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‘I didn’t want to talk about Syria while waiting for the bus or having a haircut’

In an extract from her memoir, Suad Aldarra recalls her early days in Galway

Suad Aldarra says Irish people usually noticed that she and her husband were foreigners and would ask them questions. Photograph: Bríd O'Donovan

Suad Aldarra
Sat Jul 16 2022 - 06:00

The farmers’ market in Galway, where my husband and I stopped regularly, became a place where our identity was open for discussion. People usually noticed that we were foreigners, even if we didn’t talk much. One time, Housam and I were walking holding hands when we passed by a group of young men hanging out. They smiled at us and one of them said, “You are the most beautiful non-Irish couple I’ve seen around.”

The follow-up questions that came after statements like this, exposing my nationality, were unique. At first, I loved satisfying people’s curiosity: better they hear it from me than from the media. But sometimes it was overwhelming, and I didn’t want to talk about home while waiting for the bus or having a haircut. “Are you going back? Are you Muslims? You don’t look Syrian. What do you think of al-Assad? How do you think it will end?”

Housam was more patient than me. He explained politics and religion and extremism even to those who didn’t want to listen. Once, we were blamed for forcing the Irish to travel overseas looking for jobs. Ironically, it came from someone who was not Irish. In general, the Irish were warm and loving. Having their own share of wars and troubles made them more empathetic to the Syrians around them. And for that I was always grateful.

In September 2015, during one of our strolls in the city, we noticed a brown shipping container standing in the middle of a shopping street. Eight volunteers had decided to lock themselves inside the container for 24 hours with just two bottles of water each, a portable toilet and no food. The art installation, designed by the Giddy Biddy Collective, aimed to raise awareness of the migrant crisis and the struggles endured by migrants to reach a safe haven. I walked away to hide my tears and my identity. I checked Twitter later to read more and decided to leave a virtual thank-you note for telling my people’s story.

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Suad Aldarra and her husband, Housam Ziad. Photograph: Aidan Crawley

Luckily, one of the volunteers replied, and that’s how I met Cait Noone, a dean at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and one of the supporters of the project, who invited me to come back and say hi. Cait’s smile can be spotted from the end of the world and would make you walk towards her like an insect following the light. She noticed the accumulated tears in my eyes, and she opened her arms to hug me. I didn’t resist the generous embrace of a stranger. I needed that hug, but I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t go in containers or on boats. I didn’t drown. I wasn’t kidnapped or tortured or sold for slavery and sex by human traffickers. I am safe. But why am I feeling vulnerable?

A journalist there wanted to do a story about Housam and me. We talked about the war and the struggles, hoping to raise awareness. It was only after we’d finished and left that we realised how much we had been through. We had never talked about it.

Our story was published in the Connacht Tribune. I don’t know if it made much of an impact. Still, when I saw a picture of Housam and me with a full-page article in the newspaper, I realised that our normal life had become a hot story, accompanied by words like “survive” and “tragedy” and “home” and “hope” and “new beginnings” and “gratefulness”. We had become news, despite our efforts to escape it.

Every morning when I scanned the news, Syria would be in the headlines. “Country X is fed up with the refugees. Country Y is closing its borders in their faces. A boat sank carrying refugees from Syria. A Syrian refugee did something bad. A Syrian refugee did something good.”

Every morning, I read the news. I read it all. I looked at the dead bodies, the exploded remains, the miserable faces at borders, the bodies skeletal from hunger, the weeping mothers and the scared kids.

I would close my web browser, wash my face, drink my coffee and go to work, helpless, hopeless and in denial, fighting the pressing thought that I didn’t deserve to survive. I would greet my colleagues and complain about the weather and the overpriced food in the cafeteria and other first-world problems.

Overwhelming

Early in 2016, I got an invitation through Euraxess to speak at the European Commission in Brussels about the challenges of the refugee crisis, and to share my story, along with two other Syrians.

It was overwhelming to be in a room with everyone talking about the one topic I didn’t want to talk about. But I was desperate to do something, anything, to help Syria, to heal Syria. I thought I was over the idea of having a homeland I couldn’t return to, but the memories were pushing hard to the surface, and I tried my best to push them back down. I fought the urge to cry whenever someone mentioned a statistic about displaced, dead, drowned or illegal refugees. I tried not to think about how those numbers and percentages represented people I knew and cared about.

I have to be strong, I thought. I have to represent the resilient Syrian, the one willing to do the impossible to survive.

Then it was my turn to talk. It was tricky to do this without opening the box of memories. I kept it professional. I did not talk about how I was terrified by the explosions that happened a few metres away from me. I did not mention how I used to go to sleep early, wearing many layers of clothing, because it was too cold and too dark to stay awake. I skipped the part about my engagement and marriage during the war. I briefly mentioned my father-in-law’s martyrdom, but I definitely did not mention how we saw photos of his body all over social media. How it haunts us still.

I never talked about how we didn’t dare to dream of having a kid because we were too damaged to raise a child in this unfair world. I skipped many stories, a lot of pain and tears that had no place at that conference. Instead, I talked about timelines and statistics, gave examples of ongoing initiatives and suggested ideas that could be life-changing for many refugees. The conference ended with a lot of applause and I felt good for doing my bit and not falling apart.

On the plane back to the place I called home, I closed my eyes above the clouds and let the pilot do his bit. The flight attendant broadcast a message to the passengers over the tannoy. It wasn’t about seatbelts, nor was it about our location or destination. It was about Syria.

“Syrian children are facing a lot of pain and suffering from cold and hunger. Please help us raise funds to support them.” I looked around to see people getting out their wallets and putting money in an envelope with the Unicef logo on it. I was grateful for all the kind hearts on that plane, but heartbroken to hear my country’s name mentioned in a donation campaign.

At that moment, all the blocked memories rushed in. The miserable faces, the dead bodies, the explosions, my little cat, my grandmother. My whole life burst from my overloaded memory, and I wept.

Suad Aldarra now lives in Dublin with her husband and son. This is an edited extract from her new memoir, I Don’t Want to Talk About Home, published by Transworld.

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