If All the Doors Close

By Ali Kattee / Winter 2023

It was on the first day of summer of 2012, when the first Incident happened. The war in Syria was getting worse and millions of civilians started fleeing to the neighboring country trying to find a new home, or just a shelter to survive. My father decided to send my grandparents to the US, where my uncle and aunts live.

I was chosen to accompany my grandparents in that journey in order to lower the weight my parents would have to carry in case things get worse and they have to escape. My family insisted on staying in Syria hoping that the war would end soon, but my father was also prepared to leave incase of emergency. It wasn’t more than a week after me and my grandparents left Syria and the airports completely shut down. Making the only way out of Syria is through the borders. The situation got worse for my family as the electricity would only come for a couple hours a day, sometimes a week making it difficult to communicate with my family.

When the first incident happened, I wasn’t aware of it immediately, making the incident more dramatic for me to experience for the fact that I was far away from my family when it happened. That day, my brothers were heading back home happy as it was their last day of school accompanied by their friends. Suddenly, two armed soldiers stopped them. They looked at my younger brother who was less than 9 years old at that time, and ordered him to go check something for them. My brother got scared and tried to refuse. The soldiers grabbed him from his arm and screamed at him to follow the orders. My older brother who was 14 at that time tried to interfere but they were very aggressive, and forced my younger brother to do this suicide mission for them. They forced him to go check a backpack that was reported to be a possible bomb placed in the trash container at the end of the street. The military soldiers, whose job is to protect us, the civilians wanted to sacrifice an innocent child’s life. My brother was crying while heading to check it, thankfully it was just a normal backpack thrown away since it was the last day of school. My brothers spent their first day of summer shaking and crying.

That moment caused my father to make the decision of leaving Syria at any cost. I was informed about this situation two days after it occurred. At that time, I never experienced anything like it.

The fact that I wasn’t going to be able to see them again hit me hard. While they were living in danger and daily struggle, I was blessed to be in the United States. I felt guilty and unfair to be on the other side of the world experiencing Freedom and safety. My father told me that they are fleeing to Turkey “our neighboring country” which is a driving distance leaving everything behind. Hoping that the situation will get better quickly so we can finally go back to Syria. Unfortunately the situation was only getting worse, leading us to lose everything we had in Syria and move on with our life. My family knew that there was no future for us in Turkey since they speak a completely different language, so they decided to go to Egypt, and start a new chapter there. That is where I finally regrouped with my family, we had to struggle for two years as we were starting from scratch.

Unfortunately as soon as we stood on one foot we fell again. As the situation in Egypt was going worse economically and getting more heated politically. Syrians were to blame for that, since they were stealing their job opportunities according to them. My father had to look to find a new home for us again. He was offered a job in Saudi Arabia, so he went there to check it for us.

As that was happening, our family from my mother’s side were finally able to escape Syria to enter Turkey. The plan was that my father would go to Saudi, start settling up and prepare things for us while we regroup with my mother’s family and help them find a place to stay.

That’s when the second Incident happened, as we arrived at the airport in Istanbul, my mother led us to obtain the visa. We were lost and didn’t know where to get it from and every time we asked a worker to help us, they would refuse for no reason. We finally found the line, and as our turn came to get the visa, the man would just look at us in a hatred look and start talking to us in Turkish knowing very well that we don’t understand it. The man suddenly started yelling at my mother and threw our passports on the ground and pointed with his hands in a dehumanizing way telling us to leave.

I felt very angry and disappointed again, because unlike the last incident where I was far away from my family. I was here this time, but very weak and not capable of doing anything to change the outcome. Thankfully, a man who looked important in the airport saw the incident and rushed to help us get the Visa.

These two incidents opened my eyes to the world in multiple ways. I learned that we are no longer free, no longer home, no longer civilians, no longer humans. Our existence can be a problem to some people because we steal their jobs. Our voices are irrelevant to them because we sing a different song.

There is a saying in Arabic, if all the doors close on your face, remember that the door of the creator will never close on you. We have been through many incidents and challenges in our lives, but we never gave up and lost hope in God, we always looked for the bright side, and always found the way out. My parents taught us to be strong and confident. My father once said “If all of humanity grouped together to hurt us, we should not be afraid. Because God, the creator of these humans, the creator of everything, and the most powerful, will always take care of us”. This is what we live by, and this is who we live for.