Syrian tradesman starts life anew, with some help
Master craftsman determined to make upholstery business a success
Wael Aun’s father died when he was 17. The teenager left his village in the south of Syria for Kuwait, where an uncle taught him the fine trade of upholstering furniture.
“I leave school because my family needed the money,” Aun says.
The youngest of his eight sisters and four brothers was only a year old at the time.
“I must get to working.”
It’s a trade that sustained Aun and his family for 25 years as he roamed in search of work and to escape the war that had torn apart his homeland.
Aun says he likes being his own boss. He proudly lists the upholstery stores he has opened in Syria, Lebanon, Greece and Jordan.
Now, he’s standing in a small workshop in an industrial park on Ottawa’s Sheffield Road, surrounded by the tools of his trade: a sewing machine, a serger, big blocks of foam and slabs of wood with ornate designs. The sign on the brick outside announces, in English and Arabic, the birth of a new business: Wael’s Upholstery.
It’s one of several businesses in Ottawa established by Syrian refugees. Others run small catering or trades-based businesses, says Louisa Taylor of Refugee 613, the umbrella aid group formed when the wave of Syrian refugees began arriving in 2015.
Like newcomers before them, some Syrians have found that entrepreneurship can be the path to a good income, especially if their English language skills are developing, Taylor said.
Wael, his wife, Wafaa, and their four children arrived in February 2016, sponsored by the Canadian government.
Wael scoops up 15-month-old Hanna, who is toddling around the workshop floor, and grins as she grabs his ear. They wanted a name that would work in either culture for their youngest child, who was born in Ottawa.
Building a small business is challenging for anyone. Wael has little money. But if hard work and grit are rewarded, Wael’s Upholstery will succeed. Inshallah, or “God willing,” as they say in Arabic.
He also has some help from a Canadian woman, Kim Davison, a family friend and head cheerleader for the business.
Davison, a retired IT manager, cheerfully says she doesn’t know anything about setting up a business. But she helped Wael find the storefront and co-signed the lease, enlisted another volunteer to set up the books and began spreading the word about the skills of the master craftsman from Syria.
“He’s a very talented upholsterer,” she says. “Every friend of mine who has needed upholstering has gone to him. He doesn’t let anything leave his shop that is not perfect.”
Wael displays pictures on his cellphone of the plush Middle Eastern style couches he has built, explaining that no one in Ottawa knows how do to that type of work. He can upholster anything, Wael says with a grin. “When you think of something, I can do it. If you bring to me any picture of anything, I would do that. You just have to choose the colour.”
Davison met Wael’s wife, Wafaa, in a community room in one of the highrises on Donald Street that has been dubbed Little Syria because so many refugees have moved there.
Davison had volunteered to help the newcomers learn simple English phrases — “Excuse me,” and “Which bus to St. Laurent?” When she began giving Wafaa personal tutoring, Davison quickly grew close to the whole family.
“They are such good, kind people,” says Davison. She can never leave the apartment without being pressed to stay for a meal, she says. “They have virtually nothing but they want to share it with you.”
She has shared lots of laughs with the family.
Davison recalls driving with Wael to Montreal to pick up fabric for the business. He became alarmed when she opened the car window. “Is not allowed!” he insisted. “I’m scared.” A Syrian friend had told him it was illegal to roll down a window while driving on a highway in Canada. “He thinks we are going to be in trouble. And he really wants to follow all the rules,” says Davison. “He doesn’t want any problems in Canada.”
Wael was adamant until she pointed out other cars with their windows down. Then he produced a word Davison had taught him earlier. “Ridiculous?” he asked. “Is it ridiculous, what my friend said?”
It was Davison who got the call when Wafaa was ready to give birth in April 2017. “Kim, Kim, the water is gone. Can you come to the hospital please?”
As she sat with Wafaa during labour, a nurse inquired what her relationship was to the Syrian woman, and Davison replied “friend.”
“Wafaa turns to the nurse, in her limited English, and says ‘No! Not a friend!’ And my heart just stopped. She doesn’t think of me as a friend? But then she said ‘No, she’s not my friend, she’s my sister.’ And my eyes just filled.”
Davison says she’s is confident that Wael’s business will thrive.
After all, he’s started from scratch in a new country before. A decade ago, Wael moved to the island of Crete for four years while “waiting for the problems to stop” in Syria. He began work as an employee at an upholstery shop but within six months had opened his own business in a large house, working with an interior designer. He learned Greek. “All the hotels knew me, all the coffee shops. I do very nice work in Greece.”
Even during the five years the family spent in Jordan as refugees before coming to Canada, Wael ran his own shop. Now, finally, he is in a country where he has the right to become a citizen and live permanently with his family.
The kids are adapting quickly, says Wael. “They don’t speak Arabic much,” he laughs. “They don’t want the music Arabic. All English, everything English.”
Khaled, 21, works at a grocery store, Hussein is going into Grade 10 at Gloucester High School, Khadijah, 11, is in middle school and four-year-old Mariam will start junior kindergarten in the fall.
“My dream?” says Wael. “To open a factory here, a big factory.
“But even if I find that doesn’t happen, I am happy here, because of my family.”
He takes a Sunday afternoon off every few weeks and they head out for a picnic, exploring Mooney’s Bay and Britannia Park or fishing on the Mississippi River west of Ottawa. He loves everything about the Ottawa area, says Wael. The cold? He shrugs. “No problem!”
The heat? “No problem!” Although, he allows, “we have a problem with the mosquitoes.”
Mosquitoes aren’t so abundant back home.
“Mainly in Syria, if you tell them to go, they go! They don’t listen here,” he says, laughing at his joke.