Grateful but grieving: Syrian refugee family grapples with uprooting

It still rings in her ears — the adhan — a phantom sound.

Ask her about Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday of charity and gift-giving, how they celebrated it in Syria.

How the day before, she and her kids would make hundreds of ma’amoul cookies, shortbread filled with date or pistachio, shaped with the traditional carved olivewood mold. How relatives would take turns visiting each other, exchanging sweets and hugs, how they'd leave flowers at dead relatives' graves.

“Khalas al-Eid,” Emein answers in Arabic with a bitter smile, her face awash with longing.

Eid is over.

What's the three-day celebration without family?

This summer will be her first Eid away from home. Emein, 40, and her husband, Safouh Alhendi, 49, are Syrian refugees fleeing the nation’s civil war and sent to Tallahassee. The family of seven is among 35 Syrians who resettled in the capital city last year.

Their home was in Beit Sahem, a countryside village outside of Damascus, known for its wild olive and apricot trees, damask rose and “ful,” Arabian clustered jasmine. On weekends, Emein and Safouh, an engineer, would take the kids to the park and swimming lessons. They'd spend breezy summer nights at their villa, and in the winter drive to ice-capped Bloudan, a snowy, mountain town and ski resort about 35 miles from the village.

The uprisings against dictator Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. The violence soon spread and the trips stopped. It just wasn't safe. Bombs and blood and grief withered the town.

“We felt like we were in a dream,” Safouh recalled.

Safouh's brother's home, adjacent to his own, was struck by explosives. His cousin's family of six was killed in an air strike that crumbled their house to the ground.

In Beit Sahem, barrel bombs and air strikes bellowed in the streets. The couple and their trembling children hid in the stairwells and corridors of their apartment building. Hiding became second nature.

Shaking with adrenaline after an air raid, Safouh would venture out of his house and see nameless corpses, limbs scattered in the street amid a haze of acrid smoke.

“We'd watch American horror films — it was like those, it was like the films,” he said in Arabic. “It's like you're watching a film. Until now, we still don't even believe what has happened.”

Leaving home

The war, dubbed by the United Nations the “great tragedy of the century,” has displaced more than 11 million people. More than 5 million Syrians have fled their homes, half of them children, including Emein and Safouh’s brood of five.

"We feared for our sons,” Emein said. “We feared for our girls.”

The couple did not want to leave Beit Sahem. They built a life they loved there.

"Beit." Home. 

It still doesn't feel like it here. Not yet.

The family lives in a modest two-story townhome off woodsy Old Bainbridge Road. The International Rescue Committee arranged the move for them, provided furniture and lined them up with other necessities, including health insurance.

She’s grateful for all of it, but Emein misses her nest in Beit Sahem — her deep purple couches and mirrored niche, the pretty dangling chandeliers and Arabic calligraphy on the walls. The flowers that always adorned the home.

"If I knew we wouldn't return,” she said, “I would have taken pictures."

When they fled in February 2012, Safouh and Emein piled the kids into their Hyundai Accent and drove about 200 miles to the Jordanian border.

Pinballing from apartment to apartment in Amman, they moved five times in four years, scavenging cheaper rent, places closer to their kids' schools. They thought it would be a temporary stay, just until the violence stopped.

This spring, the war entered its sixth year.

The vetting

In Syria, Safouh was an electrical engineer. When he first arrived, he worked at Golden Corral with his 19-year-old son, Saeed. He now works as an apartment complex maintenance man, and Saeed has picked up a second job at Starbucks, which has a refugee hiring program.

In Jordan, Safouh settled for an off-the-books job as an electrician, working odd jobs at people's homes and businesses. He couldn’t legally work there at the time and Syrian refugees faced the risk of being deported if authorities caught them working without permission.

Saeed, then a teenager, dropped out of high school to work in restaurants and supermarkets to help feed the family. His younger brothers and sisters remained in school, but only during certain hours designated for refugees.

In Jordan, Safouh and Emein worried constantly about being sent back to Syria. They wanted to make a living without breaking the law. They wanted to be in a place where they could become citizens, live a normal life again.

They applied for refugee resettlement through the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. That’s when the vetting began.

For eight months investigators turned their former lives inside out. Background checks. Long questioning sessions that felt like interrogations. Why do you want to leave? What did you study? What do you want out of a life abroad?

Finally, they were cleared and told the U.S. was going to be their new home — specifically, Tallahassee.

The acceptance of their resettlement assignment brought more probing: medical screenings, blood draws, prescribed medications to ensure the family was healthy.

They didn’t have some moony dream to move to the West. Safouh said his only dream was to give the kids a chance at a good education.

“I’m not looking to shoot for the stars,” he said.

‘Comfortable’

In November, after a journey that took them from Amman to Frankfurt to Miami, an IRC representative greeted the family at Tallahassee International Airport. They were brought straight to their furnished northwest-side townhome.

Safouh said community members at the local mosque “have helped us not feel like foreigners.”

“We found people who didn’t leave (our side),” he said. “We’re comfortable.”

But happy? Not yet.

Each uprooting — leaving Syria, seesawing in Jordan — stole time from the children’s lives.

College-aged Lubna finished one and a half years’ worth of pharmacy studies in Jordan. It was expensive — 100 dinars or about $140 per course. Now she has to start over.

Fifteen-year-old Yumna, a Muslim, wears a hijab. Sometimes her high school classmates give her dirty looks.

Mohammad Noor, 11, and his brother, Mouiad, 9, go to Astoria Park Elementary, where they are immersed in learning English. 

“I hope the dreams that weren’t realized in Syria are realized here,” Emein said. “I won’t be happy with the time lost until I see my kids graduate and become successful.”

Safouh shrugged when asked if he was afraid or offended by President Donald Trump’s executive order banning Syrian refugees from the U.S.

No one is forcing us to stay, he said, his voice edgy and tinged with pride.

The war is what made them leave. They were simply seeking safety. They didn't choose where they would be sent. 

“If you don’t want us,” he said with a shrug, “send us back.”

New call to prayer

For Emein, "refugee" is a painful word. It is for many Syrians, who’ve seen their worlds wrenched.

"Honestly, I don't like the word ‘refugee,’ but this is what God has written for us,” she said. "It was hard to leave our families, our memories.”

During an April tornado watch, Mohammad Noor and Mouiad crawled up to their mother on the family’s dull and mismatched donated couch. The children were frightened by the Florida lightning and thunder tremors; the deep, sudden vibrations reminded them of air strikes.

Emein reassured them in her soft, dovelike voice.

“We won’t forget the sounds,” she said.

Sometimes, the little one, Mouiad, asks when they’re going back. Even though Emein knows they won't return, she can’t help but hold on to a sliver of hope he might one day feel that summer breeze on a fragrant porch in Beit Sahem.

“There’s nothing like one’s own country,” she said. “God willing, may God relieve Syria, and we can go back.”

In Emein's townhouse, the adhan still sounds. Instead of from tall minarets, the call to prayer comes on cell phones and the computer. The family rolls out its rugs and prays.

Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.

About this project:  President Donald Trump’s January executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program for four months and barring Syrian refugees entirely brought scrutiny to resettlement programs and prompted the Tallahassee Democrat to ask: How many refugees live in the capital city? Where are they from? Who are they?

“American Strangers” provides the answers. The report is anchored by an interactive database created by Democrat producer Yoon Pyun, and brought to life by staff writers Jeff Burlew and Nada Hassanein, who spent months getting to know local refugee families and those helping them build new lives.