Wartorn: Five years after happily settling in Canada, a Syrian family is heartbroken as refugee siblings struggle around the world - Toronto Star

I will never forget the image of Emel Hemo and her family arriving at Toronto’s Pearson Airport in the wave of Syrian refugees arriving in Canada in the fall of 2016 — all of their belongings piled onto a single cart.

Friends there to help settle the family clutched a welcome sign in Arabic, not realizing no one in the family had learned to read Arabic. Emel grabbed my arm. Translated, her first words were: “Emel wants to go to school.”

It has been five years since we met at Pearson. Our Moore Park group, one of 26 from Rosedale United Church that sponsored Syrian refugee families, supported Emel and her family financially and practically for their first year in Canada.

Today, as Emel and I discuss her English homework, she beams with pride over her daughter Nately’s Grade 8 graduation photo. A decade after fleeing Syria, Emel, her husband, Abdul Sido, their three children and Abdul’s mother, Jamilla, who are from Syria’s Kurdish minority, are happily settled in Canada.

The family’s new life in Scarborough has not been without challenges. The Syrian restaurant they opened in December 2019 failed, leaving them deep in debt. But Emel worries more about her siblings who have sought refuge in countries around the world.

Noela is still in Afrin, Syria, where many still die at the hands of government forces or the Turkish army, which is rooting out Kurdish resisters; another sister is fighting for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); Hussein, his wife and five children make ends meet in Turkey, but face routine threats, beatings and extortion; Abdul, is financially stable in Germany, but suffers from mental health issues and has been abandoned by his wife and children; Emel’s nephews and nieces fare better in Sweden and Austria, but integration into their new communities remains elusive.

Syrian refugee families, like Emel’s, have been scattered around the globe. 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 the war and struggle to support each other.

“I feel so lucky here in Canada,” says Emel, “but my family’s suffering makes me so sad that sometimes I don’t answer the phone.”

It is Sanam, her eldest sister, whom Emel worries about the most.

Sanam struggles to feed her eight children in Lebanon. The economy is near collapse and many are dying from COVID-19. Sanam was hospitalized with heart issues in May and cannot afford the cardiac 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 on-the-ground support than our group felt we could provide. We still feel guilty about it.

Sanam was slower to evacuate from attacks on the Kurdish community near Afrin, Syria, than others in the family. In late 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 as a Kurd and worried about the immediate needs of her family.

Kurds in Syria have long been suppressed and denied basic rights, according to Human Rights Watch. Land has been confiscated and redistributed to Arabs. Kurdish rights, cultural celebrations and language have been banned. Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party has underinvested in infrastructure and education in Kurdish regions, leaving its population in poverty, according to Kurdish leaders. School is out of reach for families like Sanam’s. “None of my children can hold a pen in their hand or read their name on a piece of paper,” she says.

The death of Sanam’s eldest son, Bakri, just 18, at the hands of Turkish forces in February 2018 made it too dangerous to stay. Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels attacked Afrin to expel the Kurds, according to media reports. Bakri, fighting with local PKK militia, killed two Turkish soldiers before he was slain. The family was warned of retaliation. Sanam’s second son, Mustapha, 16, had fled earlier to hide in Turkey to avoid being captured. 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 wished was that I could die instead of my son,” Sanam says, sobbing.

The family’s escape from Syria was harrowing. They walked through the night. Just steps out of their village, a family walking in front of them was struck and killed by a bomb. “I couldn’t look at them,” remembers Sanam. “I just picked up two of my children and ran.”

A second bomb exploded near them a few hours later. Her daughter Rugeen, holding baby Habad, fell to the ground. “I love you, my daughter and my son,” shouted Sanam, 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 could not see,” remembers Sanam.

They continued by foot on mountainous trails until morning. “My children were crying and tired. Some of my children did not have shoes. Their feet were bleeding. We were all so scared,” remembers Sanam.

As the sun rose, another bomb fell. A family who had taken their place on the tractor was killed. “Thanks to Allah we didn’t stay in that tractor.”

They sheltered in a mosque close to Aleppo with 500 other refugees — surviving on little food, no heat and sharing a blanket among 11 of them. After a week, the PKK took them to a “safe house.” It was not much safer. Bombs exploded at night, killing neighbours and blowing out their windows. Nine-year-old Sidra was seriously burned when a grenade she found in their yard exploded in her hands.

The PKK soon wanted payment for their hospitality and demanded they hand over daughter Rugeen, then 15, to join the fighters. Sanam found a man to marry her instead — married women not being permitted to fight — and they fled again, Rugeen’s new husband in tow.

Recruitment and use of children in combat is widespread among combatant groups in Syria, according to United Nations’ reports. Three-quarters of the almost 1,500 verified child soldiers in the past two years were from Kurdish regions of the country. The UN also confirmed the killing of almost 1,600 children, most from Sanam’s Kurdish region, during the same period.

The family reached the Lebanon border weak and hungry, only to have Sanam’s husband, Othman, stopped and sent back. Having been employed by the Syrian government, as a garbage collector, Othman was not permitted to leave the country. Hemo transferred $3,000 from Canada to have him smuggled across the border a week later.

Three years later, the family is safe but living in ever-worsening 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 per cent of Syrians in Lebanon are currently “living below the extreme poverty line,” up from just over 50 per cent in 2019, reports UNHCR.

Lebanon’s economic crisis is possibly among the top three worst crises the world has seen in 150 years, according to the World Bank. Incomes have plummeted by half since 2018 and the cost of consumer goods has more than doubled.

Sanam’s son Bashar is the only member of the family who has found a job. He works in a factory for $2 a day — not every day, but when the factory has power, which is disrupted often in Lebanon, and when the factory has enough work for him. He is 14 years old.

Olon, 17, born with only one hand, makes a little money begging or sifting through trash to find aluminum scraps to be sold.

Daughters Noosh, 9, and Silvanna, 11, clean houses in return for bread. They are locked in by their “employers” for the entire day. The girls have protested having to work, but their Lebanese bosses say that if they don’t return each day, they will have their family evicted from their house.

Children in Lebanon are subjected to the worst forms of child labour, including forced labour, according to the United States Department of Labor. And the UN reports that child labour doubled in Lebanon in 2020, with no criminal penalty for using forced labour in the country.

The rest of Sanam’s family, including Habad, now almost four, work in agricultural greenhouses when they are needed. A day’s work for the nine of them earns $10. They are allowed to take home a few tomatoes and cucumbers when they are in season.

Sanam’s greatest wish is to educate her children. “My children come to me and say, ‘Mommy, I cannot read, I cannot write my name. Please send me to school.’” But school would cost $50 to $100 per child per month — a sum they would spend on food if they had it.

Emel sends Sanam what little money she can afford. She has to hide these gifts from her husband, who worries about making interest payments on their bank loans and line of credit.

Emel’s major worry now is her brother, Abdul, who is in Germany. Abdul is like a father to Emel, her own father having died before she was born. He has not been in touch in a week and is suicidal, she says.

“At least Sanam is alive.”

Katharine Lake Berz is a management consultant, writer and a fellow in the Fellowship in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto. She helped sponsor Emel Hemo’s family in 2016.

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Wartorn: Five years after happily settling in Canada, a Syrian family is heartbroken as refugee siblings struggle around the world - Toronto Star
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