From Aleppo to Aberystwyth

Until the Karkoubi family arrived in Aberystwyth last December, they had never even heard of Wales. Tom Rowley reports on how the Syrian family have adjusted to the language, manners and weather of their adopted country

As the last amber light drained from the sky above Manchester Airport, the plane carrying Britain’s newest family came in to land. The Karkoubis – Ishraq, Mohamad and their three young children – knew just how lucky they were. Not only had they escaped the bombs in Aleppo and borrowed enough money to flee to Lebanon, but now they had crossed the Mediterranean – not, like so many of their countrymen, in a leaky dinghy, but on a charter flight, paid for by the British Government. And yet, as the plane dipped through the clouds on that afternoon last December, they began to cry. They were flying away from so much suffering, but also from their families, from neighbours who spoke their language and understood their pain. Their destination was an unknown and faraway country they were meant to call home. And, as Mohamad would later put it, “there was fear in my heart”.

Inside the terminal, a handful of charity workers from across the country had gathered in a private room to greet passengers from the flight. Along with the Karkoubis, the plane was carrying about 100 other refugees, all Syrians, who would need to be taken to their new homes. One of the charity staff members, Graham Hedges, a beefy 57-year-old Welshman from the British Red Cross, was holding up a sign with the names of the 11 refugees he would guide through their first year in Britain; one of the names was Karkoubi. As he waited, he reread the family’s UN case notes, which had passport photographs attached. There was the 32-year-old father, Mohamad, his black hair flecked with grey; Ishraq, five years his junior, who wore brightly coloured headscarves; then the three children: three-year-old twins – a boy, Mayas, and a girl, Rimas, who kept her long brown hair in pigtails – and their brother, Mustafa, who was two years older. But the pictures did not prepare him for reality.

When the three children finally crept into the room behind their parents, he was taken aback: they looked so tiny, so much younger than their ages. “When I saw them coming towards me, I had to clear my eyes,” he would say later. “I just looked at them and thought: ‘Oh my God.’ They were petrified.” Hedges had been told the family had “basic English”; it soon became apparent they spoke none at all. He only remembered one word of Arabic, so he resorted to pointing towards the red cross on his shirt, hoping this meant something to them. When all else failed, he gave them the thumbs up. Then there was another surprise. He had assumed the refugees would know where they were being resettled, but none of them did. When Mohamad had first heard he would be coming to Britain, he had thought of the optometrist he had known as a child, who was educated in London. He pictured Big Ben. It fell to Hedges to explain where they were actually going: Aberystwyth.

Before the war, Aleppo was a thriving industrial city, home to more than two million people, who basked in long summers. Now the Karkoubis – and the six other refugees Hedges was collecting – would be living in a beautiful but remote Welsh seaside town with a population of 19,000. Once Hedges had ushered his Aberystwyth contingent onto a minibus, an interpreter hired by the charity told them about the “quiet, safe town” in a country that was “very small compared to England”. The Karkoubis had never heard of Wales, or heard a word of Welsh, and Mohamad had many questions. “Is it a good area?” he asked. “How are the people there?”

The Karkoubis never wanted to leave home. Ishraq and Mohamad both grew up in poor families on the outskirts of Aleppo and rarely left the city: the journey to Manchester was their first flight. Mohamad left school at 11, to begin work as a blacksmith, and soon after that he met Ishraq, the daughter of a family friend. Throughout their teenage years, they were friends; by their 20s, they were engaged. When they married, in October 2010, 250 guests thronged the streets, and the dancing went on for three days. They moved in together, redecorating the house where Mohamad was raised. It was, he said, the culmination of a “long love story”. Then came the bombs. As the war spread, dozens of their friends were caught up in the air strikes.

When Ishraq gave birth to the twins, she was so traumatised that her body could not produce milk. Then a bomb fell on the couple’s home, sending stones crashing into the rooms. They fled with Mohamad’s father to Lebanon, leaving their wedding photographs behind in the rubble. In Lebanon, the family shared one small room with six relatives. The electricity cut out, the water ran dry and Mohamad struggled to pay the rent. They lived like this for three years. Then, a year ago, everything seemed to change. The world had seen that photograph of Alan Kurdi, dead at two and cradled by a Turkish gendarme. Four days after it led television bulletins and newspaper front pages, David Cameron announced that Britain would accept 20,000 more Syrian refugees. The “whole country”, he said, had been moved by Kurdi’s plight. They saw it in Aberystwyth, too: the day after Cameron’s speech, councillors in its county, Ceredigion, voted to

“The climate of the British seaside was puzzling. ‘In Syria, we have different seasons. Here, you can see all four in one day’”

become a “trailblazer” local authority, one of the first to accept the refugees.

Those to be accepted would be chosen according to vulnerability, and the Karkoubis were among the first picked. UN aid workers were already aware of their struggle: schools in Lebanon were refusing to take Mustafa or the twins no matter how many times Mohamad tried to enrol them. If they were not moved soon, they would miss out on an education. In Aberystwyth, preparations were soon under way. The council found homes for the 11 refugees, including a small flat for the Karkoubis. To deflect any accusations of preferential treatment, they would be given the same deal as any other resident: they could claim child benefit and jobseeker’s allowance, but they would not be given council houses and would have to find the rent for their private accommodation. When a group of local mothers heard the Karkoubis’ place would be unfurnished, they organised a collection. Their donations – bedspreads, coats, colouring books – were waiting for the family when they finally pulled up outside their new home that December evening.

