by Tima Kurdi
I would have liked to rescue all my siblings from their dismal lives. But the majority of refugees that were granted asylum in Canada came from private sponsorships from citizens, which cost $28,000 for just one family of six. The government rarely funded refugees, and even with private sponsorships, approval by the Canadian government also required approval from the Turkish government and the UNHCR, which involved intensive, slow vetting. We couldn’t possibly afford to sponsor all five families by ourselves.
Shireen’s husband had an income selling falafels in Sham, and so did Hivron’s husband, though it was meagre. Maha’s husband could also work, and they had adult kids helping generate income, at least. So I focused my initial efforts on my two brothers, who needed more help. If I managed to bring them to Canada, Mohammad’s family would live in my house, and my sister-in-law, Rocco’s sister, Anna, who lives in Toronto, would host Abdullah’s family at her house.
“If Anna can do this for my family, I will be grateful forever,” said Abdullah when I told him our plans.
Anna was an incredible help. I knew nothing about the immigration process; I didn’t know how to start. Anna researched the steps, and every time she found new information, she called to explain it to me. The best option was to go through one of the many sponsorship agreement holders (SAHs) in Canada that were attempting to help refugees with asylum and resettlement in Canada through private sponsorships. The majority of the SAHs were religious groups of many different denominations, from Anglican to Muslim, or community-based charity groups. These churches and groups would say, “Send us the necessary application forms and the required sponsorship money, and we will try to help you.”
For three months, every single day, Anna and I reached out to many organizations in Toronto and Vancouver. With the help of my neighbour Kitt, we filled out all the necessary forms. The applications required detailed information from each member of Mohammad’s and Abdullah’s families, including my brothers’ military records and the names of every school they had ever attended. They also required specific passport-style photos and original identification, all of which my brothers sent to me. But we discovered that the Canadian government also required a valid Turkish residence permit, called a mavi kimlik, for each family member. The residence permit was impossible for refugees to get because Turkey did not grant them to citizens of non-EU countries. The only identity card that the Turkish government issued refugees was a yabanci card. All my siblings got the yabanci card when they entered Turkey, but it didn’t mean much to the Canadian government. Syrian refugees who had made it to Turkey were still officially considered illegal, whether they had a yabanci card or not. They could not legally exit the country; they could not access work permits or even receive much humanitarian aid, at least until October 2014, when the restrictions relaxed a bit.
Canada also required a valid passport for each family member, which was problematic. Of my family members, only Hivron had a valid passport. Maha and her family didn’t even have expired passports, and neither did Rehanna, Ghalib, Alan, and a number of my younger nieces and nephews. It was next to impossible for refugees to renew their passports at international embassies outside of Syria. This lack of a valid passport was the main roadblock for my family and millions of other Syrian refugees.
Mohammad and Abdullah spent hundreds of lira that they couldn’t afford just to try to fulfill the Canadian government’s requirements. The applications required original signatures, so I had to send pages of the paperwork to my brothers in Istanbul, which then had to be routed back to me. I drove my family half crazy with requests for impossible paperwork. Every time I thought that I had things under control, I’d find there was another step or another document missing.
“We can’t get the papers that Canada wants,” Abdullah told me. “You and Anna and Kitt are doing your best to help us, we know. But it seems that the world will only recognize us as human beings if we have the right papers, which are impossible to get.”
Still, we were determined to keep trying. We kept contacting the SAHs. I must have reached out to every church in Canada. Every single day, I was begging for help, but each step I took seemed to take me ten steps backward. It was a terrible time of my life. Day after day, the answer was the same: “We’re sorry, but the government’s requirements are impossible for most refugees to get. We can’t help your family.”
We were not looking for what some critics of refugee relocation call “a free ride.” Rocco and I were committed to providing the entire $28,000 the government required for private sponsorship of Mohammad’s family. In the end, we did submit an application for Mohammad’s family, and I planned to do the same for Abdullah’s family when I had saved enough money for a second application. I knew the paperwork was incomplete, but I was so angry and frustrated with the bureaucracy that I wanted to challenge the government’s smothering requirements.
There was one other way of receiving the Canadian government’s approval, which required another document in lieu of an exit visa or valid passport: an official referral from the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency. This UNHCR approval was a maddeningly elusive thing. Mohammad had first registered in 2013; in 2014, Abdullah and Hivron tried many times to get that UNHCR referral, joining the throngs of other refugees in the long lineups at the UN office, waiting for hours, inching ever closer to the front of the line, only to be turned away when the offices closed.
I emailed the UN offices in Ankara and wrote about Mohammad’s and Abdullah’s families’ predicaments, from the lack of schooling to the slave labour to their many medical issues, including Ghouson’s difficult pregnancy, Ghalib’s skin condition, Abdullah’s abscessed mouth, and the overall desperate state of affairs in Istanbul. I got no response. When Ghouson suffered a miscarriage, I emailed the UN again and begged an employee to call my brothers and find some way to help them.
