For Rateb, who fled Syria at 14, Victoria job comes with a ‘mom’
Afew weeks after 19-year-old Rateb started working at Zazu Cafe in downtown Victoria, he put a Syrian soup, shurbat addes, on the menu. Selling the red lentil soup, spiced with cumin, to customers was a small way of tying his old life in Syria to his new one in Canada. Rateb has been working part-time at the Blanshard Street café since March. The café’s owner, Tracey Higgins, is not just Rateb’s boss — right now, she’s the closest thing he has to a mother. Rateb, one of the few unaccompanied minors from Syria resettled on Vancouver Island, is living with Higgins and her husband, Mark, in their Fernwood home until subsidized housing can be found.
“She’s doing lots of stuff for me. She’s like a mom,” said Rateb. “I have somebody who can understand me.” The Times Colonist is not using Rateb’s last name to protect family members who remain in war-torn Syria.
Higgins and her sister were out dancing one night last September at the Strathcona Hotel when they met Rateb and his friend. Higgins’s sister told Rateb to apply for a job. A few months later, after some help from his settlement worker, he came in with a resumé.
Higgins said during the job interview, Rateb was shaking and he kept clasping his hands together as if praying he would be hired.
He didn’t expect the job to come with a family, at least a temporary one.
Rateb’s parents and siblings remain in Damascus, waiting for the day they’ll be able to come to Canada. Higgins is organizing a fundraiser to raise enough money to sponsor Rateb’s family privately. She hopes, at the very least, to get his brother out before he turns 18 and is forced to do military service.
Rateb is the eldest of three brothers and two sisters, one of whom was born after Rateb fled Syria for Lebanon at age 14.
Rateb has been on his own for five years, applying for refugee status in Lebanon and finally being resettled to Victoria just over a year ago at age 18. Higgins said even though Rateb is now constantly surrounded by people, either at work or at home, he’s still very much alone.
“The first thing I noticed was the deep sadness,” Higgins said.
She remembers the first heart-to-heart she had with Rateb after the café employees had left for the day. She asked how he was doing and Rateb broke down.
“He just sobbed in my arms. That was our first moment of getting close and for him to share his story,” Higgins said.
She suggested Rateb live with her rentfree, just to have a support network.
“Ever since then he’s my son — until his family gets here.”
Even before entering Higgins’s home, on a leafy street with well-kept gardens, there are the subtle signs that a teenager lives here. There’s the array of stylish sneakers on the doormat and the shiny olive-green road bike propped against the front porch. Rateb loves cycling, and will often ride his bike down to Dallas Road to be near the ocean.
Rateb’s bedroom has an overstuffed chair in front of a large television where he plays video games. A small wooden coffee table is covered with plants, several succulent varieties and a flourishing bamboo.
Other than the poster for the fundraiser Higgins is planning for him, there’s nothing in the room that would remind him of Syria. But, Rateb said, in his mind, he’s still there. He speaks frankly about how difficult it is for Syrians to resettle in Canada knowing there are loved ones still suffering back home.
“They’re going to have a hard time here,” he said. “It’s just kind of hard for me. There’s
Rateb has lots of friends who text him and ask him to hang out. Sometimes he accepts, many times he declines.
“If you live four years by yourself, you're not going to be with people just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.
One exception is on Friday nights, where Rateb joins a group of breakdancers in Centennial Square.
One recent Friday, Rateb brought his speaker and a mat, and plays hip hop from his phone, taking turns breakdancing with one seven-year veteran and one new guy. They call him Ray and he seems most confident when breakdancing.
When he thinks of the future, Rateb sees himself as either a dancer or a chef, or both. “Nobody know what’s going to happen in the future. What’s in my mind? I'm going to be a dancer and, the same time, a chef.”
Rateb is introspective and self-aware, and can see how much he has changed in the past year.
“When I first came here, I was like a small baby, I don’t have the perfect personality,” he said. Higgins helped him gain confidence and open up. “When I met her, [she said]: ‘Just be happy, nothing is going to happen.’ She's always behind me.”
Rateb came to Victoria more than a year ago as a government-sponsored refugee. It means that, other than his settlement worker at the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria, he does not have the same support network as privately sponsored refugees. Private individuals, community groups or churches who sponsor a refugee family must raise enough funds to support the family for a year, but those groups often provide more than financial support — taking refugees to appointments, helping them find jobs or inviting them over for family dinners.
All Syrian refugees receive one year of federal-government funding. If they aren’t self-sufficient after that year, their settlement worker helps them apply for provincial social assistance.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada was not able to provide data on how many unaccompanied minors have been resettled in Canada, but the government has focused on resettling families as opposed to individual males.
Winnie Lee, director of operations for the Inter-Cultural Association, which has managed the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Victoria, said she knows of only two unaccompanied minors, both age 18, who settled on Vancouver Island. She said one young man was joined by his family a few months after he arrived.
She could not speak specifically to Rateb’s case due to privacy rules.
The association has a robust youth program, which includes activities and outings for youth such as a camping trip organized in partnership with the nonprofit organization Power to Be, Lee said. It does not provide inhouse counselling services, but can connect youth who are struggling emotionally with counselling in the community, she said.
Higgins said she can tell Rateb is still struggling, that he won’t be whole until he’s reunited with his family.
“Just to see somebody on their own, without a family and the struggle and the war in Syria, he’s been through a lot and I can’t imagine that,” she said.
Rateb doesn’t want to appear ungrateful for the new life he has, but he’s overcome with a feeling of helplessness and, perhaps, guilt, for being the one person in his family who got away.
“Like for me, I’m losing my country, I can't do anything,” he said. “If there is no family, there is no life.”