‘I’m here because of you’

here as refugees,” Sankary said.

The separated families are hoping their stories end something like that of Nahed and her family. Nahed, 40, and her three children waited 2½ years to join her husband in Toledo after he applied for asylum.

The Blade is identifying them by first name only because of concerns for the family’s relatives still in Syria.

Nahed left their hometown of Daraa in southwest Syria in March, 2012, with her two sons, now 13 and 11, and daughter, now 7. Her husband, Ismail, left Syria before the rest of the family, fleeing after he was arrested by the government.

Nahed said her husband was imprisoned because his last name is the same as a family heavily involved in revolution efforts against the government.

His family was able to pay for his release, but Nahed knew he would never be safe there.

“When they let him go we begged him, ‘Just leave Syria, we want you alive,’” she said. He got a visa to the United States and came to Toledo to be near his uncles, who live in Dearborn.

“The beginning of the revolution, the war, it started from Daraa, from my city,” Nahed said. “I saw the war, I saw bombs, I saw tanks, I saw everything. I just wanted to leave.”

Ismail left Syria in April, 2012, and arrived in America after a month in Jordan.

In May, 2012, Nahed left Syria with her children, her brother, and his family. They spent a night in Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp and continued to Egypt, where living was more affordable than Jordan. There she waited for her husband’s asylum request to be approved and his subsequent petition for his family. She recalls the moment she learned they would be joining him in Toledo.

“The whole night I was waiting for the answer. I could not sleep, but no answer. I said, ‘They will say no,’ “she said. The next afternoon, an embassy employee arrived at her door with passports and visas. “I just started to shout, ‘It’s (been) two years, it’s so difficult!’” she recalled.

She and her children arrived in Toledo in September, 2014. Ismail has since received a green card and is on the path to citizenship. Nahed has an appointment for a green card on Monday.

Adjusting to a new life takes time. Technology made things easier, but is “never enough,” Ismail said. After three years separated from their father, the children are rebuilding the relationship that was disrupted by what Nahed calls “the gap” when they were separated.

Nahed said she wants to tack on “American” to their identity as Syrians, to one day be officially Syrian-Americans.

“I always say to my kids, ‘I’m here because of you,’ ” she said, adding that she hopes for safety and a good future for them. “I hope things will be great like this always.”