Alsado, a refugee who arrived in Edmonton in February, was a pathologist in Raqqa with a burgeoning lab of his own. Before the war, it was so successful he bought a house for his family and a farm with 1,000 olive, peach and grape trees.
In 2013, when Assad regime “troops” left Raqqa and ISIS made it their capital, that idyllic life turned into a nightmare.
Alsado lost two nephews, one aged 20 and another just nine, and narrowly avoided airstrikes and barrel bombs as he drove through the city with his son. The family moved to a relatively safe spot in Damascus but, as the situation deteriorated further, he headed toward Europe. His plan was to find a new home and then go back for his family.
He made it to Turkey and hopped on a smuggler’s boat to Greece, where the coast guard promptly fired live rounds at them, wounding a little girl who sat next to him. Alsado found himself in jail, “humiliated,” and he headed back to Syria.
When he returned, he was put in prison by the Assad regime and forced to pay a 22,000 US dollar bribe to free himself. As he sat in an underground cell with 200 other men, he fainted several times while hearing people tortured nearby.
Fearing arrest again, he fled with his family to Turkey. An old friend who had immigrated to Canada 20 years ago applied to be a private sponsor for the Alsados and, by February 2016, they were in Canada.
When the customs and immigration officer welcomed him to Canada, he thanked her and she replied, “No, thank you for being here.”
“These words I can never forget. It was a very warm welcome that I’ll never forget. … That was amazing. I loved this country the moment I arrived because of this lady,” Alsado said Wednesday.
With no way to transfer his credentials as a pathologist — many of the documents were lost in the war — Alsado began working in Edmonton at a nearby Pizza Hut. A few months later, he picked up a job at Alberta Hospital as a psychiatric aide and, just last week, he secured a casual job as a lab assistant.
He counts himself lucky to be employed at all.
“I think I was lucky … meeting good people, nice people who will welcome you,” he said.
Alsado says he was lucky to have one thing many refugees lack: a growing network of friends and contacts to help him out and recommend him for jobs.
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