InFocus: Syrian student tells of life in war-torn nation

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By Sean Hull

Features Editor

mhudso27@jccc.edu

On a dreary day of freezing rain in Kansas, Ismail, a Syrian student at the college who wished to use a pseudonym for safety reasons, sipped tentatively from a steaming cup of coffee. He settled into a plush leather chair and longingly began to tell of his life in Damascus, the capital of Syria, before conditions there forced him to come to Kansas City.

“Beautiful, beautiful … My country is more like a mother. It’s my everything. To me, really, everything in Syria is special,” said Ismail.

Now a 23-year-old student at the college, Ismail left Syria nearly four and a half years ago when the Arab Spring uprising was first reaching Damascus.

“When the conflict first started in Damascus, it was the end of May … We had problems in the suburbs of Damascus, but nothing in Damascus yet,” said Ismail.

Ismail is not a refugee. His father owns a paper processing plant in Damascus and could afford to send his son abroad before the conflict in the region flared to its full potential. His parents still reside in the capital, and the paper processing plant is still operating. He did not leave Syria because he doesn’t love his country or his people; he left because there was no hope. Forced conscription policies of Assad’s regime left young men in Syria with no options but to join the military, willingly or by force.

“Army is not an option in Syria. You have to serve, and serving at that time means that you are going, you don’t know when you’re coming back and you don’t know where you are going,” said Ismail. “People started to get drafted whether they were studying or working, so there is no excuses … Whoever they see, they draft. It started to be chaos.” Ismail has friends that were drafted in the army he hasn’t heard from in six years.

Before he was able to leave Syria, two incidents happened that convinced him he was making the only decision he could. One night he got a taxi to take him home. Because of the incredibly high tensions in the country at the time, taxi drivers no longer entered neighborhoods, fearing civilians were part of rebel groups. Civilians were suspicious of the taxi drivers as well, fearing they were working for the government. Ismail’s driver brought him as close as he was willing to go that night. Three men attempted to kidnap him as he walked the rest of the way home.

“I started walking to my house, and then three guys started to … [surround] me, and I ran … taking [the] shortcuts until I got home and I lost them,” said Ismail.

The second incident happened the day before his plane was scheduled to leave. As he was walking outside the mosque, smoke bombs were fired into the crowd by “very high forces” of the government. He passed out in the fray, but was carried to safety by a stranger.

Ismail considers himself to have suffered very little compared to those who remain in his homeland. Millions have been forced from their homes into neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, while hundreds of thousands more have embarked to Europe in hope of finding a better life.

Germany has been the Promised Land most of the refugees coming from Syria have sought to reach. This year Germany is expected to receive over 800,000 refugees from all countries. Earlier this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany opened the door to Syrians by removing the restrictions on people seeking asylum; however, she quickly reinstated those restrictions.

Those in Syria without money are unable to flee even if they wish to, leaving millions more trapped in a country torn by several factions: Assad’s regime, Daesh, The Free Syrian Army and other innumerable rebel faction groups. Life is dangerous in Syria, especially for those of the working class with no means to escape.

A driver for Ismail’s father’s paper processing plant worked to take care of his seven brothers after their parents passed. One night, all eight brothers were driving back to their home in the suburbs of Damascus when they reached a checkpoint. The men enforcing the checkpoint forced the eight of them to exit the vehicle and form a line. They separated the youngest of the siblings, then executed his seven brothers before his eyes. It has been two and a half years since that incident, and the boy has not spoken a word since.

The United States, the country Ismail and countless other Syrians call a second home, is divided by the debate of whether to take in more Syrian refugees. President Obama has proposed measures to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the country. After a passport was found among the destruction of the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, concerns over the security of the vetting process for refugees has led the House of Representatives to pass a measure that will temporarily halt the refugee program and instate additional security checks in the process.

Republican presidential candidates such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson have called for measures such as forcing Muslims to register in a national database, as well as surveillance of mosques.

Countries with populations many times smaller than America are taking in many times the refugees the United States is. Ismail believes that a country of the magnitude of the United States should do more to help those in need in Syria and around the world.

“Deciding to be, and people accepting that you are the strongest country in the world, it’s not your choice anymore to help or not. You are in a position where you are required to do the right thing, you are required to help. You want to be the strongest country in the world? Act like it,” said Ismail.

The most important thing to him, though, is that we begin to recognize the bond we all share in this world: We are all human.

“People, if they could just step outside from thinking about religion and politics, if you just want to be human, what would [you] do?” asked Ismail. “… You have blood flowing in your body, and I have blood flowing in my body. So at the end of the day, we are all human beings. We have emotions.”

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