My family members didn’t hold their breath waiting for a call from the UN. Through the grapevine, they had heard hundreds of stories about people unable to get UN approval. It seemed that there was nowhere left to turn.
By December, work had slowed down at the clothing factory where Abdullah worked. He had to take whatever jobs he could find in construction, sometimes working twelve-hour days, just to make enough money to scrape by. Often he had to travel by bus for many hours, leaving before the kids woke up and returning after they’d gone to bed. Finally, that December, a man from the UN actually called Abdullah. Abdullah gave the man a brief account of their hardships, and the good-hearted man empathized.
“We’re going to help you,” he said. “Where would you like to resettle? Germany? Sweden?” Abdullah couldn’t believe his ears.
“I don’t care where, as long as we can get help and my kids can have a health treatment, a better future.”
The man set up an appointment for Abdullah at the UN office in Istanbul two weeks later. That phone conversation gave him such hope. When I talked to him, he was flying high.
“Tima, I know you’re trying to bring us to Canada. But it’s clear that your government doesn’t want us. If we can get to Europe, we have to try.”
Two weeks later, Abdullah brought Ghalib to the appointment at the UNHCR, but they were forced to wait all day in a lineup with many other desperate refugees. Eventually, a UN staffer announced to the crowd, “The office is about to close. Come back tomorrow.”
“But I have an appointment!” Abdullah called out. The worker waved him into an office. She looked at the skinny-boned father and son, saw Ghalib’s angry skin condition, and listened to his terrible cough. She said she would help them immediately. She couldn’t provide UN approval on the spot; she admitted that the process might take a long time because it needed to be evaluated both within the UNHCR and by the Turkish government. She told Abdullah that she would send his file to their head office in Ankara, and handed him a piece of paper with the date of his next appointment—more than a year later. That winter, Hivron also got a date for her first UNHCR interview, which wa
s scheduled for September 27, 2016, over a year and a half later. The only immediate help that the Istanbul UN worker provided Abdullah was the address of a doctor to treat Ghalib’s skin and an address for him to access food donations. The next day, Abdullah spent the last coins in his pocket to reach the food bank.
“It was like a zoo of ants,” Abdullah said, describing the number of refugees waiting in that lineup. He didn’t make it to the front that day, so he left empty-handed. The next morning, he travelled for hours to begin the process all over again. After many more hours, he got to the front of the line. For his troubles, he was given a package of spaghetti, a bag of lentils, and some sugar.
“You can go to another location for cooked food,” said a worker at the food bank. Off Abdullah went to another address, where he joined another lineup of desperate people. After waiting for hours, not going to work, and spending precious money on bus fare, Abdullah got to the front of the line, where he was served a single plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce.
“Alhamdulillah for the food,” Abdullah thought.
By New Year’s Eve of 2015, Anna and I had exhausted every possibility with our government. My family still didn’t have even one of the three essential documents required by the Canadian government. The last thing I wanted to do was celebrate. I think I would have traded anything to be back in Sham, having a huge meal with my family, which always began with a prayer and a toast: “May God bless everyone around the world, and let us return to this table together for the next hundred years.” As kids, after our New Year’s meal, we’d run up to the roof to do the countdown and watch the annual fireworks that lit up the skies. Now, our city of jasmine was in total darkness because of electricity shortages; it had been an unseasonably cold winter, and the only things lighting up the skies that night were mortar and rocket shells. My baba never mentioned the situation when we spoke on the phone. But that night, he was feeling lonely and disheartened.
“People are losing hope that this war is ever going to end,” he said. “Inshallah, one day, we will rebuild this broken country and my grandkids will have a future in Syria. I’m glad I can see the kids sometimes on video, but it’s not the same. I’m missing so much. Even with Abdullah, who talks non-stop about his kids. As soon as I answer the phone, he says, ‘Baba, talk to Ghalib,’ and hands the phone to Ghalib, who starts chatting to me in Kurdish. I never get a chance to ask Abdullah how he’s doing. He just says, ‘I’m in heaven because I’m with my kids. You should see Ghalib playing the bouzouki; Alan can understand everything I say in Arabic and everything Rehanna says in Kurdish, and he even understands Turkish.’ I’ve never seen a father who cares as much about his kids as Abdullah. Your mom would be so proud.”
That phone call made me feel as if it had been one hundred years since I’d spent the holidays with my family. We were a long way from our childhood celebrations. Now my siblings could barely afford a decent meal.
“Are you making anything special for the new year?” I asked Abdullah when I called him that night.
“I got Rehanna and Ghalib a special treat: canned sardines,” said Abdullah.
“I would do anything for Mama’s kibbeh.”
“Don’t remind me. My mouth is watering thinking about it,” Abdullah said. “Don’t worry, , ekhti, sister. , Allah karim, bithoon. God willing, it will get easier. Enjoy your family.”
I tried to take Abdullah’s advice. That night, Rocco convinced me to go over to our neighbours’ house, where they were having a small party. But I couldn’t think about anything other than my family. I told my friends that the only option I had left was a “Group of Five”—a five-party private sponsorship. But I wasn’t convinced it would work.
