Imagine watching your home collapse and fleeing your country with nothing.
You arrive in a foreign refugee camp where you’re forced to sleep on the ground out in the elements. You have no money so leaving the camp seems impossible.
That’s what members of the Zain Al Abedeen family experienced prior to arriving in Fergus last January.
“People’s very nice here. It’s amazing. Everybody just want to help you when you come,” said Asmaa Zain Al Abedeen.
“Mom, she’s very happy. The people’s very kind, nice.”
The 17-year-old came to Canada with her father Rasheed, mother Awatef and little brother Hahmoud, 1, on Jan. 28, 2016.
They are four of the more than 37,000 refugees Canada has welcomed since November 2015.
The Faith and Friends refugee group, spearheaded by the Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fergus, sponsored the family.
Asmaa attends the English as a second language program at John F. Ross Collegiate Vocational Institute. In 11 months she has progressed from knowing no English to carrying a conversation and telling her family’s story.
In 2011 Asmaa, along with her mom and dad, fled from Daraa, their hometown in Syria.
“They were in a rebel-held area,” said Ingrid Kebbel-Beer, chair of the Faith and Friends task force. “That’s actually where the revolution started, in the southwest of the country.”
Asmaa explained her family lived in a traditional multi-family home with their extended family, but when the war broke out in 2011 their home was destroyed and they were forced to leave.
“One day like everything coming, like the airplanes … in my country and we are just asleep and many things are coming and Dad say, ‘Enough, we have to move because I can’t save your life, you and mom, anymore,’” Asmaa explained.
“We went to Jordan.”
The family arrived in the winter and spent about a month in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. While there they saw the unimaginable.
“We live in this space very cold,” Asmaa said. “Mom’s very tired because we didn’t have something warm.
They didn’t have a tent so they slept on the ground and Awatef said many of the children and elderly in the camp died.
However, Asmaa said even when they were given tents and heaters, there was always a threat that the structure would burn.
“We didn’t have water … can’t
do anything,” Asmaa said. “We just see the people die.”
She added, “Every day we can’t sleep because we see this. You can’t imagine.”
Eventually Rasheed found “under-the-table” work because Syrians were not legally allowed to hold a job in Jordan, so his family left the refugee camp and spent the next four years in Jordan.
When the family, now four-strong with young Hahmoud, received the News that they were coming to Canada, Awatef didn’t believe it at first and Rasheed had to make the confirmation.
“Dad say, ‘Yeah okay,’” Asmaa said. “Because like, more good school (in Canada); good life more than Jordan.”
Before leaving Jordan the Zain Al Abedeen’s were told Canada was very cold so Awatef stocked up on warm clothing for the family.
“Inside we thought … (it would be) very cold all the time, so mom say, ‘Oh maybe put (on) that sock, the gloves, the hat,’” Asmaa said with a laugh. “It’s not – we don’t use it in the house.”
Once they adjusted to the temperature, the Zain Al Abedeen’s settled into life in Canada.
With the help of Faith and Friends volunteers, Rasheed sells Syrian baked goods to Ashanti Café in Elora and he also works in maintenance at Giant Tiger in Fergus.
Awatef participated in the Sensational Elora Soup Off on Thanksgiving Monday at the Wellington County Museum and Archives and the family has done some baking with KIPPElora in Bissell Park.
Also, this summer Rasheed grew two gardens – one at St. James Anglican Church and one at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fergus – and they flourished despite this year’s dry summer.
“Rasheed was out there every day and his technique was amazing,” Kebbel-Beer said. “[He’s] obviously very knowledgeable of how to grow things in a dry climate … he had trenches dug so the roots were watered when he ran the water.”
He grew a variety of vegetables, including but not limited to chickpeas, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, onion, spinach and a sunflower.
Maintaining the crops wasn’t foreign for Rasheed. Asmaa said that back in Syria her family had a farm with over 400 olive trees and they also grew market vegetables.
“So we didn’t need to go anywhere to buy anything because we have everything,” she said.
However, the family’s transition hasn’t been easy overall.
Asmaa said the language barrier was a huge challenge because she didn’t understand what people were saying to her.
“She didn’t even know how to say ‘I don’t understand,’” Kebbel-Beer said.
Now Asmaa is able to translate for her parents, who are both learning English as well. While Awatef is able to speak some English, Rasheed’s progression has been slower, Kebbel-Beer said. Which is a challenge of its own.
“He … hopefully will be the family breadwinner and so we’re in this catch-22,” Kebbel-Beer said. “Do you try and work to provide that support or do you go to school to learn more English?”
Despite the work Rasheed is doing, Kebbel-Beer said she thinks the family will need to go on social assistance until he has more steady work because the sponsorship group’s financial responsibility expires at the end of January.
“The friendship phase will continue, naturally,” Kebbel-Beer said.
“We do have a little bit extra in the kitty so we will continue to provide a little bit of support.”
One of the limitations to finding more stable work is a lack of transportation. Rasheed rides his bike in the summer, but it’s more of a challenge in the winter because the family doesn’t have a vehicle.
Both Asmaa and Awatef are booked to take driver’s training in the next few months.
“That’s the big thing; I’m hoping that with the driver’s licenses that will provide some freedom,” Kebbel-Beer said.
Asmaa added, “It’s very hard to live here when you didn’t have car.”
Despite the challenges, Asmaa said her family is planning to stay in Canada and the dream is for Rasheed to open his own Syrian restaurant that looks like a traditional eatery in their home country.
“Awatef was showing me pictures; it would have arches and a fountain and then little tables all around,” Kebbel-Beer said.
The family is also looking to bring more relatives to Canada.
Asmaa said she still has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins living in Jordan and Syria, but the Syrian government took at least one cousin. The family assumes he is dead, as no one has heard from him in four years.
For now, family members are looking to get travel documents so they can visit relatives in Jordan.
