I will never forget the image of Emel Hemo and his family arriving at Toronto Pearson Airport in the wave of Syrian refugees arriving in Canada in the fall of 2016 – all their belongings piled up in one car.
Friends who were there to help settle the family carried a welcome sign in Arabic, not realizing that no one in the family had learned to read Arabic. Emel grabbed my arm. Translated, his first words were: “Emel wants to go to school.”
It has been five years since we met at Pearson. Our group from Moore Park, one of 26 from Rosedale United Church that sponsored Syrian refugee families, supported Emel and her family economically and practically during their first year in Canada.
Today, as Emel and I talk about her English homework, she is proud of her daughter Nately’s 8th grade graduation photo. A decade after fleeing Syria, Emel, her husband, Abdul Sido, their three children and Abdul’s mother Jamilla, who belong to Syria’s Kurdish minority, are happily settled in Canada.
The family’s new life in Scarborough has not been without its challenges. The Syrian restaurant they opened in December 2019 failed, leaving them deeply in debt. But Emel cares more for his siblings who have sought refuge in countries around the world.
Noela is still in Afrin, Syria, where many are still killed by government forces or the Turkish army, which is eradicating the resistant Kurds; another sister fights for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); Hussein, his wife and their five children make ends meet in Turkey but face routine threats, beatings and extortion; Abdul, financially stable in Germany, but suffers from mental health problems and has been abandoned by his wife and children; Emel’s nieces and nephews do better in Sweden and Austria, but integration into their new communities remains elusive.
Syrian refugee families, like Emel’s, have spread across the world. Some host nations have been hospitable, including Canada, others not so much. Emel’s is the story of many Syrian families who have been separated by war and are struggling to support each other.
“I feel so lucky here in Canada,” says Emel, “but the suffering of my family makes me so sad that sometimes I don’t answer the phone.”
It is Sanam, her older sister, who worries Emel the most.
Sanam struggles to feed her eight children in Lebanon. The economy is on the brink of collapse and many are dying from COVID-19. Sanam was hospitalized for heart problems in May and cannot afford the heart surgery doctors say she needs.
Emel has begged our sponsorship group to also sponsor Sanam’s family. But a family of 12, in poor health and illiterate in their own language, would require more support on the ground than our group thought we could provide. We still feel guilty about it.
Sanam took longer to evacuate from the attacks on the Kurdish community near Afrin, Syria, than other family members. At the end of 2017, she had just given birth to Habad, her 10th child, and was caring for a sick brother-in-law and an incontinent mother-in-law. She was used to being persecuted for being Kurdish and was concerned for her family’s immediate needs.
Kurds in Syria have long been repressed and denied basic rights, according to Human rights observer. The land has been confiscated and redistributed to the Arabs. Kurdish rights, cultural celebrations and language have been banned. Syria’s ruling Baath Party has invested little in infrastructure and education in Kurdish regions, leaving its population in poverty, according to Kurdish leaders. The school is off limits to families like Sanam’s. “None of my children can hold a pen in their hand or read their name on a piece of paper,” he says.
The death of Sanam’s eldest son Bakri, just 18 years old, at the hands of Turkish forces in February 2018 made it too dangerous to stay. Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels attacked Afrin to drive out the Kurds, according to media reports. Bakri, fighting with the local PKK militia, killed two Turkish soldiers before being assassinated. The family was warned of retaliation. Sanam’s second son, 16-year-old Mustapha, had previously fled to hide in Turkey to avoid capture. He later tried to escape to Greece on foot, but was captured and imprisoned in Turkey.
Dozens of Kurdish civilians were killed during the 2018 attacks, according to media reports, and tens of thousands fled. Sanam’s family was among them. “All I wanted was to be able to die in my son’s place,” Sanam says between sobs.
The family’s flight from Syria was heartbreaking. They walked at night. A few steps from their village, a family walking in front of them was beaten and killed by a bomb. “I couldn’t look at them,” recalls Sanam. “I picked up two of my children and ran.”
