SU_T_22

[i] Hi [name], would you like to introduce yourself?
[r] Hi, yes, my name is [name], father of a large family, we are Syrian, my wife and I, four children and a five-year-old granddaughter, my daughter is the oldest, 26 years old, now I have a five-year-old girl. We arrived from Syria, as you know, unfortunately due to this conflict that started in the Middle East because of the war, which broke out in 2011, but in 2011 we already had a large business in Damascus, we lived in Damascus, right in the capital. We were living very well, also because I had my job, my wife had hers, my children were studying. Some at school, some at university, and unfortunately because of this war. Let’s not go into details, just go on the internet and understand a little about the various conflicts that we’ve been in for seven years now in this war, we thought, yes, we can survive and it started in 2011, in 2011 I completely lost all my work. Let me go back a moment to my work. I studied English literature, I have a degree in literature, a degree in history, I’m passionate about archaeology, so I started working in Syria as a tour guide in 1986. I accompanied groups that came mostly from Italy because I already spoke Italian very well, my father had studied medicine here in Italy, I arrived here in Italy with my father when I was two years old, I studied all the schools here in Italy, then we returned to my homeland and at 18 I began to learn Arabic, so Italian is already my mother tongue, I also studied English, I speak English very well and so I started to accompany groups from all over the world, then the Syrian travel agencies, when they heard the comments of the Italian groups, ‘oh this guide is very good’, they always called me to accompany groups of Italian origin. And so after about ten years of work, I started a small tourist office with a friend of mine, a travel agency. This small office then grew bigger and bigger, we have four employees and my wife took care of the outgoing office, sorry for the incoming, I took care of the outgoing, my wife took care of the incoming. We organised trips abroad and within Syria and when there were trips, I would accompany important groups myself as office manager to see the beauty of Syria. So until 2005 I also started working as an interpreter for the Italian embassy, for the Syrian government, delegations from Italy would arrive in Syria and I would interpret, from there I had the opportunity to also work as a simultaneous interpreter, in Syria there was no specialisation in this, I had to go to Lebanon for nine months to sit the exam and so I also became a simultaneous interpreter, Arabic-Italian and vice versa. And I travelled around the Gulf, in Italy, in Egypt translating for various conferences, I also translated several books of a cultural, religious and historical nature, from Arabic into Italian, I did a two-year theology course, I’m a Muslim, we’re a Muslim family. However, I’m interested in discussing the history of Islam, how Islam arrived, how it spread and where it came from, so studying theology meant I had to go back to studying the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament and compare these sacred books. I held several interfaith conferences and conventions in Assisi, Sassari, Lecce, Padua, and every now and then they would call me to hold these conferences. So you went from Syria to Italy on purpose?
[a] I accompanied various kinds of groups, obviously Syria is a land where Christianity was born, if you read the Gospel, the city of Damascus, St Paul, converted on the routes, so many groups arrived accompanied by priests as pilgrims to visit the Christian religious sites that there are in Syria, the most ancient churches, together with the Byzantines. And while chatting with these groups the conversation would start ‘but you’re a Muslim, you’re a Christian, no I’m a Muslim’ then these two faiths would be compared and from there when these priests returned with their contacts they would call me and send me emails ‘[name], you can come here to Italy, what you explained in our group is repeated here with a more studied conference’ And so for 6-7 years, almost every year I travelled to Italy, both to promote my travel agency and for interfaith conferences and conventions.
[i] Did the war in 2011 come suddenly or did you have the perception that something was happening that would change?
