Syrian family fled war, only to find violence next door

RICHMOND—When Aabeed Bairouti packed up his wife and three kids and fled war-torn Syria, he expected their new home in Canada would be quiet and safe.

Instead, the family found themselves living next door to a woman whose boyfriend would start drunken fights at all hours of the night and even stab tools through the drywall into the Bairouti home.

“I went from a war in Syria and I came to a war in the house,” said Aabeed, who has photos on his cellphone of knives and hammers piercing through his bedroom walls.

“Sometimes the girl would fight with the boyfriend. She would come to us and tell us to call the police. I told her no, you telephone the police, or then he will have a problem with me.”

Police were called to the residence in Richmond four or five times in the 20 months the family lived there. Yolanda, Aabeed’s 12-year-old daughter, remembers the angry neighbour once followed her father around with a baseball bat.

“He would drink and get alcohol and then he didn’t know what he was doing,” said Aabeed, with his 15-year-old daughter Kita translating. “They were always fighting. No sleeping, because there was too much screaming.”

Afraid for the safety of his children, Aabeed reached out to B.C. Housing and his nearby church, St. Joseph the Worker Parish, which sponsored them to come to Canada, to find another home.

High housing prices in Richmond made it exceptionally hard for the large, young family with a low income and little to no English.

“Every day I look at homes, I check: five people? No, no, no,” said Aabeed. The family hoped high prices and violent neighbours wouldn’t drive them to a new city, uproot their children from their schools and friends, and launch yet another job search.

It took about a year before friends at St. Joseph the Worker found their current home, an apartment in Richmond five minutes from the church. 

“Here is okay. Now is okay,” said Aabeed, grateful to church volunteers for working hard to find them a new home. Now, the family has befriended many neighbours, including two other Syrian families.

“I have a friend in my school,” said Yolanda. “She doesn’t speak Arabic; she’s from South Africa. She’s from my school and she also lives in this apartment. We do our homework together.”

It’s been two years since the Bairouti family arrived at Vancouver International Airport and began new lives in Canada. The bump in finding housing aside, Aabeed said his family is adjusting well to the new climate, culture, and language.

“When I came to Canada, we didn’t speak English – Kita, Yolanda, or George,” he said. Now, his children are making friends and doing well at school. George, in Grade 2, says he hopes to sign up for martial arts classes.

Aabeed has a steady job at an auto mall in Richmond. He used to bicycle 10 kilometres to work each way and is grateful he has now passed driving exams and can afford to drive.

“I would go to the job in rain and snow, I would come back to my home and same thing: snow and rain,” he said, his children laughing. On Sundays, the family now easily travels to St. Joseph the Worker or an Arabic church in Burnaby without having to rely on public transit.

Aabeed is grateful to have come to Canada. There is literally no home left for them in Syria; a bomb levelled it to the ground, luckily while no one was inside.

“When we were in Syria, more than three or four times the bombs came around us, but it didn’t hurt us. So, we left our country and we went to Lebanon, and then the bomb went to our house,” said Aabeed, relying on translation from his eldest daughter, Kita.

“Before the war, there was no problem. Syria was a good country. Very good. But when the war started, all of Syria was destroyed.”

His daughter Yolanda said unlike their paper-thin walls in Richmond, homes in Syria are built with stone. “Syria is so strong. The next house has a bomb, but our wall, nothing happened to it. It shook a little bit but it didn’t break.”

They miss their family; many relatives are still living in Syria. Some of Aabeed’s siblings and in-laws have moved to Lebanon, Germany, or Venezuela.

“You know how there’s a tree and the leaves go everywhere?” said Yolanda. “This is how Syria went. All of Syria went to different countries, just like tree leaves fall and all the leaves go to different sides.”