“How will I get a group together?” I asked.
“I’ll put my name forward,” said my beautiful neighbour Kitt.
Another one of my neighbours volunteered to help. Rocco said he would chip in too. And then there was me. We needed just one other member for our G-5.
A few days later, I was at the salon where I was working at that time. I mentioned our plan to a client and friend named Claire.
“Mike and I would love to help your family,” said Claire. “Count us as number five.”
I was amazed. In just a few days, I suddenly had a team! But there was still much work to be done. The G-5 required much more paperwork. Without help from Kitt, I don’t think I could have filled out any of those forms. But if my people could somehow survive that war, I could survive a blizzard of paperwork. We decided to sponsor Mohammad’s family first, and I also got paperwork for Abdullah’s family so that my sister-in-law Anna could put together a G-5 for him. But one day, Anna called me with bad news.
“Tima, I’ve been reading through the paperwork,” Anna said. “Even the Group of Five process requires your family to have a mavi kimlik and a valid passport.”
“What? I thought the G-5 would avoid that.”
“I’m afraid not. The government still needs that ID, no matter what.”
I was heartbroken. Once again, I had hit a dead end.
But then Anna had a brilliant idea. “Why don’t you talk with your local MP and see if they can help?” she suggested.
So, Kitt and I contacted Fin Donnelly of the New Democrat Party, my local Member of Parliament, to discuss the Canadian government’s near-impossible requirements. We set up an appointment to visit Fin at his office. I told him about my family’s situation. Fin and his assistant, Karin, were deeply saddened and concerned.
“I will stand up for you. I will try my best to help get your family to Canada,” he said.
“Can you deliver a letter from Tima to Chris Alexander?” Kitt asked Fin. Alexander was the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and he could have a lot of influence.
“I’m going in a few days to Ottawa. Send me your letter, and I’ll make sure your letter is hand-delivered to him, or at least to his office.”
I wrote that letter from the heart, with my tears running down my face. I described the general hardships of my refugee family and explained that the government’s requirements were impossible for my family to meet. Fin, true to his word, delivered my letter to Chris Alexander. I heard nothing from the immigration office, so we continued to fill out the G-5 paperwork. When I told my family about my meeting and the letter, I was shocked by their response.
“, Ekhti, khalas. Enough, sister. It won’t work. Canada just isn’t an option for us,” said Abdullah.
By the end of April, I was lost. “Everybody is telling me I’m wasting my time,” I said to Rocco.
“Let’s send the application anyway,” he said. “I read on the government website that if they reject a claim, we can appeal it in court.”
So I persevered. But I was beginning to understand why refugees were risking their lives to make dangerous crossings to get asylum in Europe rather than try to reach North America. By the start of that winter, more than 200,000 refugees had fled to Europe, and 3,500 had died or gone missing attempting to reach Europe, the majority perishing while crossing the Mediterranean.
Even the weather wasn’t on the refugees’ side that winter. It was unseasonably cold and snowy in Syria, in Turkey, and across the Middle East. Mohammad and Abdullah took whatever temporary jobs they could find with many different construction companies. One job involved twelve hours a day of digging in the frozen dirt and mud.
“Why pay for mechanical diggers when you have Syrian animals that will do the work for next-to-no pay?” my brothers lamented. Once the digging was done, the concrete work began, which was just as difficult. Mohammad was lucky to have a sobia in his apartment, a small wood-burning fireplace to provide heat. Wood and charcoal were very expensive, and they had to use it sparingly. The Turkish government provided refugees with some free charcoal, but it was never enough. Abdullah’s little place didn’t have any source of heating; the propane stove was strictly for cooking. But the landlord had come to love the family, and the family called her Teyze, which is T
urkish for Auntie. She gave the family a wood-burning stove and let Abdullah cut a hole in the wall so that the fireplace flume could vent outside. When Abdullah couldn’t afford to buy charcoal, he would get on his bike and scavenge the city for wood. But when he burned wood, his neighbours in the adjacent apartment building got upset.
“Your smoke is stinking up our laundry,” they would bellow.
Each time this happened, Abdullah’s blessed landlord Teyze came flying down the stairs.
“Shame on you!” she’d yell. “It’s cold. They’ve got two little boys. What option do they have?” It was true: what else could Abdullah do?
It remained hard for Abdullah to leave his little house every morning to go out and face another long, cold day at a construction site. But his beautiful kids were his alarm clock.
“Go tickle Baba and wake him up,” Ghalib would whisper in Alan’s ear. “Bite him.”
Alan did whatever his big brother asked.
“The tickling was nice. But Alan was growing sharp little teeth,” Abdullah told me later.
Before he left for work, he would get down on his hands and knees and his boys would climb onto his back to play their game of shepherd transporting two lambs.
“, Ya ghanamati. My beloved lambs,” Abdullah would sing.
“, Maa, maa,” the boys bleated.
“, Into hayati, shu-ta’amikon. You are my life. What should I feed you?”
