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Syrian refugees in US fear for those left behind

Chicago (AFP) – Sitting on a donated couch in her modest Chicago apartment, Safa Mshymish knows she is among the lucky ones: a Syrian refugee welcomed into the United States before the tide of public opinion turned.
It hurts, she said, to hear politicians are trying to stop families just like hers from finding a safe haven, branding all Syrians a security threat in the wake of the Paris attacks.
“Just like any mother who loves her children and wants to see them sleep peacefully, so do I. Just like any mother wants to feed her children, so do I,” she said.
They must not realise, she said, that like her these are people forced from their homes — consumed with worry for the loved ones left behind.
This is what she would tell them all, if she could.
As her American neighbors prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families on Thursday, Mshymish, 27, longs for a homeland that no longer exists.
They had a good life before the war began. They were comfortable, safe and happy, surrounded by family and friends.
Her husband went to a couple of demonstrations in the early, peaceful days of the protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but mostly stayed out of the intensifying conflict.
Until a car full of “thugs” drove up and opened fire as he sat at a cafe with five friends in Homs on October 15, 2011.
“I was the only one who survived. Everybody else was killed,” Ismil Alrife, 38, told AFP.
Watching his friends die on the street was just the beginning, as fear came to shadow their days.
Now that Alrife was injured — the bullets severed the main nerve in his right leg and he needs a cane to walk — they were afraid he would become a target for the regime, indiscriminate in rounding up potential “trouble-makers.”
Trying to leave was also dangerous. So they stayed, even as the war intensified, making it impossible for their three children to go to school and difficult to even buy groceries.


 


 



Syrian refugee Ameer Alrife stands in front of his parents and community leaders during a press conference


 


Then a missile struck their apartment building. As the walls crumbled around them, they flung their children under the bed and prayed. They escaped with their lives, and little else.


 


– Moonlight escape –


 


The family of five joined a steady stream of refugees weaving their way through the war-torn country, reaching the border with Jordan in July 2012.
They waited for darkness to fall and walked 40 kilometers (25 miles) though the mountains in hopes of avoiding Syrian patrols.
After more than two years in Jordan, they were given clearance to immigrate to the United States, arriving in Chicago during one of its coldest winters ever.
The children — now aged 11, 9, 6 and 20 months — have had an easier time adjusting to the new language and culture.


 


 



The United States has admitted fewer than 2,180 Syrian refugees out of the nearly 4.3 million


 


They are learning English at school and, like generations of immigrants before them, sometimes act as interpreters for their parents.
“We feel very happy to be here and be safe, but at the same time it’s not easy for anyone to leave home,” Mshymish said.
The United States has admitted fewer than 2,180 Syrian refugees out of the nearly 4.3 million who have registered with the United Nations since the conflict began in 2011.
President Barack Obama pledged to resettle 10,000 more in the next year, but Syrian refugees have become a political football in the wake of the November 13 attacks which killed 130 in Paris.

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