Being Syrian Is Exhausting

Photo credit: Sahaba

TEXAS: In 2011, I was turning 18, and trying to come to terms with my queerness. The Syrian high school final exam made that year especially difficult. The pressure and stress of that test and its results were so intense that schools would have ambulances waiting for the few people who ​will faint. It dictated our futures.

The revolution was in its early days, and my father thought it would bring change to a country that desperately needed it. He begged me to register to vote, I told him he was too hopeful.

At 19, I moved for college to a little town not too far from my hometown of Damascus, which by then had immensely changed. The city carried the exam’s intensity; it was riddled with checkpoints, it regularly woke up to explosions, and its people were being detained.

The rapid changes were surreal to witness, and it was seen everywhere, especially in people’s eyes. Our sense of normality was gone, and we had no idea what was about to come.

In 2013, we’d gotten used to bombs falling on campuses, learned about various shell sounds, and how to hide in shelters. We even gained some investigating experiences as our families and friends kept getting detained, tortured, kidnapped, or killed.

We stole intimate smiles, tears, and queer kisses under the sounds of airstrikes, and it felt like the revolution was still alive. Later that same year, after my parents had been detained, tortured, and forever traumatized by Assad forces, it was clear that our family was in immediate danger.

We feared the checkpoints more than we feared bombs.

What should have been fun, youthful 21-year-old parties became bittersweet farewells​. Everyone was leaving, and the destination was ​any ​country that gave us visas. Getting a visa in itself was a miracle for Syrians. Some settled temporarily in neighboring countries before it got impossible to get to those as well.

I know relatives who walked through the mountains to Lebanon because of threats, friends who were smuggled to Turkey, and activists who had to bribe officials to be allowed exile. My family was miraculously approved for a US visa, moved to North Texas, and filed for asylum.

In 2015, I wanted to grieve for friends and relatives no longer around me, but was too busy with my siblings’ school registration papers and going with my parents to job interviews and doctor appointments as an interpreter.

I immediately became my family’s parent because of my English language skills. Without documents to go to school or work, it was difficult to not fall into a depressive state of loneliness, which led me to become the local interpreter for the refugee.

Other times, I’d track relatives’ locations as they crossed the Mediterranean on boats. We needed to know which waters they were in to know which authorities to call if they began to drown.

In 2016, as we waited to hear back on our asylum cases, we took jobs where we could: restaurants, grocery stores, butchers. While we were able to apply for a work permit annually, it was costly but necessary. Every year we dutifully submitted our renewals months in advance, only to receive the new permits long after the old ones had expired. While we were able to maintain our jobs, our lives were disrupted in other ways. Our state-issued IDs were canceled, auto insurance gone, and bank accounts frozen. When I asked the banks about it, the few that allowed us to open accounts in the first place, every single one said it was because of our Syrian citizenship.

When I turned 24, I gave up on going back to school. I was working all the time and had become overrun with debt trying to make ends meet while paying medical bills. Unlike most of Europe, the US asylum system doesn’t financially or medically help those in limbo. That same year, Americans elected their first dictator. While many joked about going to Canada and made Trump memes, I was trying to explain to friends how scary this was. I was baffled by their unfamiliarity with dictatorships. My family was terrified; as Syrians without an official asylum yet, we believed we’d be deported in weeks.

In 2018, the US asylum office was finally ready to hear why I couldn't then, or now, return home, so I drove hours to Houston and explained in depth why sending me back is a death sentence. The officer asked the same bizarre questions repeatedly. My attorney said it’s a tactic to see if I was telling the truth. I thought it was interesting how at-home that tactic made me feel. “You did great. Now, we wait again,” she said. Syrians aren’t granted asylum on the spot since our files have to go through intensive security measures without a timeline. ​The rest of my family had their interviews a few months after my own. The same tactics were used with them, and while I was resilient, my parents were troubled for weeks.

In 2019, I was still in debt with no stable job or established career after five years in the US and eight years into my adult life. My American friends have a hard time understanding how the system doesn’t enable us to even have the same opportunities. ​My story is not unique. When I speak with my Syrian friends, they all feel the same. My friends are in ​other states, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Malaysia, Russia, and some are still in Syria. We are this decade’s diaspora after all, and we were all set back years.

Earlier in 2020, we as Syrians watched the entire world go through what we once did: a radical change of normalcy and intense trauma. I lost my jobs and social life while clinging to the safety of my home, just like the war days in Damascus. And just like those days once more, I began attending protests, screamed Black Lives Matter at the top of my lungs, and was tear-gassed. I also listened to Trump talk about protestors the same way Assad did. I watched the same propaganda unfold, and witnessed the police violence and how similar it is to that of the Syrian Armed Forces. ​News today of the Trump administration feels right at home hearing how the CDC must exclusively report to the White House or seeing federal officers detain protesters in unmarked vehicles. Even seeing a judge's family be shot at home feels strangely familiar. Through it all, I can't help but wonder how the US still claims to have a "First World Country" title.

My family still hasn’t been granted asylum, and although I was, I am still years away from becoming a citizen. I’m almost 27 with no sense of safety whatsoever. Not legal, financial nor educational.

I daily read the news of more than 10 countries. I think of friends and lovers across continents whom our chance of getting to grow together was stolen, along with our youth. Our final exam did not dictate our futures after all. I think of all the struggles and obstacles their stories had. I think of how they, too, will have to grieve grandparents or parents dying back home without being able to say goodbye. I wonder if they, too, get so homesick sometimes that they uncontrollably cry. I think of all the mothers like mine who are so soft, yet had to endure the harshness of exile. I have cousins who grew up outside of Syria and now speak languages I don’t, and I wonder if they too will have this constant feeling of homelessness. Even those still in Syria feel it as they struggle to barely survive the coronavirus, as well as the extreme poverty caused by economic inflation. I’m hoping my generation is the last to carry it. It’s exhausting to try to belong in a world that doesn’t have a place for us.

When we’re asked where we’re from, a sigh comes out with “Syria”. Not only because we’re prepared for being looked at like aliens, but also because the word carries an endless weight of homelessness.

I dream of a day when I'm able to reunite with friends and relatives. Because even though we are homeless, we are everywhere. The world now has millions of little Syrias that feel like home at every one of our houses.