St Mary Redcliffe Church Parish Magazine - December/January 2018

community overseas
THE GRIND AND TRAUMA OF BEING A REFUGEE
— ANGELA HOGG, REPORTING FROM JORDAN
WHAT’S IT LIKE to be a
Syrian refugee in Jordan?
Daily volunteer teams,
each led by an Arabic-speaking
long-term volunteer, make house
visits. They get to know the families
quite well — their past lives
in Syria, details of their flight to
Jordan and how they are managing
as refugees in Mafraq. They
show a cheerful and very stoic
front, at least at the beginning of the visit, but as they serve tea or coffee
they frequently share their concerns — the daily grind of living in scruffy
flats with leaking roofs and suspiciously high electricity bills, their mental
and physical health, no jobs and combative neighbours. Less often they
talk about personal traumas as a result of the war. The following are a
couple of my recent diary entries which record snippets of what some
families have recounted; many others have similar stories.
Thursday 15/11:
House visit with Hiba to a woman with 4 children aged between 8 years and
8 months. Hiba and I suspect the baby may have slight Down’s syndrome.
There was the usual rubbish strewn in the communal entrance and a
grubby floor. The flat smelt badly of gas escaping from the stove.
We arrived at 12.45pm just when the two elder children should be setting
off for school. (Refugee children get their schooling in the afternoon.) The
8 year old boy rebelled. His mother clearly was not bothering to encourage
him to go to school. Finally the two children left the flat but a minute or so
later the girl, younger, returned to say her brother would not walk to school.
Certainly he would not, even with the promise of a ball which we had in a
bag. His mother explained that his teacher hits him — this may or may not
be true. She has not gone to the school to investigate but we have heard
complaints from many refugee parents that their children get beaten up on
the way to school, or in school.
On the story of their coming to Syria, the mother described how she could
no longer bear the bombarding in Syria. She persuaded her husband they
had to flee. They left, dodging from taxi to taxi and bus to bus, steadily moving
southwards to the Syrian border and then walking across to the Jordan
border with their first two children (the others were born, later, in Jordan).
They carried small bags. Living here in Jordan, she says the housing is
awful and the rents high but the worst thing is the lack of a wider-thanfamily-social-network
to advise and help one when in trouble.
Saturday 17/11*
Arabic lesson — at the end, the teacher Amal* (not her real name), a 25 yearold
female pharmacy student on a scholarship (paid for by someone from
Emirates), asked me how to get into the UK as a refugee.
Amal’s family — parents, three brothers and herself— were offered asylum
in the USA by UNHCR* in 2014 but after a family discussion, they turned it
down as she and her brother had full study scholarships. These would be
cancelled if they immigrated to the USA. While making the decision, the family
knew their application for an overseas move would be cancelled forever. Do
they regret it? I dared not ask. Father (68) can never return to Syria. Long
before the war in Syria he was imprisoned for 15 years for no reason except
false testimony by his wife’s relatives. In prison he was known by a number
and was therefore untraceable. He was given up for dead by his family, and
in the meantime his parents had died. His wife left him. At the change of
regime he was released and offered derisory financial compensation which
he refused. He remarried and had the four existing children.
They live in a grim flat surrounded by building sites on two sides. My
teacher, the budding PhD pharmacist who earns money in her spare time
by teaching Arabic, is unlikely to get a job as a pharmacist here as the jobs
are reserved for Jordanians. The same applies to her scholarship brother
who is a civil engineer. Jordan has thousands of its own. The father with
heart trouble since his imprisonment is too ill to work but can never return
to Syria for fear of further arbitrary imprisonment. They are trapped. (21/11
Today I dropped by and drank coffee with Amal’s mother. She is desperate