From Syria to Salento | Flowers fleeing war
The story of welcome, reciprocity and autonomy of a Syrian family that found refuge in Salento
Article by Massimo Buccarello, an intercultural mediator in the Sportello persone straniere of the Ambito Sociale Territoriale of Gagliano del Capo and operator of the Sportello “Nessuno è straniero” (No one is a foreigner) of the Caritas diocesan of Ugento-Santa Maria di Leuca, in the province of Lecce
The place where I was born and live is an extreme piece of Italy, it is the easternmost point of Italy, the heel of the boot. If we draw a straight line north, it will run farther east than Berlin; if we calculate the distance between our little villages near Leuca first from Paris and then from Beirut in Lebanon we will find that the distance is the same. We are Levantines; on the clearest days from our shores we can see the mountains of Albania and the Greek islands closer.
Years ago, I saw Nadine Labaki’s Caramel, a beautiful film that I enjoyed very much and that tells the everyday life of some Lebanese women who frequent a beauty salon in Beirut. The light of those streets, the peeling walls, the mugginess that envelops the scenes in those streets recall the atmosphere of our small towns , the chaos, the humanity of a very human world full of Life.
A world far away and yet similar,
the Mediterranean culture of proximity, of courtyard houses , of recognition in the other.
A few days after the shooting of that film, Lebanon’s capital was torn apart by the outbreak of war with Israel. It was 2006, one of many wars that have ravaged that territory for decades.
A few years later, in 2011, a new conflict began that would devastate another country in the neighboring Middle East, Syria.
In the years to come, millions of refugees will seek refuge and help in Europe through legal or less legal channels. Either with shelters organized by governments and associations such as UNHCR or by plying the Mediterranean Sea or sailing up the Balkan route.
One family affected by this war has found refuge in Salento and this is their story….
They are Syrian citizens and arrived (excluding the little one) in Italy in late 2017, fleeing the war in Syria. They were granted political refugee status and their arrival in Italy was made possible by a resettlement project in which IOM, UNHCR and Caritas participated.
They have integrated very well here in Italy and, despite difficult times, have managed to achieve the goals they had set for themselves:
living in peace, working and studying.
A. is a native of Al-Raqqa, the city on the banks of the Euphrates River that in recent years has been one of the centers of power of DAESH, the Islamic State, but which has a very ancient history that links it to Roman civilization and great Syrian culture. At the age of 23 he moved to Aleppo to work as a painter; after a few years he met M., they fell in love and started a family.
Better job prospects prompted him to emigrate to Beirut in Lebanon and return to Aleppo regularly to his wife and three children, who lived in the Syrian city with a brother-in-law.
Unfortunately, the flare-up of the war in Syria made it impossible to stay in Aleppo, both because the city was under the grip of the warring sides and because the road A. used to return to his family was becoming increasingly dangerous.
For this reason they all decided to move to Lebanon, where they lived for 6 years, from 2012 until the end of 2017, renting a house in the Beirut hinterland, and then moving permanently for 4 years to Jbeil.
The father continued to work as a painter and the mother cared for the children; the material conditions of the household were good
but the parents were very concerned about their children’s education.
In fact, after asking several local institutions which school to let them attend, receiving no answers, the mother began to inquire at the offices of UNHCR and Caritas Lebanon.
After these contacts, they were placed on the resettlement lists, the relocation that UNHCR regularly organizes for refugees. They were taken over by IOM in August 2017 and arrived in Italy by air flight on December 4 of the same year.
In Italy, they were housed in the SAI project in Tiggiano and immediately began the integration process.
The mother’s main worry was education for her children, and she managed, with the support of the project and the community, to get the younger two enrolled in middle school, while the older one started a training course at a local machine shop.
A., after an initial settling-in period, found a job as a painter, and his wife has integrated very well into the community of the small Salento town.
The project lasted 17 months during which the family achieved many of the goals they had planned on their path to integration: the contract for A., schools for the two little ones, the woman’s social and human integration, work and active participation in Corsano Carnival initiatives.