A second bomb exploded near them a few hours later. His daughter Rugeen, holding baby Habad, fell to the ground. “I love you, my daughter and my son,” Sanam yelled, thinking they were dead. They were unharmed.
A few hours later, a tractor driver allowed them to ride with him. But another bomb fell and killed the people in the car in front of them. “I covered my children’s faces with a blanket so they couldn’t see,” recalls Sanam.
They continued on foot through mountainous trails until morning. “My children were crying and they were tired. Some of my children did not have shoes. His feet were bleeding. We were all very scared, ”recalls Sanam.
When the sun rose, another bomb fell. A family that had taken their place on the tractor died. “Thank Allah we did not stay on that tractor.”
They took refuge in a mosque near Aleppo with 500 other refugees, surviving on little food, no heating, and sharing a blanket among 11 of them. After a week, the PKK took them to a “safe house”. It wasn’t much safer. The bombs exploded at night, killing neighbors and blowing up their windows. Nine-year-old Sidra was severely burned when a grenade she found in her garden exploded in her hands.
The PKK soon wanted payment for their hospitality and demanded that they hand over their daughter Rugeen, then 15, to join the fighters. Sanam found a man to marry her instead, married women were not allowed to fight, and they fled again, with Rugeen’s new husband in tow.
The recruitment and use of children in combat is widespread among fighting groups in Syria, according to the United Nations. reports. Three-quarters of the nearly 1,500 child soldiers verified in the past two years came from the Kurdish regions of the country. The UN also confirmed the killing of nearly 1,600 children, mostly from the Kurdish region of Sanam, during the same period.
The family arrived at the Lebanese border weak and hungry, but Sanam’s husband, Othman, was detained and sent back. Having been employed by the Syrian government as a garbage collector, Othman was not allowed to leave the country. Hemo transferred $ 3,000 from Canada to be smuggled across the border a week later.
Three years later, the family is safe, but lives in increasing poverty in Lebanon. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, which has a total population of just 6.8 million. Almost 90 percent of Syrians in Lebanon are currently “living below the extreme poverty line,” up from just over 50 percent in 2019, UNHCR reports.
Lebanon’s economic crisis is possibly among the three worst crises the world has seen in 150 years. according to the World Bank. Income has collapsed in half since 2018 and the cost of consumer goods has more than double.
Bashar, Sanam’s son, is the only member of the family who has found work. He works in a factory for $ 2 a day, not every day, but when the factory has electricity, which is often interrupted in Lebanon, and when the factory has enough work for him. He is 14 years old.
Olon, 17, born with one hand, makes a little money begging or going through the trash to find scraps of aluminum to sell.
Daughters Noosh, 9, and Silvanna, 11, clean the houses in exchange for bread. They are locked up by their “employers” around the clock. The girls have protested having to work, but their Lebanese bosses say that if they do not return every day, they will evict their family from their home.
Children in Lebanon are subjected to the worst forms of child labor, including forced labor, according to the United States Department of Labor. And the UN reports that child labor doubled in Lebanon in 2020, with no criminal penalty for using forced labor in the country.
The rest of Sanam’s family, including Habad, who is now almost four years old, works in agricultural greenhouses when necessary. A day’s work for the nine earns $ 10. They are allowed to take home some tomatoes and cucumbers when they are in season.
Sanam’s greatest wish is to educate her children. “My children come up to me and say: ‘Mommy, I can’t read, I can’t write my name. Please send me to school. ‘ But the school would cost between $ 50 and $ 100 per child per month, a sum they would spend on food if they had it.
Emel sends Sanam what little money he can afford. She has to hide these gifts from her husband, who worries about paying the interest on her bank loans and her line of credit.
Emel’s biggest concern now is his brother, Abdul, who is in Germany. Abdul is like a father to Emel, as her own father died before she was born. He hasn’t been in contact in a week and is suicidal, she says.
“At least Sanam is alive.”
Reference-www.thestar.com