TOO YOUNG FOR GOODBYE
Fleeing war and persecution, the Al Dabeis have a new home here
Abdullah Kurdi cradles the body of his three-year-old son, Alan, during a funeral ceremony in Kobane, Turkey, on Friday. Photos of the boy’s tiny body lying on a beach this week sparked renewed focus on the plight of Syrian refugees.
Nabil Al Dabei knew it was time to get his family out of Syria when a sniper’s bullet smashed the windshield of the car he was driving in early 2014, narrowly missing his head.
The message was driven home a few days later when a bomb fell on his neighbour’s apartment in Damascus.
It took a while to reach safety. But three weeks ago, Nabil, 43, his 40-year-old wife Manal, and their four children arrived in Ottawa, their lives transformed by 22 parishioners of St. Basil’s Catholic Church.
The family is now settling into a triplex apartment the St. Basil’s sponsorship group rented for them near Carling and Churchill avenues, gearing up to send their children — Bashar, 14, Julie, 11, Sally, 6 and Kareem, 4 — to Canadian schools starting next week.
On Friday, Julie proudly showed off a patterned purple backpack and equally vibrant turquoise lunch bag, acquired this week in preparation for her Grade 6 class at Lady of Fatima School, which her two younger siblings will also attend. Bashar, the eldest, is enrolled in an extended ESL program at St. Pius X High School.
“I can’t describe my feelings,” her father, Nabil, said through an interpreter. “Here, people are very nice to us, helping us, respecting us. It’s a very nice feeling and I’m lucky to be in Canada.”
Their apartment, rented since May and awaiting their arrival, is “very nice and tidy,” he says. But the most important thing is that people have made them feel so welcome, meeting them at the airport, helping them move in to their new home.
The feeling is mutual, says Marianne McLean, the head of St. Basil’s Syrian refugee committee. “The Al Dabeis are just lovely people,” she says. “It’s been a joy to share their life.”
One of the first things you notice when you meet the family is Nabil’s luminous blue eyes, which his son Bashar and daughter Julie have inherited. They fairly glow.
The family owes a lot to Shadi Al Khalil, a relative by marriage who came to Ottawa in December 2010 to learn English and stayed here after the Syrian civil war erupted. He used his new language skills to translate during the Citizen’s interview with the Arabic-speaking Al Dabeis Friday.
Al Khalil, who works an overnight shift at Staples in South Keys, approached several churches about sponsoring the family. But because of the cost – sponsoring a family of six is a $30,000 to $40,000 commitment – he initially struck out.
Eventually, the Catholic Centre for Immigrants connected him to the St. Basil’s group, which agreed to take on the sponsorship. Al Khalil had previously arranged sponsorships for his brother and sister’s families, who now live in Ottawa.
Before the war, Nabil ran his own auto body shop in his hometown Daraa, where the popular uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. “They were happy and had nothing to worry about,” says Al Khalil.
Things started to change in late 2011, when a group of armed Islamist fighters trashed Nabil’s body shop, targeting him because he is a Melkite Catholic Christian.
As shooting and bombing became commonplace, the family moved to the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2012, hoping to find safety there.
There was less shooting, but bombs still rained down regularly. One fell on a school near their home, killing 14 students and their teacher. A neighbour’s child was so traumatized by the incessant explosions that she couldn’t speak for a month.
The Al Dabei children were fortunate; they escaped injury. But after the shooting and bombing incidents, they left Syria for Lebanon on Feb. 27, 2014, eventually settling into an apartment in a Beirut suburb.
Nabil found work at a body shop, which allowed the family to survive. Thanks to a bureaucratic snafu, the family received no support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for months.
But life was difficult in Lebanon. Syrian refugees are hated by most Lebanese. When the Al Dabeis renewed their residency papers in Lebanon, authorities there contemptuously referred to Syrians as animals.
The family realized they had no long-term future in Lebanon and pinned their hopes on coming to Canada.
When Al Khalil’s text arrived last November informing them of St. Basil’s sponsorship, the whole family celebrated. “It was the only good news that they had in Lebanon,” Al Khalil says.
Canadian visa officials in Beirut approved the family in late May, but it took until mid-August for space to become available on a flight to Canada.
Those weeks of waiting were hard on the family. “They were on top of the world when they got the good news,” Al Khalil says, “but because of the long time between that and the travelling, they started to think they’d been forgotten or the government had lost the papers.”
They arrived in Canada with only $300 and their clothes. But the support of their sponsors has eased the transition tremendously.
Perhaps that’s why Manal’s first impression of Canadians is that they are exceptionally kind. It’s a perception shared by Al Khalil. “It really is remarkable,” he says. “People in Canada are like angels.”
Nabil harbours large dreams for his new life. He wants to open his own body shop some day, buy a house and, like all immigrants, give his children a better life
Will his children become good
People are very nice to us, helping us, respecting us. It’s a very nice feeling and I’m lucky to be in Canada. — Nabil Al Dabei, whose family arrived from Syria in August They were on top of the world when they got the good news, but because of the long time between that and the travelling, they started to think they’d been forgotten.
Canadians?
“Inshallah,” he responds initially, using the Arabic word meaning “God willing.” Then, a quick, firm amendment. “They will be good Canadians.”