[r] No, when I accompanied groups to Syria at the beginning of 2011 there was absolutely nothing there, people lived well, there was work for everyone, schools, universities, so apart from the political question civilians, citizens lived very well in Syria. There was no real poverty, there was no unemployment, let’s say if we want to talk about a percentage, 4-5% of the Syrian population were unemployed. But we Syrians always said ‘if you want to work, you’ll find work’, so with the will to work in Syria there is work for everyone. These groups would come to me and say ‘ah [name] domino effect, the Arab Spring has started in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Algeria, it will also come to Syria’ and I would smile and say ‘but no, goodness no, in Syria it’s a completely different thing, not like in the other Arab countries’. It’s true that the head of state was a dictator, then he died, his son took over, it’s not hereditary, it’s a presidency, so he was appointed president because there was no other candidate when his father died, yet the people elected him and with these ideas I didn’t have the slightest idea that this huge war could break out in Syria. In March 2011, demonstrations began, simple demonstrations by young people who wanted to change the constitution or part of the constitution. I kept saying to myself ‘well these demonstrations have created a bit of a problem for tourism and suddenly all the groups we had planned were cancelled’ and that’s when I started to lose work in the group.
[i] Gradually?
[r] Then the embassy closed, with all these events, the tourists stopped coming, I lost my job, but for better or worse we have a huge apartment in Damascus, another small apartment that we were renting out, a villa, there was even a project to build a hotel that had already been bought, the land to dig the foundations, so I thought ‘we have some money, we can survive for a year or two and the blockade of both the foreign ministry and tourism won’t last longer than that’. My wife immediately thought ‘why don’t we turn the travel agency into a driving school’, she was already teaching driving licences, she was a driving instructor for her friends and for another driving school and so we created this driving school, we went on for two or three years without any financial problems. But then I realised in 2013, after two years, that these demonstrations had changed from peaceful to full-blown guerrilla warfare, an armed opposition against the government had arisen, I realised that this opposition was financed by foreign sources, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, at the same time the Syrian government already had Russian armour supported by both Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, I immediately realised that the situation is not a civil war, it is not a war between opponents of the government, but foreign armies have intervened and so at that moment my children had just started university, I was afraid of the future, I realised that it will not end in two or three years, not for economic reasons but for the future of my children, I decided to escape from Syria,
[i] This was in 2013?
[r] The idea had already matured at the beginning of 2013, we started thinking about how to escape from Syria,
[i] You say escape because there was no other way, I mean just leaving, escaping in the sense of fleeing…
[r] Leave because already in 2013 there were many checkpoints, the city of Damascus was completely surrounded by these armies to protect the capital, outside the capital a few kilometres away there was complete destruction. Missiles, bombs, fighter planes, we can’t decide why, the airport was closed, so we have to take the car to get to Lebanon and leave from Beirut airport, leave from where? We need a visa, the embassies in Syria are all closed, so I started sending emails to my Italian friends. Having worked in tourism for 26 years, imagine how many Italian friends I’ve had, not only travel agencies but also tourists who visited Syria on a 10-day trip and we became friends. They sent me invitations, I got all the documents, I asked the Italian embassy in Beirut what documents I needed, my passport is full of stamps, Schengen, Italy, for many years, yet they denied my visa three times, saying you have presented an invitation to go to Italy within a month, two months, then after these two months we don’t have the assurance that you will return to your country of origin, we obviously knew this, I was lucky enough to have friends in Spain, they sent me an invitation request and the Spanish embassy gave me a visa, I don’t know why, it’s just luck. Ok I got the visa, but not my wife and children, so I decided to leave alone and go to Italy. Because in Italy I have lots of friends in Poggio who can help me, I apply for family reunification. And so within a few months I can bring the whole family to safety, with a Schengen visa. I arrived in Italy, found friends here and there, it was a bit complicated because I had a legal visa, an application for political asylum, no you have to be illegal to then present this application. I changed several lawyers around Italy until a friend who has a travel agency here in Turin told me, come on, we’ve found a lawyer who can help you, so I arrived here in Turin, with the help of my friends, with the help of this lawyer in six months I obtained my residence permit. Speaking of six months, for me it was a lifetime, six months, then two months that I was here, eight months, anxious. Because my family lives there in Damascus, in war, we tried to escape from the war, we went to a refugee camp in Beirut, but it was unlivable, we are not used to living in a tent with one meal a day, a piece of dry bread, a little of rice and we ask for water please I want to drink a bottle of water, these organisations, we decided no, let’s go back to Damascus, let’s put up with this war, let’s not go out on the street because deadly bombs would occasionally fall, those who left the house didn’t know if they would return or not.
