For single mother, settlement in Canada remains a challenge
When Fatima al-Rajab arrived in Canada in January 2016, she felt hopeful.
That sentiment quickly led to the realization of how tough it would be to make a new life in a place where she was surrounded by strangers and a language she didn’t speak.
After her husband was killed by a sniper in Syria, al-Rajab was left to raise her four young children on her own — a feat challenging enough without starting from scratch in an unfamiliar country.
About a year and a half after taking that step, the single mother has grown more accustomed to her new home. She is taking English classes and has gotten to know her way around the local transit system.
But in an interview in her Forest Lawn home, al-Rajab says she still misses her Syrian home, and she hopes to return.
“I feel like a stranger (here),” al-Rajab says through a translator.
The family’s journey from the city of Homs to Canada started a few months after al-Rajab’s husband was killed. They spent the next three years moving around between refugee camps in Lebanon.
Despite living conditions she describes as “very, very tough,” the family took comfort in the fact that they were still close to their home country.
“You have that feeling that at any moment you’re going to go back to Syria,” she explains.
Most of the children, except for the oldest daughter, were so young when they left Syria that they don’t remember their country, describing Lebanon as where they are from.
The kids have happily made Calgary their new home, glad to have activities in school to keep them busy — a far cry from the refugee camps they lived in for so long.
They are learning English, and have made friends, both with Canadian children and other Syrians, in the complex where they live.
Al-Rajab says some of the highlights of coming to Canada, aside from the children being happy in school, include the fact that the houses are much nicer, and that “the places in general are very beautiful.”
She has also made friends with other Syrian women in the neighbourhood, and she has gone from being worried to take the CTrain on her own when she first arrived, to finding her way around easily. If she goes somewhere once, she remembers the route. Above all, it is much safer here. But settlement remains a major hurdle for the mother, who admits that if her husband were still alive, “life would be much easier.”
She misses her family, and sometimes thinks about going to Jordan to see her mother, who lives there with some of al-Rajab’s siblings. Since arriving in Canada, al-Rajab has been confronted with grief once again, this time after losing a sister in Lebanon to cancer.
She feels conflicted between the longings for family and familiarity, and providing stability for her children, who have grown accustomed to life here.
During the interview, the children run in and out of a back door to play with neighbour friends and lounge on a couch in the kitchen near their mother as she prepares coffee, appearing at home in their southeast Calgary community.
“They love Canada so much,” says al-Rajab.
She acknowledges that life has become easier since the family’s arrival. When asked if she expects things to continue to improve, she says: “This is what people tell me all the time: Just at the beginning it’s hard, and then it’s going to be fine.”