'Britain has accepted you': what it's like to be a resettled Syrian refugee
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Version 0 of 1. In February 2016, Manal Rwaeh was sitting in a Turkish language class in Antakya when her phone flashed with a call from a private number. Like the other Syrian refugees in the class, Rwaeh always kept her phone on her desk in case a call came with news that she had been offered a place in a resettlement scheme. “They said: ‘Britain has accepted you,’” said Rwaeh. “I went back to the class and I told the teacher: there’s no need to learn Turkish now!” When Rwaeh returned home that evening, she played a practical joke on her family, telling them they would be resettled in Hungary. “I chose a country that I know that they don’t like … and I told them: this is the country that has accepted us. They were shocked. Then I finally told them [the truth] and they started to jump on me and kiss me.” And so, last November, Rwaeh, 40, her husband Amjad Batous, 46, and their three sons – Ahmad, 17, Bilal, 14, and Ihab, 11 – arrived in Gedling, five miles from Nottingham, a city they only knew from the Robin Hood stories. They are in a sense the lucky ones – five of the 6,000 who have been resettled in Britain so far under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement programme, a scheme that relocates Syrian refugees to Britain from Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon, where an estimated 4.8 million of them live. The day they arrived, they found a hot Syrian dinner waiting for them, prepared by a refugee family who came to the area a year earlier. “The people who received us were so welcoming, so nice. The house they took us to was full of furniture and food,” said Rwaeh. Rwaeh is in contact with many other Syrians in the area, meeting them at English classes held at the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum and through the Syrian Society of Nottinghamshire, which organises gatherings every few weeks. “We heard the Syrians were coming a year ago,” said Lena Amir Baurak from the Syrian Society of Nottinghamshire. “So we helped them preparing the houses and we tried to put all the Syrians together in a WhatsApp group so we won’t lose each other.” “We felt, it’s the least we can do for our people,” said Amir Baurak, who has lived in Britain for 25 years. “Our heart is broken. You open up the news every morning and you cannot do anything about it. So it’s an opportunity for us to feel like we’re doing something, we’re contributing.” Rwaeh has also made friends with some of her British neighbours. “Jackie would say hi when she saw us in the morning so I invited her over for coffee,” said Rwaeh. “She was very pleased when she found out I could speak a little bit of English, because she said: ‘I was a bit worried about how we’re going to communicate.’ She brought me some flowers and I served her some Arabic coffee, which is a bit strong, but she liked it. She was very kind.” Rwaeh and Batous also take delight in cooking Syrian food for neighbours. Often when Rwaeh is cooking dinner she will send a plate over to their neighbour Ronnie, and Batous is known to heap food on to the plates of guests, saying: “There is a proverb in my country. However much you love us, show us by how much you eat.” Currently Bilal and Ihab are in school and thriving. Rwaeh and her eldest son Ahmad are at college working hard to learn English. Batous has not been able to get a place in college yet and while he waits he is participating in a free bicycle building and maintenance course and is studying to get his UK driving licence. Batous and Rwaeh are desperate to improve their English and get back to work and are hoping to start voluntary work soon – Batous at Nottingham castle and Rwaeh at Nottingham hospital. “We came here to this country because of war as refugees. We wish that we visited this country in different circumstances,” said Rwaeh. “I hope that we can return to a life like the one we had before in Syria. That’s what I wish for the future. We think of ourselves now as part of British society and I wish to offer my services to the British people who hosted our family here.” The family had left Syria for Turkey in April 2015 as the war crept ever closer to their home, in Idlib, which was hit by a bomb months after they left. Because Batous suffers from serious back problems, they qualified for the resettlement programme, a scheme that prioritises vulnerable people – those with urgent medical needs, victims of torture, and women and children at risk. “I thought of Britain as the country of liberty, of freedom,” said Rwaeh just weeks after her arrival. Now, four months into their new life here, she does not feel disappointed. This story is part of The New Arrivals, an in-depth Guardian series looking at the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Britain. You can sign up to receive email updates when new content in the series is published. Share your experiences If you arrived in the the UK as a refugee or work with refugees, we would like to hear from you. We would like to find out about initiatives that are working well and also the challenges of integrating into local communities. Share your stories and experiences, anonymously if you prefer, in the encrypted form below. We will do our best to ensure your responses are kept secure and confidential. A selection of contributions will be featured in our reporting. This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre via a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |