Mamoun Shebat was on his way to buy bread when he saw bullets tear through a woman’s head and stomach.
He rushed to her side to help, and that’s when he was hit. A sniper was hiding about 700 metres away in the minaret of a mosque, shooting into the street.
Shebat’s left elbow was blown out, an injury that still affects him today.
The shooting happened in 2012, one week before Shebat, his wife and three children fled war-torn Syria. They lived in Daraa, and the city was ground zero for the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Every night, bombs went off between 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., recalled Shebat.
“(You) could hear it; you could see it, about two kilometres from house,” he said.
Thanks to a private sponsorship application filed by the New Westminster Christian Reformed Church, the family now lives in Burnaby. On Feb. 8, they’ll be celebrating one year in Canada.
Sitting in limbo
When the Shebats left Syria, they travelled on foot to nearby Jordan, some 13 kilometres away. They spent 10 days at the border, living in a big tent with 20 to 30 other refugees.
“It was cold. There was snow. No food. It was raining non-stop,” Shebat told the NOW.
Eventually, the family of five was taken to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where they would spend the next three-and-a-half years.
Conditions were harsh, said Shebat. The camp housed tens of thousands of refugees, so food was scarce. They were fed rice and bread for lunch and cheese for breakfast and dinner. If anyone had to go to the washroom, they either had to walk long distances or build their own toilet in the ground.
Asked how they passed the time, Khloud Ahmad, Shebat’s wife, said there wasn’t much to do.
“You just sit down and think about country, about family,” she said.
Girls were not safe. If her daughter Fedaa wanted to go somewhere, Shebat had to accompany her.
To guarantee her safety, Fedaa married a Jordanian man she never met. She stayed only six months at the camp until she moved in with her in-laws.
“(It was) very sad because she married early. She was 18,” Ahmad said.
Today, Fedaa still lives in Jordan and is expecting her second child at the end of March. Ahmad was able to be there for the first birth, but isn’t sure she’ll get that chance this time.
Sponsorship comes through
Burnaby-based New Westminster Christian Reformed Church has sponsored refugees since 1979.
In September 2015, a member of the church suggested they fundraise to bring over a Syrian family. The congregation held a meeting one month later and managed to raise $25,000 that day.
“By December, we had put in our application to Toronto and we had enough money for a family of five, possibly six,” said Marianne Van Delft, one of the organizers behind the campaign to bring the Shebats to Canada.
At the time, the federal Liberals had put a hold on sponsorships, so the church had to wait until January to find out which family would be coming over.
“We said we will take the first name that comes. One name came forward. That was their name,” Van Delft said.
After that, things started falling into place. Organizers learned of an available two-bedroom basement suite for under $900.
“We said we’ll rent it regardless if it takes three months or four months because the rent was too good to pass up,” she said.
By the end of January, everything for the suite had been purchased.
The Shebats boarded a plane on Feb. 10 in Montreal, where they were being processed, and headed to Vancouver.
“The first thing they told (the interpreter) is, ‘We are starving; we are so hungry.’ So I phoned Carol upstairs and said get the soup on,” recalled Van Delft of their arrival.
“We didn’t know if we had a sponsor,” Ahmad chimed in. “When we arrived, we just signed some papers.”
When the family got in the door of their new home, Van Delft and her husband told the family, through an interpreter, “This is your house, everything here is yours.”
“I remember Mamoun said, ‘I have no hope for me, but I have hope for the future of my boys,’” she told the NOW.
A new life
Adjusting to his new life hasn’t been easy, according to older brother Fares.
The now-19-year-old admitted he wasn’t happy when he left Zaatari. After having to leave Syria and then the camp, a move to another country was hard to imagine.
“I had my friends. I missed them,” said Fares, noting he grieved for about six months and didn’t leave the house, except for school. The brothers enrolled at Cariboo Hill Secondary when they first arrived and eventually moved to Byrne Creek Community School, where they’re currently working towards finishing their high school diploma.
Ahmad, meanwhile, said the hardest part of coming to Canada was learning the language. Today, she can speak in short sentences and is attending English classes.
The church helped Shebat get a part-time gardening job at a private school. He got a couple of months of work experience under his belt, saved enough money to buy a car and then, last September, took his resume to an aluminum plant in Langley.
“He went on a Friday morning, dropped it off, and they told him to come back in the afternoon for a meeting and was hired,” said Van Delft. “I’m very proud of him because he did it himself.”
Reunion
Moving forward, the Shebats say they’re eager to become fluent in English, have the boys finish school and most importantly, reunite their family.
Van Delft said the church submitted Fedaa’s sponsorship application last October, and now it’s just a waiting game.
“If you get it (the application) done, then you’re in for the next year, but that doesn’t guarantee you. Some people wait two years, so I don’t want to put their hopes up,” she explained.
Van Delft added the church will always be there for the Shebats regardless of what happens.
“That’s the beauty of private sponsors. You become family,” she said.
