A NEW LIFE IN WEXFORD AFTER HORROR OF SYRIAN WAR
Having left their war-ravaged home city of Aleppo in 2013, the Aljasim family tell reporter David Looby how they have been welcomed here in Co. Wexford
SITTING in front of a blazing hot fire, Haitham Al Ramadam Aljasim takes a deep breath and recalls the moment he decided to leave his homeland of Syria. It was 2013 and his country was being torn apart in the worst civil war imaginable.
His wife Raghada, 37, had lost a nephew in a bomb attack.
Speaking through an interpreter, his friend Mahad Osman, Haitham, 39, says up until 2011 the family were very comfortably off. He had a steady job as a security man and his children were safe.
‘The first time I started to see problems in Aleppo was 2011, the time of the Arab Spring uprisings. With each year it got worse and worse and harder and harder to live at home.’
Dressed in a hijab and green thawb, Raghada shakes her head, putting her hand to her cheek as she recalls how her 12-year-old nephew was cut in two when a regime air-strike bomb exploded on his house, scattering sharpnel through the air.
Shortly afterwards the couple – fearing for their lives and the lives of their daughters Nagham, Nada and Nermeen, who were seven, five and four at the time – moved to a village outside Halep (Aleppo). As Sunni Muslims in a city being invaded by Shias from Lebanon and Iran, leaving was becoming a life or death choice.
In 2013, shortly after the death of Raghada’s nephew, the family made the prescient decision to move. Days later their house was destroyed in an air raid attack. Their beautiful city, which was deemed impervious to political upheaval, had suddenly become a byword for war crimes and savagery.
‘It was very hard to survive in Aleppo. If you ran one way the army would get you and if went the other way the rebels would kill you for siding with the army.’
Raghada’s brother was kidnapped around this time and the family had to pay 300,000 Syrian pounds (€520) to win his release.
‘We were told the tribes were coming in and it became a hot zone for activity. This was Syria’s second city. A beautiful city with beautiful smells carried on the breeze from the hills. It was full of factories and companies,’ she says shaking her head.
Haitham also sparks to life remembering the city he grew up in, and raised a family in, up to a point.
When the shelling by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces grew worse in 2013, death became commonplace. With rubble piled high in streets for months on end making some completely impassable and bomb blasts shaking houses to their foundations leaving hulking twisted metal remains protruding from the dusty, dead palm tree-lined thoroughfares and once grand squares, Haitham watched his city and its people crumble before his eyes.
‘We can’t believe what is going on there. We have lost our family, our neighbours, our city. We have lost our homeland and property. We can’t go back. Different tribes have taken over.’
Raghada’s brother had to move to Idlib as his life was in danger. With no water supply and no electric light, the family lived a nightmarish reality, one Nagham (now 12), can’t remember. ‘When I was in Aleppo I was five so I did not know anything,’ she says in her lilting, sing-song english.
She is better off.
Her mother recalls seeing people dying on the streets during the Siege of Aleppo. A proud Aleppan, she recalls the carnage in a city where hospitals and civilian areas were bombed, her eyes narrowing at the thought – as if still in shock.
Nagham and Nada weren’t able to attend school and had to stay inside with their parents all day and all night. ‘If the government forces caught you they would kill you,’ Haitham, an astute, gentle man says, sadness haunting his eyes.
From the comfort of their threebed home in New Ross, Haitham and Raghada watch the news and love to hear the rare good news story that emerges from Aleppo but mostly watching the news makes them sad. Haitham finds it impossible to sleep thinking of his father who is in his seventies and can’t leave his homeland where an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
‘We’ve asked him but she says he won’t leave because that is the city where he has lived all his life.’
The bags under his eyes and wornout gait – as he sits by the fire smoking – say more than words can of the toll the worst civil war in recent decades has taken on him. He suffers from diabetes and high cholesterol. ‘I am thinking about him all the time.’
Raghada gently braids Nada’s hair as she recalls the 12-hour journey they took in a bus across the desert to Lebanon in 2013 to escape Syria.
‘We were terrified the government would attack us. So many people were leaving Aleppo at the time. In the city you didn’t know who your friend or enemy was. My brother had a friend he worked with before the civil war and he was kidnapped by him during it. His tribe said “if you want your brother you must pay. If you don’t you won’t see your brother again”, so we paid. You can’t trust anybody there anymore.’
Pointing to a 7ft by 5ft carpet on the sitting room floor, she cracks a wry smile, a look of disbelief flashing in her eyes, and says: ‘We lived in a room that size for two years in Lebanon.’
Haitham says: ‘We became refugees, non nationals, people without a home or place. It was terrible.’
The family moved to a village outside Aleppo city in north west Syria,
Haitham got a security job and for his days’ toil was allowed stay with his family in the fetid, stuffy box room, which also contained a toilet. They received $150 a month to live in, but in Lebanon – a relatively expensive country – they just managed to get by.
‘What could we do, we took the money and I made some money doing security. That was our life for six years, sorry three years. Was it only three years?’ Haitham says, shaking his head in a downcast motion.
He rolls his shoulders in disbelief, still registering the appalling living conditions his family endured in Lebanon.
