Syrian students
Ayram is 18 years old now, studying law at the University of Surrey in Guildford. It is a dream that once seemed impossible when she fled a burning Syrian refugee camp at the age of seven. Never far from her thoughts is Areej, her neighbour and best friend who never made it out of the camp.
‘Sometimes I feel like I am doing this for her,’ Ayram explains. ‘When we were together, we used to talk about schools because we had no education in the camps.”
Ayram and her two sisters left their home in Damascus when the Syrian War became so intense in the city that their parents were left with no other option than finding a way out.
‘There was literally no choice for us,’ Ayram continues. ‘Originally, we thought it would be a few weeks of protest and everything would go back to normal. But people started dying in ground attacks around us and there were airstrikes and bombings, with buildings all around us collapsing.
The family headed south and crossed the border into Jordan where they spent six weeks at the Zaatari Refugee Camp, which at one point was home to over 100,000 refugees. It was a brutal and overcrowded environment where nobody was safe.
‘The Syrian regime would send people to attack the camps. They would pretend to be refugees but then they would set fire to the camps. Our tent burnt but we managed to escape, as my dad was awake at the time and he got us all out. But Areej’s family next to us didn’t get out. It was a really hard thing to witness and I will never forget it.’
Mohammed, 19, and Ali, 18, are brothers from Kobani, close to Syria’s northern border with Turkey. The small city and its surrounding area came under attack from Islamic State in September 2014. The Siege of Kobani lasted for five months and had a devastating human impact, leading to over 300,000 Kurdish refugees being displaced to Turkey.
Mohammed and Ali had left home with their mother and three other brothers in search of safety, several months before the IS attack. They joined their father in Erbil, Kurdistan, where he had found work in the construction industry.
‘It was emotional leaving our home, saying goodbye to our grandparents,’ Ali recalls. ‘We didn’t know if we’d see them again and now it’s been over 10 years since I’ve seen them.’
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‘We were lucky,’ Mohammed insists. ‘But all my cousins and their families struggled a lot. My grandparents still live in Kobani now. At the moment it is safe, but you can never really call it safe as you never know when something will start up again.’
Mohammed is studying accountancy and finance at Oxford Brookes University while Ali is taking a biomedical science degree at University of Westminster. Along with Ayram, they represent the successes of the Syrian resettlement programme and demonstrate what can be achieved with the right support network.
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Mohammed and Ali arrived in Surrey in August 2017 after spending three years in Kurdistan. After leaving Zaatari Refugee Camp, Ayram spent five years in Jordan, where her education suffered, before being resettled to the UK in March 2018.
‘We arrived at night and were so tired when we got here,’ Ayram says. ‘I remember falling asleep in the clothes I was wearing. I woke up the next day and looked out of the window and it had been snowing. I had never seen snow before. I just thought it would be like this a lot of the time, but it hasn’t snowed since!’
None of the new arrivals spoke English when they came to the country, but that soon changed.
‘When I first came here, I was doing a sort of sign language to socialise with people,’ Ayram adds. ‘Everyone was so nice, they wanted to help me understand. We used Google Translate sometimes. Everyone did their best to put me in a comfortable situation and that really helped. It made me think, “Okay, I’m not hated here”. I knew I could take my time to get it right, and within a year I could speak English.’
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‘When you are in a school with English people you catch on really quickly,’ Mohammed adds. ‘It was challenging being in a new country with new people but I’m quite a social person. I used to play every sport at school and then I played football out of school for Oxshott Royals as a left winger. I played with them for a few seasons and I met loads of people that way.’
‘I have Elmbridge CAN to thank for all the help they gave us with homework,’ says Ali. ‘We were able to bring an adult translator in for the lessons at first. After school a volunteer called Carly helped me, tutoring me twice a week with chemistry and maths. Then Sue used to take us shopping because we didn't have a car, that was so helpful. They have so many volunteers who provide support.’
That assistance gave Ali the confidence to visit another school in Oxshott and give a charity talk to the other pupils about his journey from Syria, to Kurdistan and finally the UK. Education has opened up a new life to all three of them and that has not been something these young students have taken for granted.
‘Since I was little, I have always dreamed about going to university and having this amazing life’ Ayram continues. ‘When we went to Jordan, the Syrians there were not allowed to work so Mum and Dad could not continue their jobs. We had to survive off anything we could. Coming here, that whole dream of university returned. My dad has been able to work again too. I have always wanted to help people. Elmbridge CAN has played a big part in helping us so I want to give back to society and help. To be a human rights lawyer or an immigration lawyer would be great, to go around the world and help people. Some people can’t afford lawyers so I’d like to be able to help those who struggle. I can help in places where there is need, maybe even refugee camps one day.’
Ali hopes his degree will lead to a career in dentistry. He remembers his brothers having painful tooth extraction treatment without access to the right medical care before they came to the UK. Mohammed has always been good with numbers and is planning for a career as a chartered accountant in London.
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‘At the beginning of uni when we had our ‘ice breakers’ chats and I told the other students I was from Syria they were surprised,’ Ayram reveals. ‘Some were saying, “Oh My God, what happened? Tell us your story.” Some people already knew quite a bit about what happened in Syria but others knew nothing at all. I like talking about it because it is part of my experience in life, and what happened drove me here.’
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Ayram thinks back to her childhood conversations in the refugee camp and perhaps the biggest inspiration of all, her friend Areej. ‘We used to say, “We can go to school when we get out of here”. Education is my way to survive in this world. We dreamed about this, so I am doing this for me and for her.’