The Ones Left Behind Haunt Refugees
The couple heard that last question as many as 20 times a day. They had just arrived in Canada with one piece of luggage and almost no money, so what could they do? Which relative would they even try to help first — his brother or her brother, or one of the dozens of others? Sometimes Mr. Hajj did not respond because he had no idea what to say.
In Lebanon, passers- by cursed the family’s relatives for being Syrian. In Canada, an older couple had approached the Hajjes in the park, asked, “Syrian?” and insisted on sharing their phone numbers in case they could do anything for the newcomers.
After the children left for school, Mr. Hajj headed to English class. In Syria, he had been a farmer and shepherd. Now, at 36, he was finally learning to read and write, and in an entirely new language.
That morning, he was the star of his class. His nice-to-meet-yous made his teacher nod in approval, and he helped a Mandarin speaker who was struggling to fill out a work sheet. The English words he heard outside class were beginning to mean something.
In the opaque lottery of the refugee system — this family goes here, that family stays there — many people ended up with diminished lives, but he and his children had better prospects than ever before. “What’s happening now is something we never dreamed in Syria or Lebanon,” he said.
Ms. Hajj, however, often stayed up for much of the night to converse with relatives seven hours ahead, growing exhausted by dawn. Those messages felt like a lifeline, and the ones that were not harrowing were comforting: greetings for the Eid al-Adha holiday among her 16 siblings, and a whose- baby- is- cuter photo contest.
She was trying to embrace life in Canada, cheering during her children’s soccer matches and soaking up advice on tummy time and solid food for her 5- month- old, Julia. But her husband worried that the infusions of survivor’s guilt were preventing her from fully entering her new world. When the sponsors tutored her in English, she often yawned through the lessons. Ms. Hajj played another request, this one from a sister- in- law in Lebanon.
was married to Mouhamad’s younger brother Ali. The two couples had lived side by side in their village south of Aleppo, then in adjacent tents in a refugee camp in Lebanon. The brothers had dreamed of reuniting in Canada. Mouhamad had promised his younger brother that he would take up the cause with the sponsors who were resettling his family.
The grandmotherly group had become the Hajjes’ all-around tacticians. The sponsors had found schools, doctors, clothes and bikes for the children. Ms. Hajj felt especially close to Peggy Karas. Sometimes when she saw Ms. Karas at her door, straining under the bags of fruit and halal meat she had brought, Ms. Hajj’s eyes welled in gratitude. “I feel like Peggy is like my friend, my mom, my sister,” she said.
The Hajjes’ best hope for helping their relatives, they believed, lay with Ms. Karas and her partners, who could sponsor additional family members or find other Canadians to do so. Ms. Hajj had already blurted out requests for the sponsors to bring over her brother Ibrahim. But her husband had not said a word about his own brother. Perhaps his wife needed a relative more.
Asking about more than one seemed like too much. The Hajjes cringed at doing anything that could seem like taking advantage. “They’re giving us all of this, with nothing in return, and we have to
As Mouhamad al-Hajj was sleeping in Toronto, his brother Ali, 30, stood at a dusty crossroads halfway around the world. He was another face in a cluster of laborers waiting at the intersection for a chance to work. He got it once every five or 10 days at best. The youngest in the crowd was 13. Ali dreaded that his own children could be in that position one day. “I don’t care about money; all I care about is giving a proper education to my kids,” he said. He was counting on his brother in Canada for that chance.
The two used to stand at the intersection together. They had lived in tandem since childhood. Mouhamad was the one who had spotted Eman as a potential wife for his younger brother. When the Hajjes lost their fourth child, shortly after birth, in Lebanon last year, the two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder to dig the tiny grave.
They were at work last winter when Mouhamad’s phone rang and a voice from the United Nations said his family had been chosen to move to Canada. He accepted immediately, but when he hung up he asked Ali if he should really leave his relatives for a country where he knew no one. “Go,” his brother told him. “Just go.” Ali threatened to travel in his place if he did not go. That was when Mouhamad promised to try to bring the younger man to Canada.
