HOW TO HELP
Isat up the front of the bus, almost like a novelty ornament bobbing away on a dashboard. Other passengers fed me, patted my blonde hair and took turns sitting in the seat next to me.
I was on my way to Syria from Iran, in the middle of a Middle Eastern winter, travelling thousands of kilometres through snowcovered Turkey to the Syrian border, bus by bus.
I got to the border at dawn, and fixed my headscarf. I didn’t wear it out of requirement, but to cover up my greasy unwashed hair, as I waited for my next and final bus – to Aleppo.
A black Mercedes pulled up carrying sharp-looking men with leather jackets, sunglasses and moustaches. ‘‘Halab?’’, the driver asked, the Arabic word for Aleppo, before he opened the car door and beckoned me in.
The driver listed the Eastern European countries he guessed I was from, and handed me a cigarette. Russia, Ukraine, Poland? I showed him the speck that is New Zealand on the map I kept in the back of my diary. Good, he said, looking pleased, as well as confused.
We ate sunflower seeds and drove through the biblical lands of my Catholic schoolgirl imagination. Golden arid plains, olive trees and donkeys flanked our arrival into the sprawling sandstone city of Aleppo, one the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
The Mercedes men took me to my hotel and carried my bags into a room with pink walls, a floral bedspread and a porcelain basin. I had breezed into Aleppo.
Fast forward to today, seven years on. I’m with the Red Cross at Auckland airport, welcoming Syrians to New Zealand. There are tears and smiles, along with lots of babies and old men in tweed hats who could be anyone’s grandfather. When I first see them, my mind is filled with questions: where they have come from in Syria, which border they crossed to escape, and did they walk out or take the bus? How did they make it here to New Zealand, the furthest corner of the earth? Refugees are often surprised when I mention my travels to Syria. They’re relieved, and there’s a sparkle in their eyes when they hear about it.
Globally, 65.3 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes, and 21.3 million of them are refugees who have fled across international borders.
A record 1.19 million people are expected to need resettlement in 2017, but it’s likely that only about 170,000 will be able to be resettled.
New Zealand takes 750 people a year through the refugee quota programme, with the Government announcing last year it would accept another 750 over three years as part of an emergency intake.
Over small cups of tea in small council flats in Wellington, I talk in bits of English and Arabic with some of the 475 Syrian refugees who now call Aotearoa home.
We don’t need to talk about the war, the bombs or the death toll – it’s become all that’s talked about, all that’s known about Syria. Syria is now synonymous with war.
Eleven million Syrians have been forced from their homes, 4.8 million have fled the country as refugees, and more than 470,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
These facts can’t be escaped. I know why people leave Syria. I know that some of the people I talk with have lost children to bombs. I know that some had fighting and body parts on their doorsteps. I know that lives and livelihoods have been lost.
Instead, we talk about the Syria that was – Syria, beautiful Syria, their Syria – the Syria before.
The refugees are often surprised when I mention my travels to Syria. They’re relieved, and there’s a sparkle in their eyes when they hear about it.
They ask what I did in Syria, suggesting key sites – Krak de Chevaliers, the ancient Crusader castle built in the 12th century; the Great Mosque of Damascus, one of Islam’s holiest places; the ancient city of Palmyra, millennium BC.
When I say I didn’t visit these places, they shake their heads and raise their hands with their palms upturned as if to pray, and ask: what did you do?
I tell them about arriving in Aleppo, wandering the labyrinthine streets and the cavernous old market, with the smells of spices and soap made from olive oil. I talk about the sounds of the call to prayer, the swishing of the burqa and the rattle of glass prayer beads passing through fingers.
I tell them about their impressive gleaming modern malls, where I shopped at European chain stores for warm clothes, and where I hid from the cold, drinking lattes and reading imported editions of Vogue.
I tell them about the delicious food, from the cheap staple kebabs to the five-star meals, the baklava dripping with honey and the breakfasts – plates laden with cheese, bread, olives and fruit.
I tell them about the famous ice cream parlour in Damascus, where hundreds of Syrian families queued and crammed inside to eat traditional chewy, pistachiocovered ice cream, even when it from the second Kiwis can continue to support the Red Cross’s work in Syria by donating to the Syria Crisis Appeal – 100 per cent of the money raised will go directly to the people affected by the conflict.
A donation of just $35 could provide blankets to displaced families, or $68 could provide food for a month.
Donations can be made at was snowing outside.
I tell them about the quirky taxidermy shop in Damascus with the badly stuffed animals, in particular a monkey wearing a little fez and smoking a shisha.
Mostly, I tell them about the people I met, the kind and generous Syrian people who took me out for lunch, gave me lifts, gifts and directions, and invited me into their homes. I tell them how I couch surfed for the first time in Aleppo, taking up the offer of staying with a complete stranger I’d met online.
My weary traveller’s cynicism was left at the border as I got into the Mercedes. There was no catch in Syria, no hard sell.
Seven years ago, I breezed into Aleppo and into the Syria of redcross.org.nz/donate/wherethe-need-greatest/
If people prefer to donate their time, they can become a refugee support volunteer in Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson or Dunedin.
Volunteers work in teams to help refugees settle into their new homes. Apply at redcross. org.nz. before. Today, the the city has begun.
My International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Red Crescent colleagues are loading thousands of people on to buses out of Aleppo, appealing to all sides to spare civilian lives, issuing a reminder that the rules of warfare must be respected. The scenes are heartbreaking. This is the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II.
Just for a moment, let’s remember the Syria before. evacuation of
Hanna Butler travelled to Syria in 2009. She now works for the Red Cross, which provides resettlement services to people arriving in New Zealand through the refugee quota.