Amani Shamseddin and her family fled Damascus in 2016 and found refuge in Edmonton, Canada. They share their story of survival and hope after the Syrian civil war.
When asked about her life in Syria a decade ago, Amani Shamseddin struggles to find the words. Sitting on the couch in her Edmonton home as her children clamour for her attention, she pauses to think. “It wasn’t safe, we had so many incidents,” the 33-year-old says after a moment. “I don’t want to bring it back.” In the fall of 2015, the newly elected Liberal federal government embarked on its pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrians fleeing the country’s brutal civil war in just 100 days.
Since then, Canada has welcomed more than 100,000 Syrian refugees. Among them were Shamseddin, her husband Mahmoud and their children Ahmad and Ghena, who were eight and four when the family fled Damascus in April 2016. The family briefly stayed in Lebanon before securing asylum in Canada. According to Global Affairs Canada, more than 250,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict that began in 2011, and there are more than seven million internally displaced Syrians and six million Syrian refugees around the world. After almost a decade in Canada, Shamseddin says she never could’ve imagined her family’s escape and the community they’ve now found in Edmonton. While settling in a new country has had its challenges, their journey to safety is something she doesn’t take for granted. “We had so many hopes,” she says, smiling. Every day in Damascus was filled with fear, Shamseddin explains. Airstrikes rattled their home, and countless neighbours died as they fled for their lives. Shamseddin says she was scared to send Ahmad to school or have Ghena start kindergarten as bombs detonated in the city. Her family didn’t think much about the future, she says, because they were only trying to survive each day. “I never thought about my life later on, because I didn’t know what might change,” she says. “We think day by day.” “It was terrifying.” It was late 2015 when they learned that Canada could offer them a futur
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