The journey to Canada from war-torn Syria
Khadra Alsaleh never got the chance to bury her husband.
He was killed at a checkpoint in Syria in 2013 along with two of her brothers. The three men died simply for being from a city known to be against the Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad.
The last image Khadra has of her husband, Khaled, is a graphic photo of his dead body heaped in a pile of other victims of the civil war: His throat slit, one eye hanging from its socket and his front teeth smashed in. Khaled had became one of more than 465,000 Syrians to lose their lives to the war so far.
Khadra has now been in Canada for over a year. Her flight to freedom to save her life and those of her children cost her dearly: she lost nearly everything — her home, friends and family, before settling in St. Catharines.
In Syria, Khadra and her husband owned a small farm in Hosh al-Fara, just outside of Damascus, the capital city of Syria. They raised cows, chickens and sheep.
From her cows, she used to get 150 litres of milk every morning and another 60 in the afternoon. Her chickens gave her eggs. Her family sold them and made a good living.
In a lot of ways, her life wasn’t very different than farm life in Ontario. Her teenage children, two girls and three boys, would help out while her husband worked an agricultural job at a greenhouse.
That was before her home was turned into a ravaged battleground. When the war started in Syria five years ago, Khadra knew they may need to leave her home country for somewhere safe.
She used to watch planes overhead dropping bombs on the homes of her neighbours and friends. It got so bad that every time she heard a loud noise she would run to cover her children, afraid for their lives.
“They would kill people in the streets from airplanes. I would watch houses get destroyed in the distance, thinking the next one might be ours.”
At night she would hold her children close, knowing at any second they might all die.
The bombings got so bad she would walk the streets and help collect body parts so neighbouring families would have something of their loved ones to bury. Her daughter Waad, now 24, and her son Mohammed, now 18, would come help her.
So much death and destruction started affecting her dreams at night, she says.
The family kept their bags packed for months, ready to flee if something happened to their home.
“I was only worried about my kids. I don’t fear death,” she says.
After a while, it was clear they couldn’t stay any longer. That’s when her husband told her to take the children and flee to Lebanon. Despite wanting to stay with him, she took her husband’s advice, while he stayed to care for his sister-in-law and his mother.
Khadra says she told him “we live together or die together,” but understood he needed to stay and protect his family.
“He was a good man,” Khadra says. “He took care of his sister, mother, children. He took care of everyone.”
Khadra hired someone to take her and her children to get out of Damascus. It took them eight hours to get to Lebanon from Syria in the back of a truck — a trip that normally takes an hour and a half.
She and her children had to go through a lot of checkpoints and at one those arming the checkpoint tried to take one of her daughters away. When Khadra spoke up to say that her daughter had nothing to do with the war, a man put a gun to her head and told her not to move.
She was worried they would take her child and rape her, as is known to happen at the border checkpoints. Luckily for her daughter they let eventually let them through unharmed.
Unfortunately, Khadra’s husband was not so lucky.
While Khadra and her family were staying in Lebanon, her husband and two brothers came to visit them, but it was while returning to Damascus, all three were killed at a checkpoint.
Her husband’s body was thrown into a pile of bodies and the last thing she saw of him was the gruesome photo provided to the family.
She says she will never forget that photo.
“There’s no way I can describe it,” she says. “He had nothing to do with the regime.”
Khaled was 48 when he died. Her brothers were 32 and 46.
In Syrian culture, when a woman is widowed, often her brothersin-law will take on the responsibility of caring for her and the children. So after the news of her husband’s death, Khadra took her family back to Syria to find help.
But when she returned home, things were worse than ever. Shortly after the news of Khaled’s death, his brother died of a heart attack. Khadra says he couldn’t handle what had happened and that it killed him.
Now, years later, Khadra says she has no fond memories of Syria and that thinking back to it reminds her too much of her husband.
“All I have is the bad memories,” she says. “We lived very good… and one second things changed upside down.”
She says that now that she is in Canada, her fears have subsided. She says she feels like she’s at home, regardless of the differences of the culture.
“Even in my own country, from my own people, I’ve never felt such love and acceptance as from the Canadian people. There is no comparison.”
In Canada she says she has no fears. “What I want to say, I say it.”
She was sponsored by a group of families when she arrived in Canada and would like to offer a special thanks to them and the Canadian government for standing beside her and her children.
She says Syria was so different before the war.
“Everybody envied us because it was so beautiful. People walking in the streets, loving, socializing, smiling. Everybody would mingle with everyone else.”
With regards to the recent missile strike by the U.S. on Syria, Khadra says it’s sad because a lot of children and innocents die too.
She says the Syrian people need to stop opening the door to terrorists.
She says even in the safety of Lebanon those fears followed her. “Every time I’d hear a loud noise I would think I was back in Syria.”