[i] So resistance?
[r] Staying put. I managed to sell one of my houses and bought an underground shelter, two storeys underground, so that if it collapses, if there are bombs etc., at least we’ll be safe. And I had this option. Financially I was doing well, six months, eight months, then I heard other people, refugees here who said ‘lucky you’, in six months I obtained this residence permit because many people are waiting for a year, a year and a half before this permit arrives, I got the permit and then I have to do nothing ostra for family reunification, I also discovered that reunification is valid for wife and minor children, not for adults, I had a 17 year old son, a daughter aged 10/11, but two adult children. So I immediately did nothing for my wife, the little one and my 17-year-old son, because at 18 he would have become an adult, apart from the fact that in Syria they would have immediately conscripted him, sent him to the front, to war, and so they arrived by plane, leaving their two children, one of whom was married with a small child. We rented a house in Istanbul, I said escape, go to Istanbul, at least stay there for a month, two, three, then we’ll see how to get you here. It wasn’t that simple, we also applied for my daughter to study at the university here in Turin, they denied her a visa, I wrote to Siena, the university for Italian language students, they denied her a visa, for the simple reason that once this 5/6/7 month visa period is over, we have no guarantee that she will return home, on the contrary, she will remain in Italy, obviously, we are escaping from Syria. You have closed the Italian embassy in Syria, so it is understandable that we are escaping, but the bureaucracy, no, they cannot help us.
[i] And what was your arrival in Turin like? Were you able to get back together?
[r] Unfortunately, the two daughters, not with the help of the embassies, but legally, we contacted smugglers, one on a rubber boat, one on a ship, they saw me in a bad way. In short, in 2015, my two daughters also arrived here in Turin after a terrible trauma. The journey they saw, the deaths, the prisons, the journey between Turkey and Greece, they arrived here with great difficulty. However, now they have learnt the Italian language, they speak much better, let’s say they are trauma-free, but this will remain with them for the rest of their lives. The problem is that I feel guilty, but I had no choice. I tried in every way for a year to bring them here with a visa, with a quieter, more comfortable aeroplane. The only option I had was to contact the smugglers and I had to say to my daughter, get on a rubber boat, but dad, do you know how many die on a rubber boat? Yes, you have a 50% chance of surviving. My daughter was a good swimmer. If the dinghy goes down, you swim and you arrive, 50% chance of survival. But if you return to Syria, it becomes 5%. So I found myself forced to tell my daughter to throw herself into the water, at least to have a chance of seeing you. Let’s say it went well, in the worst case they arrived here in Turin.
[i] And in Turin, how was your arrival in this city?
[r] In Turin, as I said, my friend who hosted us at his house, he’s single, he lost his parents years ago because it’s a fairly large house and he hosted us for a year, room, board, everything you want, what I saw in this person is not just a friend, but much more. He knew me very well because he had been to Syria 3-4 times, he also accompanied groups. The impressive thing he did on his agency computer was send an email to all the agency’s clients saying [name] is here and needs help because we couldn’t live at his place, we need an apartment, so rent an apartment, move. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sell all the money I had in Syria and I spent a lot of it, about 17-18 thousand euros just to get my two daughters from Istanbul here to Italy. In short, I had no money, but between this friend and all the clients of his agency, we’re talking about 200 people who come here to Turin, they all know me, [name] and his family are here, so they brought me clothes for me and my daughters, they brought me a bed, a fridge, a washing machine, everything. They have made a home for me and in the end I had to say enough is enough, there is no room in the house.
[i] A real lifesaver?
[r] I’m not talking about the government, voluntary organisations, refugees, but civilians who have nothing to do with refugees, but know me, know what I did for a living in Syria, know my qualifications, and they said, ‘[name] you deserve much more for you and your family’. They paid six months’ rent on the house in advance and then set about looking for work, for me, my wife and my children.
[i] And how have you settled in now? How long has it been since you first arrived in Turin?
