December 8, 2015

By Alex Hannaford

Despite an uncertain welcome in Texas, these Syrian families are trying to rebuild their lives after fleeing civil unrest and violence half a world away.

The tapestry that hangs on the wall above the sofa in Iyad and Lina Al Afandi’s modest home just north of Dallas is the only physical reminder of the country they’ve left behind: a stitching that depicts a traditional Syrian house with tiled courtyard and fountain, and rugs draped from the balcony.

It’s a depiction of a time and place entirely unrecognizable now amid the rubble and dust of the Damascus suburb they once called home.

Eighteen months ago, Lina carried that tapestry, rolled in her bag, across the international border crossing in Tijuana, while clinging to the hand of her youngest son Homam, then 14. With them were Iyad, their eldest son Nawar, now 21, and their daughter Noor, now 24. Today, four-plus years after the violence began, it’s hard for them to remember a Syria devoid of snipers’ bullets, checkpoints, bloodshed and shelling — the Syria that existed before their eldest son Nawar was arrested, detained and beaten by men working for President Bashar al-Assad. Before their escape to America.

The Al Afandi family is part of an exodus of four million displaced Syrian refugees (there are an estimated 7.6 million internally displaced within Syria). Most of those who fled the country live in camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands have somehow made it to Europe, sometimes braving the Mediterranean in unseaworthy craft.

Yet since civil war began in 2011, just 2,200 Syrians have been resettled in the United States. In the 2015 fiscal year, just 213 Syrians — 23 asylum-seekers, who file after they arrive, and 190 refugees, who apply beforehand — have been resettled in Texas.

In September, President Obama pledged to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. That prompted Governor Greg Abbott, along with 31 other governors, to pledge to reject Syrian refugees, citing security concerns in the wake of the November terrorist attack in Paris.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued, so far unsuccessfully, to block the federal government, along with refugee charities, from bringing Syrians to Texas. A federal judge has said he won’t rule before January 12 on the matter.

http://www.texasobserver.org/syrian-refugees-north-dallas/