of the most complex dimensions of understanding Fadel Shaker emerges, particularly his decision to align himself with Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir’s movement in support of the Syrian people during a period marked by severe repression against an unarmed population and by the growing influence of an armed party within Lebanon.

Beyond the dominant narrative that reduces his story to a transformation from a romantic singer into a figure associated with violence and hardline rhetoric, his trajectory cannot be understood solely through the lenses of ideology, politics, or security. There is also a need to consider his choices within the framework of a deeper human search for meaning, belonging, and self-worth.

Perhaps Fadel Shaker was searching for a cause, a moral role, a heroic self-image, or even a sense of collective embrace after having experienced abandonment.

Fadel Shaker’s story must also be situated within a broader body of research that has critically re-examined the legacy of institutional care, particularly as it was imposed on Indigenous children in Canada and on children in many other countries that relied heavily on institutional care systems.

This scholarship has provided an essential framework for understanding how survivors of violence and marginalization, including those who have experienced institutional care as a form of violence, can transform painful experiences into forms of advocacy and meaning-making. Such processes are not merely individual psychological journeys; they are relational and collective acts, deeply connected to questions of belonging, memory, and responsibility.

Within this framework, the advocacy work undertaken by some survivors can be understood as part of a broader process of rebuilding social bonds and reconstructing identity. Action on behalf of others becomes a means of reweaving a sense of belonging that was fractured through exclusion and institutional placement.

This body of research further suggests that healing cannot be separated from community, land, and relationships. It cannot be reduced to an individualized therapeutic model. Rather, it is a process of restoring connections that were systematically and structurally dismantled.

In her writings on belonging, Canadian Indigenous scholar Catherine Richardson highlights the tendency among survivors to transform pain into a romanticized narrative of redemption. Richardson argues that structural and institutional violence often creates the very conditions for fracture and suffering. As such, any attempt to understand the advocacy trajectories of survivors must remain grounded in an analysis of these structures, rather than focusing solely on the individual’s internal experience.

The defense of the “oppressed” can, at times, become a space through which the self is rebuilt through heroism, sacrifice, or complete immersion in a cause.

This does not mean that empathy for those who suffer, or commitment to just causes, is in any way pathological. On the contrary, many people who have experienced pain themselves become especially sensitive to the suffering of others. The problem begins when an unhealed wound becomes a gateway to polarization; when belonging becomes a substitute for healing, and certainty replaces questioning. At that point, individuals may become more vulnerable to charismatic figures, absolutist narratives, and groups that present themselves as a surrogate family or as a path to ultimate redemption.

A closer look at Fadel Shaker’s relationship with Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir reveals traces of this paternal and structural dynamic. It may have offered Shaker a sense of belonging to a larger family and a greater cause.

Here, perhaps, he once again fell into the trap of what might be called the gratitude syndrome. In an attempt to outrun his own vulnerabilities, he sought to outpace those around him, culminating in his infamous description of two victims as “Two corpses” a deeply sectarian and reprehensible remark. Yet while the statement was undeniably inflammatory and objectionable, it also made him an easy target for state institutions and for a powerful political narrative that succeeded in completely demonizing him. The response did not stop at holding him accountable for a hateful and inciting statement made in the context of the sectarian confrontation that engulfed Sidon at the time.

Perhaps the song recorded by the children of the Islamic Orphanage, originally written by Ahmed Kaabour, captures something of the child Fadel Shaker more truthfully than any political analysis:

It is a song that seems to echo the child who entered the orphanage, the artist who withdrew from public life, the man who joined al-Assir, and later the fugitive who sought refuge in Ain al-Hilweh.

One can only hope that his case will ultimately receive the justice it deserves.