Syrian refugee family makes Rochester their new home
Posted: Friday, September 25, 2015 10:47 am | Updated: 11:24 am, Fri Sep 25, 2015. Josh Moniz, jmoniz@postbulletin.com
Thunderous explosions woke Ramia Aljasem, who was sleeping in a shared bed with her five young children in their home in Homs, Syria. It was mid-February 2012, the first stages of the Siege of Homs, which later led to civilian massacres and three years of intense city fighting between the government and various rebel groups. The explosions were the Assad regime, her own government, bombing her city.
She remembered brick shards falling “like rain” on their roof when a neighbor’s home was bombed weeks earlier, so she brought all her children downstairs to huddle together.
During the night, an explosion shook the structure and injured some family members staying with them. She feared they would all die and pulled her kids closer. Later, the bombing relented, and she went back upstairs to discover a missile had reduced her bed to “only splinters.”
They hadn’t experienced war before, but she felt neither scared nor saddened by the scene.
“I felt comforted,” Aljasem said. “It could have been us. But thank God we were not there. We had survived.”
Recalling the details, she said they were lucky they had survived the bombings and subsequent three-year odyssey from war-torn Syria to Jordan and finally to their new home in Rochester.
“We are blessed,” said Mohammad al-Obein, her husband. “We are so lucky we can be in this country. We have an opportunity at a new life.”
Their story is just a microcosm of the larger Syrian refugee crisis. Four million Syrians have fled the country since war began in 2011, flooding many countries in Europe. Al-Obein and his family were lucky to be selected to come to the United States. The U.S. has resettled less than 1,500 Syrian refugees. Al-Obein’s family is the only Syrian family to be resettled in Minnesota since 2011.
Paradise lost
Al-Obein and his family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class life in Syria before the war. Despite persistent, high unemployment, al-Obein was able to get a good-paying job as a truck driver because his father owned a construction company.
They lived near most of their relatives in a multistory home they owned and celebrated each holiday with a large family gathering.
Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim holiday, concluded last week. It celebrates the story of God testing Abraham. It was the first time the family had ever celebrated it without other family members.
“We miss the (family) traditions so much. We really miss our home,” Aljasem said.
Deterioration
Al-Obein and Aljasem said they initially protested the worsening conditions in Syria, before it morphed into a call to oust the government. They stopped participating out of concerns for their children’s safety when the Assad government’s crackdown escalated into firing on protesters.
But not being a protester didn’t seem to factor into whether you’d be taken by the government. In fact, al-Obein said nonprotesters were more likely to be detained.
“(Protesters) knew how to hide,” he said. “They knew how to protect themselves. Other people didn’t know how.”
The husband of Aljasem’s sister, a taxi driver, disappeared. He went to work one day and vanished, just like many other relatives and people they knew.
“He wasn’t political. He was just doing his job,” Aljasem said. “(My sister) doesn’t know what to tell her (four) kids. She doesn’t know whether to tell them he is dead or alive.”
One of al-Obein’s brothers was taken for three months and tortured, then arbitrarily released. Three of those who had vanished recently showed up dead.
The government told everyone they couldn’t leave the village, cutting off access to work and supplies. Armed soldiers and tanks began patrolling the area.
“If we tried to get out, we would likely be (gunned down),” al-Obein said.
The flight
The bombing of their home, which broke the ribs and lacerated the head of al-Obein’s father, forced the family’s decision to flee.
Raed, their oldest son, was traumatized by the incident and grew worse each day in the house.
“We decided we had to leave. Even if it meant we got killed. We had to leave,” Aljasem said.
They left on foot in the middle of the night, when low visibility made both sides stop shooting. They carried only the clothes on their backs, two blankets and a few valuables. Escorting the children was challenging, and both parents had to carry at least one.
Al-Obein and Aljasem said their journey’s darkest moment was looking back to see the full extent of the damage to their city and knowing they were leaving their home forever.