[r] I arrived here in February 2014, then my son and my wife arrived here in March 2015, my daughters in November/October/November 2015, so let’s say I’ve been here for two years. The problem is that my daughter was studying literature in Damascus, third year, the other was in her first year at the Academy of Fine Arts and their qualifications haven’t been recognised here. So what do we do? Start again from the first year, ok there’s no problem, but they have to pass the eighth grade exam first, so they have to study Italian, take courses, then get the eighth grade certificate, then find a job. In short, it has been very difficult. After two years I am still not enrolled at university, but one of us is working as a cultural mediator, the other is working in a hotel as a chambermaid and cleaner. Between these two jobs my wife works as a cook, Syrian cuisine, and there are no Syrian restaurants here in Turin. So we decided to introduce this cuisine. Thanks to our many friends, friends of friends, they helped us with this too. We haven’t been able to open a restaurant because it costs 70/80 thousand euros, but we prepare Syrian food at home, we sell it to our friends, sometimes their friends come to our house, like a restaurant, a home restaurant, we call it, they eat with the family, have a chat about Syrian culture, they pay us what we spent and that’s how we manage to get by.
[i] And what about you?
[r] I’ve had various jobs as a translator, as a cultural mediator and in March 2018 I found a job, for the moment it’s a fixed-term contract and it’s for six months at the Egyptian Museum. As a translator, as a consultant, as a coordinator with associations because every now and then the Egyptian Museum organises intercultural events and they need both a translator and someone who knows all these voluntary associations to organise these events, I really enjoy it, I studied history, archaeology, I work in the most beautiful museum in the world. After the one in Cairo, well, the Egyptian Museum is the number one museum in the world.
[i] Listen, so from your story this migration, where there’s always the idea that we’re always going towards something better, well, in some cases it’s not like that, is it?
[r] In our case definitely not, in our case not because first of all we live in a rented house and we can barely make it to the end of the month paying the rent, bills, etc., etc., etc., we didn’t have this in Syria, my children, dad we want to go on a trip, let’s go to Turkey, let’s go abroad, let’s get a 4 or 5 star hotel, a holiday for the whole family, I had no scruples, I had no problems, now dad I want to go to the seaside, oh dear how can I do it, it’s Genoa, it’s two hours from here, the train costs, the beach there costs, he’s not one person, there are 7 of us, that is husband, wife, 4 children and granddaughter, poor thing she too has lost her dad, we don’t know if he’s alive or dead, we lost contact with this child’s father more than a year and a half ago, anyway life goes on.
[i] Yes, let’s say that even things that were once simple are now more complex.
[r] That is, for example, in Syria or like here in Italy, many people wake up in the morning, turn on the light, heat the coffee, turn on the tap, open it, the water comes out, these are trivial things. In Syria, this has not existed since 2011, that is to say electricity. We had a fridge at home, we used it as a cupboard because there was no more electricity and we no longer use it. The electricity did come on, yes, for an hour or two a day, drinking water for three or four hours a week, so we can’t even dream of taking a shower. And now here we are, taking a shower every day again, turning on the tap and having drinking water at any time. Those who live in this mundane environment don’t think about it. But we lived in Syria for three years without electricity or drinking water. We don’t want to talk about bread, meat, vegetables, we’re not interested. That’s a secondary issue. What’s most important is to at least have water to drink and some rice, some grains to boil with the water that we have. This is our life for three years in Syria. Now are my children happy or not? They are happy that, much more fortunate than many of their friends who unfortunately fled Syria, who found themselves in Germany, who found themselves in America, who found themselves in Egypt. They are very happy because they arrived here in Turin already having a base, having many friends who helped us. For example my daughter, who is one of the two who left on the rubber dinghy, saw the shooting, saw the dead people on the rock who were with her on the dinghy, and remained deaf and mute for a year. She had no expression, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t smile, she couldn’t cry. A terrible trauma, a 22-year-old girl who was a boy scout, rode a bicycle, went to university, suddenly finds herself in a situation in front of the police who want to shoot her in the water, the dead. Fortunately, all my friends here in Italy have daughters of the same age. I said, please call me my daughter, invite her for a coffee, take her to the garden, to the parks. Little by little she too has made friends and managed to talk. She lives well now, apart from the bad memories.
