Instead of Assad ’missiles hunting them,’ the wildfire’s embers rained down on them

"Like when the missiles come down and burned the whole neighbourhood," says Fort McMurray evacuee Abdul Almouazan, 66, through a translator.

Two years ago, Almouazan fled war-torn Syria with his family of eight. In February, they began their new life in Fort McMurray. Almouazan felt safe, "like a human being again."

’Canada is like a mother for us with its tenderness and love.’ - Abdul Almouazan

But two months on, he is one of 140 evacuees finding shelter at Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton. Uprooted again, his smile is still frequent, but it triggers memories of the horrors in Syria.

Almouazan recalls bombs flattening homes, "people being killed all around him" and "pieces of people flying in the air."

Bombs often rained down around his daughter’s house by the hospital, he says. One day she disappeared. He doesn’t know if she’s alive.

Her two children are now with Almouazan in Edmonton. So is his wife, his son, daughter-in-law, and their three children.

If not for them, Almouazan says he never would have fled Syria. He never imagined fearing for their lives when they arrived in Canada.

Abdul Almouazan fled Syria, then Fort McMurray with 8 family members including his 7-year-old granddaughter.

But that changed Tuesday when, they escaped the smoke thickening around their beloved Timberlea home, heading to the local mosque.

Then the municipality issued a mandatory evacuation order. Suddenly, Almouazan and his family were on the run again.

It felt eerily familiar, he says, recalling moving from one shelter to the next in Syria. But rather than "missiles hunting them," the wildfire’s embers rained down on them instead.

Compared to Syria’s loud explosions, Almouazan found the fire hauntingly quiet. He’s sitting cross legged in the cot where he’ll later sleep. Colourful prayer beads jingle in his hand. He’s had them ever since Syria because they’re always in his pocket.

Now they’re all he has. His family left home Tuesday without anything figuring they’d soon be back.  

Making his way through the chaos and devastation of Syria and now Fort Mac, Almouazan has touched bead after bead, repeating the name of Allah.

It brings inner peace, he says.

Abdul Almouazan and other Fort McMurray evacuees join Edmontonians in prayer at Al Rashid Mosque.

Despite all the loss among the evacuees at Al Rashid, faith seems to be in abundance. Almouazan’s smiling friend in the next cot says he also fled Syria with his young family four years back.