The first few days passed in a blur of introductions: there were so many hands to shake, so many novelties to take in. Aberystwyth, the Karkoubis soon decided, was “beautiful”, its streets so clean. Then there was the mail. When they received their first letter, they were stunned: back home, people only ever phoned them. There was no welcome reception for the refugees, but the Welsh Government had prepared a 68-page introductory guide, written in Arabic – a manual for their new life. “British people are generally reserved and well mannered,” one page instructed. “Queuing in line is a common custom,” read another. The children leafed through their own booklet. “There are a lot of sheep in Wales,” it told them. Most puzzling of all was the particular climate of the British seaside. “[In Syria] we have different seasons,” Ishraq marvelled. “Here, you can see all four in one day.”

The family established a routine. In January, the children began to go to school: Rimas and Mayas went to nursery, Mustafa to a class next door. When Ishraq or Mohamad walked about town, their new neighbours either left them alone or gave them kindly glances; not even the mothers who had arranged the collection knew for sure who they were. They prayed at home; when Mohamad learnt Aberystwyth has a mosque, he began to go there on Fridays. But other aspects of their new life proved more troubling. They saved £100 to buy bicycles for the twins so they would no longer have to walk to and from school. But it didn’t occur to them that it might not be a good idea to leave the bikes in the street outside the flat. That first night, they were taken. “Now [the twins] are thinking there is a thief in the area,” Mohamad said. “Every night, they look out the window.”

Most problematic was the language. Mohamad was desperate to find a job; Ishraq also hoped to work one day. “I need to feel active,” Mohamad would tell visitors to his home before passing them his phone so they could see a picture of him in his former life as a blacksmith. But both knew work was impossible without English. “The only barrier I am facing now is the language barrier,” Mohamad said one day, in Arabic. There was no lack of effort. By April, every inch of the wall in their small living room was covered in English worksheets. When Hedges visited, Mohamad would theatrically open a cupboard, heaving an imaginary box inside before declaring, “Arabic in there”. Then he would close the door and gesture towards the rest of the kitchen: “No Arabic in this room.” The children were picking up English – and even some Welsh – at school, and their parents went to lessons three times a week. On Tuesday mornings, Mohamad went for one-to-one tuition; the other refugees, including Ishraq, were learning quicker and the tutor had never had a pupil with so little English. For three hours, he would crane over the table, taking occasional sips from the flask of tea he brought with him and writing down every new word. “I love English,” he said all the time, as if he could absorb it through enthusiasm alone.

By July, Britain had voted to leave the EU, Cameron had resigned, and a ceasefire had come and gone in Aleppo. In Aberystwyth, change had come, too. Ishraq and Mohamad had begun to recognise other parents at the school gate, and greeted them in the supermarket. Their English was much better: Ishraq was still more confident than her husband, but Mohamad would now make phone calls on his own. If they chose the wrong word, their children now corrected them. “They refuse to speak Arabic,” Mohamad said. “They say: ‘Dad, we are going to speak English.’ This is the way I am learning the most.”

There was still much to do: they had not yet found work and they were waiting to hear whether Mohamad’s brother and his family would be allowed to join them from Lebanon. But Mohamad now told visitors that he was “settled”. He had started three voluntary jobs: sorting donations in the town’s British Red Cross shop, assisting a carpenter building sheds and, on Fridays, helping the caretaker at the children’s school. He didn’t seem to mind the lack of pay. “I have never sat at home waiting for work,” he said.

One recent Friday, Mohamad was wearing his usual work clothes: a long khaki shirt and old jeans splattered with paint. When Hedges arrived at the school, Mohamad pointed out his handiwork: the 300ft-long hedge he and the caretaker had cut back that morning. Other parents occasionally volunteer, too – doing odd jobs in the garden, or helping out in classes – but the caretaker, Dave Slinger, is particularly impressed with Mohamad’s attitude. “He takes pride in it,” he said. “He’s very keen not just to please but to work. You can see that.” Sometimes, Slinger said, Mohamad greets him in Welsh. “I know he’s from Syria – he’s told me about the bombs – but I just treat him as any parent who comes to the school, the background doesn’t interest me.”

After his work was done, Mohamad walked through the school to the nursery class. The children sat cross-legged on a rug, singing with their teacher. “The wheels on the bus go round and round,” they chorused. When it was over, Mohamad scooped Rimas into his arms, then pulled Mayas towards him and kissed him on the forehead. The nursery teacher, Sian Collins, recounted the children’s progress. “They were very clingy with their mum and dad for about a week,” she said. “But now they’ve made loads of friends.” Mohamad took in her praise, pointing to the twins. “Happy children,” he said, in English.

Four days later, the whole family met one of the other refugees at the supermarket, and together they bought several dozen fresh flowers: pink, red and yellow roses, chrysanthemums and carnations. Then, on the seafront, they began to stop passers-by, giving each of them a flower. For a moment, their neighbours looked perplexed. Then they read the notes the Karkoubis had attached to each stem. “Diolch i chi am eich croeso,” they had written, in Welsh. “Thank you for welcoming us.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph. © Tom Rowley/telegraph Media Group Ltd 2016.

“The children refuse to speak Arabic. They say: ‘Dad, we are going to speak English.’ This is the way I am learning the most”