[i] Where do you live in Turin?
[r] We live in the Porta Nuova area, near the station, just 7-8 minutes on foot from the station. It’s not a place I chose, my friends chose it for me, but it’s huge, 110 square metres, there are seven of you, you need at least seven beds, a living room, a kitchen, but I can’t afford the rent. Don’t worry, they are simple people, it’s not like the European Union or the Italian government are taking money from their wages or their pensions, they are still helping me today, thanks to these friends, relatives, brothers and sisters that I found here.
[i] Yes, and the nice thing is that in the end you always had a very, let’s say, when you meet simple people, even simple, no? We talk about holidays.
[r] Then, knowing me, knowing my family, they really understood what war means, many of them lived through the Second World War here in Turin, they know what it means to live under bombardment and for this reason, and for many other reasons, they decided to help us. I hope that the 60% of the Syrian population that has fled Syria for the same reason finds friends, finds assistance, as I have found. Mine is a bit of a rare case, I would say, because I had…
[i] Have you managed to keep in touch with other Syrian colleagues of yours, travelling around Europe or the world?
[r] Syrians, yes, thanks to Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., every now and then I discover…
[i] The use of social networks is invaluable in this.
[r] This is what makes me so angry, that in Europe, when they come as refugees, migrants, etc., many say ‘well, they have the latest tablets that I don’t even have’.
[i] What about the connection to the world?
[r] These people have lost everything. I mean, I had a job for 30 years, houses, villas, an office, a car, etc., and now I have nothing. What have I managed to save? I downloaded everything from my computer onto an external hard drive and brought my memories here. My children did the same.
[i] With the photos too, the whole story, your story.
[r] We sold our mobile phones in Syria and bought the latest generation to stay connected when we go to the sea, when we move, to have internet available. And with these we saved ourselves. I managed to save my daughter’s life thanks to the phone she had. And with these devices now, on Facebook, I discover the name of a friend of mine, but where are you? Some are in Tanzania, some in Sweden, some in Canada. One per cent are still in Syria.
[i] You are a country in exodus.
[r] As I said, maybe I exaggerated, 60% of the population is out of the country. I exaggerated the negative because it’s definitely more than 60%. There are cities in Syria, like Homs, that had a million inhabitants. When I talk about Homs I always explain, you have in mind Hiroshima after the bomb. Homs is like that, it completely disappeared, a million inhabitants. Now some people have returned to Homs, but until two years ago there wasn’t a single person there. Same thing in Aleppo, more or less. Aleppo has 3 and a half million inhabitants, half of the city of Aleppo was bombed, completely destroyed. People like me, doctors, lawyers, engineers, industrialists, ministers, we all fled. We met a friend of ours here in Turin, it’s amazing, it’s something that gives me the shivers when I think about it. We met her two years ago here in Turin, there was an event in a Moroccan restaurant and my wife saw that lady ‘but yes, it’s you, isn’t it, all white hair, aged, but you’re here in Turin’. She’s a friend of hers from Damascus who is the deputy minister of communications. Now she’s here alone, she escaped the war, she doesn’t work, her qualifications aren’t recognised, she’s an electronic engineer, she helps my wife with the cooking, every now and then they call us to organise an event, for catering etc., and these two friends and my daughters prepare food and we offer the community of Turin a taste of Syrian culture.
[i] Which we will need to keep alive.
[r] Yes, we do it both to offer the community of Turin a taste of Middle Eastern flavours. Because that’s what my wife wanted to do at the beginning, ‘oh, where are you from? Syria, Syria, Arabs, oh couscous, the lady who makes couscous is Moroccan, there are thousands of kilometres between Morocco and Syria, but the Syrians don’t even know what couscous is, we have our own culture’, so she started from this idea, nobody knows what Syrian flavours are and luckily now many people have realised that Middle Eastern cuisine is very different from North African cuisine.
