IMPORTANCE OF PEACE
Syrian students to share experiences
Nour Albaradan was 10 years old when the Syrian war began.
Living in Tafas, she was like most girls. She went to school and liked playing with her cousin and friends.
“Everything was perfect until the war started,” she said.
She knew things were changing “because I didn’t go to the school anymore; I didn’t go playing at the park every day like I did before the war.”
Before coming to Canada almost two years ago, she was in a refugee camp in Jordan, where her family lived in a tent.
“It was so cold in the winter and it was so hot in the summer,” said Albaradan, now 16, but “there was no guns going off, so.”
Albaradan and two fellow Syrian-refugee students will share some of their experiences with their Sheldon-Williams Collegiate classmates at Friday’s Remembrance Day service.
Their message boils down to this: Appreciate peace.
“We want them to learn how important peace is and how important it is to keep peace in your country and how to keep it,” said Albaradan.
“They may think … it’s very different between Syria and Canada … but it’s very similar,” said 17-yearold Abdul Mustafa.
“Before the war, it looked like Canada, like how I live now.
“But when the war started, everything’s gone. You can’t go to school, you can’t go even out of your house. … If you try to go out, you’re actually probably going to get shot.”
“After the war,” said 15-year-old Mays Al Jamous, “every friend has (gone to) another country and there’s no school, no freedom and no safety, and you worry about your life every day.”
The three students from the governorate (province) of Daraa rarely speak about Syria with Canadian students. Al Jamous has twice told her story in class before, but for Albaradan and Mustafa, this is a first.
“I feel nervous because of their reaction,” said Albaradan. “I don’t know how they will react with me, but I feel excit(ed) to share this.”
Mustafa has shared his history with teachers and friends outside of school, and at Safeway where he works.
“When I meet someone new, they always ask me, ‘How was Syria? What happened there?’ ”
He has stories of seeing people die in the street, people hit by gunfire with no one coming to their aid.
“You can’t do anything. You just watch and pray for him, because if you want to go help him, you’re going to get shot.”
About 40 students and staff rehearsed the ceremony on Wednesday after school.
It has all the trappings of a traditional Remembrance Day service, including a colour party, the Reveille and Last Post, and a wreathlaying.
But amid a vocal jazz rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine and a lyrical reading of the Black Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love, the Syrian students make it personal.
They read stories and poems that they wrote.
Mustafa tells them that, seven years ago, Damascus felt a lot like Toronto.
“War can happen in an instant when people accept hate and intolerance, and look at each other as ‘other,’ ” he says.
“Every day, people choose to be good or bad,” Al Jamous reads. “When enough people choose the bad, war happens. When enough people choose the good, we live in peace.”
From a poem she wrote, Albaradan says, “There is one thing that connects all of us. We are all born human and we will all die human. Humans first. Humans last.”
The students’ English as an additional language (EAL) teacher Kyla Wendell McIntyre invited them to get involved.
She wanted to empower the Syrian students to promote peace, and encourage the Canadian students to better understand peace.
“I feel they have such an important message to share,” said Wendell McIntyre. “We really take peace for granted in our lives and we don’t really understand how lucky we are.
“This is the way we prevent war, is by dialoguing about how to keep peace. Each of them has a message about how we actually do that and I feel inspired by them.”
War can happen in an instant when people accept hate and intolerance, and look at each other as ‘other.’