Haitham and Raghada welcomed Fatima into the world in a Lebanese hospital in 2014.
Raghada recalls being ‘so sad’ at the family’s situation and their lack of access to nutritious food and medicines. Fatima’s elder sisters weren’t able to attend school and were cared for by their mother, who suffered badly with asthma.
The more refugees arriving in Lebanon the more hostility grew against them.
Haitham was robbed by a policeman after work one day.
‘We were not comfortable there or
in Aleppo. We were scared and didn’t know what the day would bring.’
When Raghada’s brother applied for asylum to the United Nations he also applied for his sister’s family.
‘He was rejected because he had a better income but we were granted asylum and received our residence permits. We were sent to Ireland, along with several hundred families,’ Haitham says.
‘It was a total lottery. Raghada’s brother applied again and was rejected again.’
The family’s first impression of Ireland was of a safe country, one in which their children would thrive. When asked if they minded the weather, Raghada says: ‘We didn’t mind that it was cold when we arrived in March. The cold is nothing! When you see someone die in front of you. When you see bombs go off, blowing up houses. When you can’t eat. When you can’t sleep and can’t take it any more, the cold is nothing.’
‘If we were still in Lebanon we’d be in a plastic shack on a mountain in the winter, freezing,’ Haitham says.
Offering the shisha pipe containing apple flavoured tobacco and some sweet Syrian tea, Raghada smiles – house proud and content – as Nagham and Nada roll colourful soft balls to each other on the rug. Their sister Nermeen is glued to a smartphone and Fatima is asleep under a heavy blanket on the couch beside the fire.
The ten months the Aljasim family spent in a hotel in Monastervin were happy, carefree times for a family who knew no comfort for five years.
‘We started to have a normal life,’ Haitham says. ‘The children started learning English and the food was good.’
Echoing his appreciation for the welcome they received, Raghada says: ‘We felt safe.’
Asked if they ever think of returning after the war to Syria she says ‘Maybe if I didn’t have a child I would have stayed. I moved because I have a family.’
She cried with happiness the day she was shown her new home in New Ross.
‘We were among the first three families who moved her from Monasterevin. Now that we’re here we are happy and we are comfortable. I am feeling very happy. We had a social worker in Wexford and they got the house ready.’
Hanging on the walls are ornate gold frames containing religious lettering and on the fire place are gold decorations reminding them of home.
‘We got them in Waterford,’ Raghada says.
‘We brought nothing from home, just our clothes, but there are five halal butchers in Waterford and there is a mosque Haitham attends on Fridays.’
One of the first people Haitham met in New Ross was Mahad Osman who showed him around the town and helped familiarize the family with the area.
Since that day Haitham and Raghada have helped fundraise for medicinal cannabis to help ease Mahad’s son Asseel’s pain as he suffers from seizures and a multiplicity of health problems.
Moving from a city of 4.2 million to a town of 8,000 was a huge transition for the family, one they have negotiated with remarkable ease.
Both Raghada and Haitham study English for a few hours four days a week, Raghada, in particular, has taken to the language and is helping other Syrian families.
‘I make appointments for some of them,’ she says.
They are among 40 Syrian families living in Co. Wexford, which has led the way nationally in the Irish Refugee Protection Programme – under Wexford County Council staff ’s and Doras Luimni’s proactive management in helping them integrate into communities like New Ross.
Their daughters are thriving in Catherine McAuley Junior School and Edmund Rís Senior School and with some extra help will really improve their English, Raghada says.
For the Aljasim’s learning English is the next step in their path to getting on their feet and progressing in a country they knew little about up until 2015.
Raghada casts her mind back momentarily to Aleppo. ‘If you came to Syria before it was a good place but it’s not safe there today and it will take time before it is again. I miss it a lot, the smells on the wind at home.’
All of the family pose for a photo, smiles beaming from their faces, Fatima (4) full of life again after a snooze.
Sitting down her mother gesticulates and gets excited as she lists all of the little luxuries the family enjoy in Ireland from the coal on the fire to the ingredients in the ethnic shop that allows her to make delicious Syrian food. Offering warm, gently spiced lamb and hazelnut stuffed pancakes and an ice-cold yoghurt drink, she says the family are looking forward to a great year ahead and years to come in Co. Wexford.
Nagham, who goes into the Mercy Secondary School in September, says: ‘I love it here, in the other country, Lebanon we didn’t have a sofa to sit down on. We sat on the floor we slept on.’
She loves sharing a class with children from Poland, Lithuania and, of course, her Irish classmates.
Raghada’s face cracks into a smile and she laughs a sweet, soft-glass laugh when she learns that shukran (A Syrian word meaning thank you sounds like siucra and of how geansai and the Syrian for jumper geansa sound alike).
They love being a part of a community of 12 Syrian families in New Ross and look forward to the arrival of a further two families in Rosbercon, across the water. After a 5,000km journey here, the Aljasims have found a place to be and a home in a county of a thousand welcomes.
Next week, we speak to those overseeing the integration programme in Co. Wexford
WE CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT IS GOING ON THERE. WE HAVE LOST OUR FAMILY, OUR NEIGHBOURS. WE HAVE LOST OUR HOMELAND AND PROPERTY. WE CAN’T GO BACK