“We were living happy lives. Suddenly, we were terrified because we don’t know where we will get food or how we will meet our needs,” al-Obein said.
However, the escape had a benefit — Raed’s mental state gradually improved.
Traveling to Aljasem’s family home closer to the Jordan border took 15 days with periodic stops at other relatives. At each stop, pressure from the spreading war pressured them to keep moving. They also gathered important travel documents for their children. After five months, with the cease-fire not working, they decided to leave the country they were born in.
Survival
They joined 500 people in a guided four-hour walk across the border. It carried serious risks. The groups that tried the crossing before them and after them were both caught and fired upon by Syrian troops.
Carrying even less than from their home, they had to help their children along steep trails and through heavy undergrowth. Aljasem recalled feeling sad seeing the luggage and clothing strewn along the path by unwise families who tried to bring too much. Toward the end of the trail, they were told to crawl on the ground to avoid detection, but the soldiers never materialized.
Al-Obein said his family will always be grateful to the Jordan government, which took them in after the crossing.
“If a soldier from (Syria) had found us, they would have gunned us down. When (soldiers) from Jordan found us, they fed us and gave us water. They helped us,” al-Obein said.
In Jordan, they enjoyed their first sense of safety in five months. They started in a refugee camp but eventually found a small apartment where they lived out the next two and a half years. Laws prohibited them from working due to their refugee status, so they were forced to eke by with increasingly shrinking U.N. refugee assistance.
When it wasn’t enough, they had to sell off pieces of Aljasem’s gold jewelry from her wedding, the few items they were able to keeps from their home, until it was all gone. She said she feels it was the right thing to do, but she deeply regrets selling off the last heirloom from Syria they could pass on to their children. All of their other heirlooms and pictures were lost in the bombing.
“All of our memories are gone.” Aljasem said.
New home
Two years after losing their home in Syria, they news they had hoped for finally came — al-Obein, his wife and their children qualified for U.S. resettlement. Ten months of paperwork and extensive background checks later, it was April and they were in Rochester.
“The best memory (of our journey) was when we got here,” Aljasem said.
Kristina Hammell, director of Refugee Resettlement for Catholic Charities of The Diocese Of Winona, said her organization is equipped for “free case,” or refugees without any family in the country. She said they helped al-Obein and his family find a home and provided various forms of assistance.
“They are incredible. They have persevered and stayed positive despite some real hardships,” Hammell said.
Transitioning to U.S. life has been unusual, al-Obein and Aljasem said, but it has been almost exclusively positive. They said the ease and access to goods and services is impressive since they’re used to being forced to use a middleman or do it themselves. Their children have also gone from hating school to complaining about wanting to go back sooner on the weekends.
“Since we have come to Rochester, it has been nothing but smiles,” Aljasem said.
Al-Obein works stocking shelves at Walmart. Hammell said Walmart is invaluable to her organization since finding work for refugees with limited language skills is almost impossible in most towns.
“All I want is a safe home and the opportunity to work so I can earn my way and provide for my family,” al-Obein said.
He and his family speak only limited English but are learning. He said he hopes his job will help him with the process.
Aljasem plans to also get a job, something she considers scary because it is uncommon in her culture for women to work outside the home. She said most of their income goes toward living expenses, so she wants to earn money she can send to relatives still stuck in Syria and Jordan.
Al-Obein and Aljasem said Syria won’t know peace until the government is overthrown, something they doubt will happen in their lifetime. They don’t believe they will ever return home, especially since their children have better opportunities in Rochester.
They also criticized most of the current rebel forces for pursuing unnecessary violence, especially the religious extremists. They said people don’t have a right to judge other’s religious views and everyone should simply focus on help each other.
“Since (the war started), happiness has been missing in my heart, Aljasem said. (Both sides) have hunted children down like animals. I weep for them. Something has to stop it.”
They said that despite their sadness, their journey has given them a new perspective and a sense of hope.
“The best blessing is being safe and healthy. That’s what we learned. Other people should learn this too,” al-Obein said.