The Tiggiano parish community has formed a very strong relationship with all of them:
their empathy, simplicity and ability to fit in made them very welcome throughout the village.
Proof of this is the deep bond that was established between them and several families in the village and with then-parish priest Fr Lucio Ciardo, now director of the Diocesan Caritas.
With some understandable difficulty they achieved housing autonomy by emancipating themselves from the aid of refugee projects, and rented a house, paying for it with their own resources.
In this transition they have participated in many training initiatives and events, increasingly accelerating their integration; remaining connected to all the people with whom they have befriended.
Thanks to Caritas Italiana’s Apri project, the family was able to participate in training courses, cultural activities, and enrollment in driving school and secondary education.
There were many moments of crisis that the family went through during their 3 years in Italy. One delicate moment was the exit from the SAI project: for this, a Syrian refugee support project was activated, which allowed the family to be able to enter into a rental contract “almost” independently.
There were also many issues related to A.’s work environment, which at times had to overcome crises related to communication or issues related to rules on the construction site.
And for this very reason, his commitment and willingness to adapt his basic training acquired in a completely different context from his current one, learning to comply with safety rules that were certainly not contemplated on construction sites in his home country, is to be commended.
This ability to adapt to a more complex reality occurred despite his language difficulty, which is not only related to the different language but to his being illiterate; A. speaks Arabic and Turkish but cannot read or write.
Other difficult moments were when their extended family struggled: the members of the different family groups living in Turkey , Syria, and Lebanon immediately strengthened their bonds by supporting each other.
M.’s tears mark her face whenever Aleppo is mentioned:
the photos of her city ravaged by a horrific war, the memories of the people who have been there and who talk to her about it,
the pain of her loved ones who still live in those battered lands or pay the consequences .
What M. recounts with tears, A. remembers with her hard face clutching her eyes.
War leaves indelible marks, wounds that don’t just gash the skin.
Overcoming these crises of integration was also possible because of the open and tolerant character of the family, a character they demonstrated outside the home and also inside.
Great is the cooperation among family members, and the mother is never left alone in the care of the household. A fine example of this excellent relationship between them is the participation of A. and the children in the preparation of different Syrian recipes.
A. is very proud of his country’s cuisine and loves to offer the different dishes to his guests, and he and the boys are always by the side of cook M., a true master in preparing the delicious Oriental dishes.
One summer day, I was confronted with a very peculiar scene. In a small courtyard among the narrow streets of Tiggiano, there were
two small tables, side by side, where two bright red creams were drying in the sun, two recipes that were similar but a thousand miles apart: cunserva mara of Salento and M.’s دبس الفلفل Syrian bell pepper molasses.
The preparation of these two recipes is very similar, the difference being in the fact that the former uses tomatoes, peppers and chilies while the latter does not use tomatoes. In both cases, the preparation is left to “cook” in the sun. This is one of many examples of Mediterranean cousin recipes .
In late 2021, the family participated in the Community Welfare project of the E’ BBENE foundation , winning with the proposal “Good Things from the World” a multi-ethnic catering idea. Under the supervision of Coop Ipad Mediterranean, a delegation participated in the project’s training and selection days in December 2021. The meetings were attended by the family’s eldest son, who described and recounted the wide variety of recipes the family could offer for the project menus.
In August 2022, the fourth son was born, beloved and called “the Italian” in the family.
“When can he have citizenship ?” his mother asks every time we see each other , knowing that the timeframe is long and that it is a long-term prospect; a new challenge, a seed of hope.
After months of research and negotiations, the contract for the purchase of their new home was signed; this was possible thanks to the support of Caritas Diocesana and the de Grisantis Foundation, which acted as guarantors for the loan of part of the sum, taking advantage of the agreement with APS Ricrediti. In November 2022 they completed their move and moved in, realizing their dream of finding a safe home where they could start thinking about their future in Italy.
Their last name, in Arabic, means flower, and I like to think of their story as that of a flower;
love for each other and respect for others is the secret of this family,
bound by a very deep and tender bond that has enabled them to overcome terrible and painful events.
(by Massimo Buccarello)