[i] And that it is Syrian in turn.
[r] Yes, Middle Eastern cuisine, let’s say Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, they resemble each other because they are neighbouring countries, but in Syria itself the cuisine of Damascus is different from that of Aleppo.
[i] Of course, then in Italy this is a very sensitive issue when you try the cuisine, but Turin and Milan are close, the cuisine will be the same.
[r] Yes, but even in Milan they don’t know what bagnacauda is, for example, and in Syria it’s the same thing.
[i] Alright, [name], is there anything you’d like to add to conclude our chat? Anything you’d like to share?
[r] There would be so much to say, but what I would like is a message to the entire population, both Italians and migrants, that the person who chooses to leave his country to try to improve his life is a choice that he knows will face many problems. He left his country, I’m not saying his nation, but simply from southern Italy to northern Italy. That person has also left behind relatives, friends and neighbours; they no longer have the baker at the end of the road, or the drinking fountain where they used to go to get water. So we should at least help them, not financially, but morally, that is, by abandoning this whole story. A little moral support is needed, just think who has decided, as in our case, to abandon everything in the space of twenty-four hours, I always say this to the people I meet, just think one day I close my eyes and I wake up in the morning, I turn on the coffee machine, I have my coffee and my croissant and I go to work, instead of that, they knock on the door, they break down the door and they tell me you have three hours, you have to run because a bomb will arrive at your house, in three hours what do you do, I have to pack a suitcase to run away, it mustn’t be heavy because there’s no car, there’s no plane, I have to run as fast as I can to escape death and so in these three hours I prepare a backpack to put on my shoulders with my most precious memories, what I’ve done, a hard drive with all the photos, the memories, the conferences I’ve attended, I’ve taken photos of my diplomas, my children, my wife, etc., at least to have something normal.
[i] Did you still have a clear head when you did this?
[r] Yes, it wasn’t a matter of twenty-four hours, but in a few months I realised that we had to move and I know very well that we can’t move with all our household goods.
[i] And now your house in Syria, do you know what it’s like?
[r] It’s still standing, one of the houses is still standing, the villa no longer exists, the office no longer exists, the house we rented is still standing, I have friends who sometimes come by and see that the door in San’s house is no longer there, it was broken down, the thieves, the windows, but the walls are still there. The problem is that with this escape we saved many documents, not the house contract, so if we return to Syria after five years, ten years, will there be a chance to say this is my property or not?
[i] Can you imagine going back to Syria one day?
[r] I hope so, I hope so tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, but my problem is that now my children have learnt Italian, they started school, my son did his secondary education with 88% of his exams passed, he managed to learn Italian quickly and now he’s in his first year of chemistry, If next year they tell me that the war in Syria is over, what do I do? Do I leave my son or do I tell him to abandon university here and we’ll go back there? Ok, let’s say we’ve returned to Syria, we’re starting from scratch again, I don’t have a home, I don’t have a job, even as a tourist guide I went to see the monuments of Syria, everything is completely destroyed, just seeing photos of these destroyed monuments breaks my heart, so I wouldn’t want to return to Syria to see these destructions first hand.
[i] I have a desire to go …
[r] I have no relatives, I have no one in Syria, but I would like to go back to see the street where I lived, with the hope that some of my friends, some of my relatives can return and find us in Syria. What can I do to find my cousin? Do I have to go to Dubai or my uncle in Germany, or my other cousin in Canada? It’s difficult. I no longer care about the house I left behind, it’s still standing, it’s not still standing, I lost millions, millions of dollars, a million more, a million less, I don’t care. What I care about now is my children’s future, they have found a life here and they are moving forward. After getting his degree, at least he studied at a university in Italy, he has a degree, he will decide after 5-6 years, 10 years, to return to Syria and become a doctor in Syria, a lawyer, an engineer to rebuild that country, this is my children’s dream, for the moment we don’t want to think about it because it breaks our hearts.
[i] Thank you very much [name]!
[r] Thank you ….