There was no work for Ali that Friday, so he returned for lunch to the shed where he, Eman and their three children lived. The shelter was so cramped that they often slept outside during the summer.
He feared that his family had no prospects. His 5-year- old daughter, Nihal, longed to attend school, but he could not afford to send her. She sat in the shed and tried to write, holding pencil over paper. There was no one to teach her — her parents were illiterate, too. In Lebanon, “there is no future,” Ali said.
In his mind, his only way out would be for his brother to bring him to Canada. Like Mouhamad, he had registered as a refugee with the United Nations, a first step to putting him on a giant waiting list that could lead to a new life in a new country. Many nations were hesitant to accept new refugees, while others were already overwhelmed.
Even in Canada, the fervor to sponsor refugees had calmed since last winter. Still, a request by sponsors might be Ali’s best shot. His application might not be reviewed until 2017 or 2018, but at least he would be in line, with backers who would help. He would wait patiently for good news from Canada. Ali had no idea that Mouhamad had not yet made his case.
Peggy Karas arrived at the Hajj apartment just as Mouhamad and the children were returning from school. She entered with a long to- do list: Remind Ms. Hajj of her first- ever teeth- cleaning appointment. Check in about sign-ups for swimming classes. Slip a few dollars to 8-year- old Moutayam to pay for his school assignment book. She told his parents to check it regularly, even though she knew they were unlikely to understand.
In the past seven months, Ms. Karas had become a maternal figure to a woman to whom she could barely speak. Initially, she thought sponsorship would be a matter of “O.K., yes, we’ll give you money,” as she put it. But the relationship had taken on a depth she had never predicted.
Ms. Hajj had arrived in Canada in her final trimester of pregnancy, and when the older woman learned that the Syrian mother had lost her last baby, she devoted herself to seeing this one into the world.
At 68, she wanted grandchildren, but none had yet arrived. Here were four children who needed help. Like a real grandmother, she often found herself thinking about them during the day, wondering what they were up to. “I never expected to be doing as much as I’m doing, and I’m loving what I’m doing,” she said.
But behind each of her agenda items that day was one overwhelming worry. The Hajjes were supposed to be self- sufficient by next February, but she feared they had virtually no chance of succeeding. They could not fill out a permission slip, read a medicine label, pay a bill or navigate the subway to a new des- tination on their own.
Mr. Hajj’s triumphs in English class shrank next to the magnitude of what he had to learn. When the sponsorship year ended in less than six months, he would need a job, but that could mean he would have less time for language instruction. The Canadian government had already funded part of the Hajjes’ integration, and without financial support from the sponsors, they might go on welfare. “What kind of work is Mouhamad ever going to get?” Ms. Karas asked later. Working in a fast food kitchen or doing manual labor might be the best- case scenario.
“We think the kids are doing great, and then you realize they can’t read a single word,” Marg Ewing, another sponsor, said earlier. The doting sponsors kept vowing to do less for the family, hoping to foster progress. But on every visit, they seemed to take on more.
A month before, the volunteers had gathered at Ms. Karas’s house to discuss whether they could sponsor the Hajj relatives. They were now seeing the faraway crisis through photos that flicked across the couple’s phone. After just a few minutes, the sponsors arrived at a unanimous conclusion: They could not help the Hajjes bring over their family members, not with them so far from settled. The Canadian women saw sponsorship like a life raft: If you overloaded it, you risked sinking those you were trying to rescue.
“We want to do a really good job and get this family on their feet,” Ms. Karas said. “We can’t take on any more right now.”
No one from the sponsor group shared the decision with the Hajj family. Some things were too difficult to say.
Maybe some of the sponsors would move ahead in a year or two, Ms. Karas said later. Perhaps another group of volunteers would take on some family members, she said. Or the Hajjes would eventually bring relatives over themselves.
Back in the family’s apartment, Ms. Karas said goodbye, but minutes later she was back upstairs. A friend had just called to ask if he could hire Mr. Hajj for some gardening work over the weekend. He was interested, but the destination was near an unfamiliar subway station. So Ms. Karas volunteered for another task.
“Saturday, 8 o’clock, Peggy, Mouhamad, subway,” she confirmed on the way out.