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Syria
انتظر
Reading orientation: from right to left
Latin script: aintizar
Phonetic pronunciation: een-teezáar
Language: Arabic
Meaning: To wait
 
 
Would you rather be killed or starved to death? Would you rather die under gunfire or under the rubble of an explosion? Would you rather risk dying in the country you have always known or risk living in a new land of which you ignore everything? Would you rather be a corpse, a wounded victim, a prisoner or a refugee? Ibrahim and Suriya left Syria in 2012. They slept on the ground, had children on strange soil, were arrested and returned to countries that didn’t want them, crossed the seas and tried again. In 2017 they arrived in a country they had never heard of and, since then, their life is in Portugal. Part of it, at least ... Because Ibrahim has three other sons in Kurdistan and he is still waiting for them.
                         
Ibrahim Kenjo and Suriya Hussein
Born in Aleppo, Syria
43 and 31 years old
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Syria, before the war, was like Portugal now”. That's how Ibrahim remembers the country he left in 2012, a year after the beginning of the civil war that continues to wreck the country. Speaking as much as possible in Portuguese (because that was the language he chose for the conversation), he acknowledges his Kurdish ethnicity and says that he resisted in Aleppo with his wife Suriya until he realized that, if they let themselves stay there, they would end up killed, either by bullets or by hunger. "We didn't like the government", she adds. “There was no electricity, no work, no school, no food, everything was always closed…”.

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The couple left the country on a bus trip towards Lebanon, where little Ahmed would come to be born, and, after a year, they went on to Turkey. On foot. “Walk a lot, a lot, a lot, in the forest. We didn't take anything. Nothing”, remembers Suriya. In that country, they lived for two and a half very difficult years: “It was bad. Sleep on the ground because they don't want Arabs there. Lots, lots of people sleeping on the ground”. The only positive memory of Lebanon is that Marian was born there, which further stimulated the desire of her parents for better luck. That’s why their next move was to Greece, by sea. Two attempts were then made: the first, frustrated, because the police detected them and returned the whole family to land; the second, successful, after five hours of bumping up and down on the waves and feeling “very, very cold” in a semi-rigid motorboat. In the so-called cradle of Western civilization – and birthplace of little Mohammed as well – they would stay another 10 months, until the Portuguese organization Associação pelo Prazer de Viver (which, symbolically, means something like “Association for the Pleasure of Living”) let them know they would be welcome in Mozelos, a small northern town in the most western country in Europe.

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“I didn't know what Portugal was, but we came through that association. Now I like Portugal, but everything is very difficult. The answer to everything is 'wait'. Just wait, just wait!”, says Ibrahim, gesturing with frustration and anguish. This emotion is not uncommon in the frequent criticism of the Portuguese bureaucracy and, in this case, it has a particularly personal motivation: the Syrian is father of three other children who are still living in Kurdistan, with his mother, and, as much as he persists, he can’t get the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service to complete their relocation. "They just say 'wait', always 'wait'. In Portugal everything has a lot of ‘waits’”.

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This has not prevented the family from enjoying a country where the greatest prejudice – at least the most often expressed – seems to relate only to outward appearance and some sense of fashion. “Portuguese people very cool. There is no this one is Black, this one Muslim, they treat everyone the same”, justifies Ibrahim. Suriya agrees, but the truth is that she resents some criticism of her abaya (the simple cut dress she wears over any outfit) and of her hijab (the veil with which she covers her hair). “In Mozelos everything was fine, nobody talked about it. Here in Escapães they tell me to take it off and I don't want to. I won't take it off”.

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In everything else, the family hasn’t met much difficulty: the people they deal with accept that a Muslim cannot eat pork nor products made with blood, they are fine with them not being allowed to drink alcohol and they also realize that women cannot touch a man even for the briefest of greetings. "Among women there can be kisses", yes, but those are to be avoided, please, as Suriya still gets dumbfounded by the excess of kissing exchanged here.

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As a mother of three, the still young Syrian wife would prefer more companionship to this somewhat superficial physical affability. When the family arrived in Portugal, they first lived for a few months in a prefabricated building in Mozelos – “in a place with only trees”, “there were no people”, “I don't want this, let's go to the UK” – and then they moved to a house close-by where neighborly relations evolved to discovery trips with their landlord on Sundays and invitations for the boys to play games at a neighbor's home. It was a “very good” phase that Ibrahim and Suriya still miss, because in Escapães they were placed in a more isolated house and there are no neighbors willing to brighten their days.

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Their current house is, nonetheless, a benefit for which they are very grateful. When they were still living in Mozelos, Ibrahim exchanged a seasonal job picking blueberries for a steady one at the clothing factory Locoluxo, in São João da Madeira, and the monthly expense of 70 euros alone for the bus pass for that commute weighed too heavily on the family budget. “My husband's job is for nine people”, emphasizes Suriya, doing the math for five mouths to feed in Portugal and another four in Kurdistan, including her mother-in-law. But the fact remains that Ibrahim’s professional experience ended up paying off: if in Syria he always worked as a tailor, producing ladies' abayas with intricate decorative applications, here he quickly excelled in the most complex details of making men's jackets and the boss compensated him for that panache by providing him with a free home in Escapães, which is closer to his job than Mozelos.

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Suriya hasn't found a job yet. Some local companies are receptive to overcoming the hesitation posed by her incipient grasp of the language, but good intentions disappear when she refuses to change the dress code that her religion enforces. She then busies herself with taking the boys to school and hockey, with attending Portuguese classes for migrants, with taking care of the vegetable garden where she grows tomatoes, oranges, cucumbers, eggplants, lettuce, mint, onions, garlic, parsley, corn, courgettes… She uses all those ingredients in Syrian dishes and also in Portuguese cuisine, which she considers “much easier” than Arabic.

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Her routine also includes the five daily prayers that the Koran requires (and that her husband disregards). On a schedule defined to the minute and that she strives to follow on the dot with the help of a phone app, Suriya always repeats the same ritual: first she washes her mouth, nose, ears, hands, forearms, ankles and feet, most of it three times, in a purifying ablution; then she puts on the white abaya that she reserves for prayer; next she positions her body facing East, towards Mecca; and, finally, she recites the prayers aloud, reading from right to left her finely illustrated Koran. She asks Allah for health, sustenance and protection for the family, wherever her relatives may be. She thanks Him for their health, for His support, His protection and for even more prosaic joys, such as the new friendships she makes and the education the boys are receiving in Portugal. “The school is very good. Very cool teachers. Here they don't hit the boys”, she praises – before subtly adding, with a wink, as if in secret: "I like children staying in school all day”.

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Ahmed, Marian and Mohammed join the conversation at times, with or without some toy, initially somewhat reserved, then warmly and with more laughter. They say simple little things in perfect Portuguese, without any accent that would set them apart, while their father makes coffee and answers calls from his other branch of the family, via Whatsapp. In a little while the kids are on their parents' laps, they pose for the photos and the family seems complete... In Ibrahim's eyes, though, a sad glance seems to appear, as if he felt hesitant or guilty... He had already explained it: "The body is here, but the head is in Kurdistan". Until he gets all his children together, how much longer will he have to wait? â– 

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