Mohammad Al Mansour, his wife Wedad Idris and their two children Ahmad, 21, and Chiraz, 19, gather around a coffee table inside a perfectly normal-looking home near downtown Nanaimo.
There is a sense of joy, peace and happiness that fills the atmosphere of their home and as they laugh and smile it’s plainly obvious they are thankful for the little things.
Life in the Harbour City is a far cry from the horror they left behind in their once happy and loving hometown of Al Qusayr, Syria.
The Al Mansours are privately sponsored Syrian refugees and were the first to arrive in the Harbour City this year. Through an Arabic translator, the family shared its journey from the Middle East to Nanaimo.
“Until now there was no hope,” Ahmad said.
Only a few years ago, 2010 to be precise, the Al Mansours lived a life filled with hard work, love, happiness and what can only be described as normality. Mohammad worked long hours as a leather distributor, farmer and butcher, while Wedad worked as a health inspector. Both Ahmad and Chiraz were in high school and enjoying life.
They lived in a nine-bedroom house – something common within the suburban city – made from Mediterranean-style stone and surrounded by palm trees and lush gardens filled with flowers. Their house was a central gathering point for friends and family, located some 12 kilometres away from the home was the family farm.
“It was a happy place with friends all around,” Mohammad said.
But what was once a beautiful home and life gradually changed into a world filled with violence, hate and death.
In early 2011, the Arab Spring took hold across the Middle East, including Syria, where thousands of people began protesting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, in hopes of political reform. The Syrian government responded with violence and crackdowns against the protesters and eventually the situation spun out of control.
“The whole equation shifted,” Ahmad said.
By June of that year, protests toward the Syrian government and unrest had spread across the country, including in Al Qusayr, where 16 protesters were killed by government forces, according to the Al Mansours. The Syrian government and supporters of al-Assad responded by bombing Al Qusayr, destroying properties, kidnapping people regardless of religion and killing people at random.
“I was always scared. I was always in fear,” Chiraz, who was 14 at the time, said. “Every time I heard shootings or bombings I thought ‘OK maybe I’ll die this time.’”
Almost everything the Al Mansours owned, including their farm, was eventually destroyed by the government and its supporters.
They say the government forces and supporters did anything they could to civilians simply as a way to humiliate them.
“How could this happen?” Chiraz asked. “We would never predict this in a million years. We are so safe. It was totally safe.
“I didn’t think under any circumstances that I would see this day,” Chiraz said.
By late summer and early fall, the situation became so bad that the Al Mansours realized the only option was to flee to Lebanon. In order to convince their children to the leave the home, Mohammad and Wedad told Ahmad and Chiraz that they would only be gone for a couple of days, but the reality was they wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.
“We didn’t want to leave the house even though there were bombings,” Ahmad said. “We felt safer at home, even though there were bombings outside.”
Wedad, along with Ahmad and Chiraz, left for Lebanon first, while Mohammed followed them in early 2012. The family members left Syria with basically nothing and took all of their life savings with them, more than $100,000.
“That was everything we had and worked for our entire lives,” Mohammad said.
Getting to Lebanon was neither easy nor affordable, and often required the Al Mansours to walk for more than eight hours at a time, passing various safe points. The journey took roughly two weeks for Wedad, Ahmad and Chiraz, while it took Mohammad a little longer.
“We weren’t thinking of coming back,” Mohammad said. “We just wanted to save our lives in that moment.”
They explained that in order to get to Lebanon, they had to pass through a series of checkpoints either on foot or by car. The checkpoints were patrolled by the Syrian military or others who would often charge around $1,000 per person to pass each point.
Mohammad said he paid roughly $20,000 per person to get from Syria to Lebanon and that thousands of people died making the trek.
When the entire family had reached the refugee camp in Zahle, Lebanon, they had escaped the violence in Syria, but their life in Lebanon was far from comfortable.
“We were safe from bombing and shootings in Syria, but there are also other types of discomforts,” Mohammad said. “A lot of humiliation and kidnapping and abuse.”This is the first part of a two part story regarding the Al Mansour family and their journey to Canada. Click here to read part two.