Stories from Syria Podcast

"I have been sleeping here five days a week." Fadi had a bachelor apartment in a basement flat on the east side of Toronto, but had not been sleeping there often when I interviewed him. It was hot and sticky and buggy. There are spiders, not that he is afraid of spiders. Thankfully, he has a sponsorship group, concerned Canadians who brought him here, and a couple close friends from Syria who arrived before him. "I don't believe in communities," he said when the mic wasn't running, "I don't want to deal with communities anymore. Now I deal with people on a person to person basis." If I misrepresent him in the published interview, he won't judge all Canadians for it, he says,  just me. When we spoke he had only been in Canada a few months and was looking for a steady job. Since, he has moved into a new shared apartment. "I can't say yet that I am fine. The IOM told me that if I come to Canada I will be fine, but as of now I don't feel I can say I will be fine!"

After he earned his Master's in Lancaster University in 2009, Amr returned to his native Damascus. There he worked in his field -- Resource & Environmental Management --  leading up to and through the first years of the revolution. He had to leave -- first going to Iraqi Kurdistan, then to Gaziantep, Turkey. In the summer of 2016, he and his talented wife Rasha got the call -- they were coming to Canada. But the timing was problematic. Kareem, their son, was born two months prematurely (another long story), and, in intensive care, was unable to fly. Five months later, Kareem strengthened, they made the flight to Toronto as 2016 closed. They were sponsored by Toronto's Ripple Refugee Project. At the time of recording Amr had finished his contract working remotely for a Washington-based NGO with offices in Gaziantep. He has since been picked up by Médecins Sans Frontières in Toronto.