Flight to Freedom

By Laureen McMahon

A plane from London, England, touched down at Vancouver International Airport on Feb. 20 carrying nine Iraqi Christians to freedom in Canada, thanks to St. George's Melkite-Greek Catholic Mission in Burnaby and St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Richmond.

Laureen McMahon / The B.C. Catholic Iraqi Christians Falah, Samiya, and Nahala are welcomed to Canada at Vancouver International Airport by children and adults from St. George's Melkite-Greek Mission. Among them is Fawzia Namrood, at right, who has been helping refugees for a decade.

Dozens of Iraqis from both parishes waited patiently for three hours while the immigrants passed through customs and immigration.

When they finally emerged, they were met with cheering and a profusion of hugs and kisses. Bouquets of brightly coloured flowers were thrust into their arms by excited relatives and friends.

Some had not seen each other for over a decade, explained Fawzia Namrood, a St. George's parishioner who has worked with refugee families for a decade.

"Welcome to Vancouver! We are so happy to see you," the tired but smiling newcomers heard over and over again as they were led to the parking lot for the final stage of a journey that for some had lasted years.

Kalys Younan, who immigrated to Vancouver two years ago with his younger brother and works as a painter, met his second cousins, Falah and his sisters Samiya and Nahala, and took them to his home. In less than a week Falah had lined up a roofing job, Namrood told The B.C. Catholic.

In January, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to provide more resources to the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to expedite visa applications for church-sponsored Iraqi Christian families fleeing religious repression. See accompanying story Page 2.

St. George's relocation program under Father Maximos Basha, OSBC, has successfully sponsored 92 Iraqi families.

"Since 1996, 279 people have

Advocate wants to be immigration officer

come," said the pastor, who offers a Sunday Mass in Arabic at 1 p.m. in St. Francis de Sales Church. "Among them are Chaldeans, Syriacs, Armenians, Assyrians, and Palestinian Greek Orthodox. Sixty have since moved to eastern Canada, but the rest have joined our Christian Catholic eastern rite mission."

While the Middle East is today mostly Muslim Arabs, it was once the cradle of Christianity.

Iraqi Christians trace their ancestry to the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians. Today they are known by various names: there are Assyrians; those who belong to the Chaldean rite of the Catholic Church are often known as Chaldeans; and there are Syriacs, members of the Syrian Orthodox Church.

Christians in the area have endured suffering for centuries. In recent times Saddam Hussein's wars with the Kurds destroyed hundreds of Assyrian villages and scattered the inhabitants. Bombs were dropped on dozens of historic Christian churches, turning them into rubble. The fall of Hussein, which it was hoped would bring peace, has unleashed new religious violence against Christians.

Sponsored by a group of five Canadians, Fawzia Namrood and her husband left Iraq in 1993 when she was just 17, two years after the launch of the first U.S.-led Gulf War in 1991.

"It was horrendous, crazy," she told The B.C. Catholic. "We knew we had to try to get out. We made it into Jordan, and then got a visa for Turkey, but at the end of three months we had to go into hiding for almost two and a half years until our papers were processed to come to Canada."

They arrived in Vancouver with a 45-day-old baby daughter and began immediately to work as many jobs as possible so that they could afford to bring their families.

"After meeting Father Basha, I went back to Iraq in 1997 to help my parents escape to Lebanon, when he sponsored them with my sisters, my brother, and his wife. We are very lucky because our family is now all here."

Returning to Iraq was scary, said Namrood. She had a close call when she was detained for hours by authorities, and they wouldn't let her small child use the bathroom.

Namrood's is usually one of the first faces immigrants see at YVR when they arrive, exhausted by days and nights of travelling from parts of the Middle East and Europe.

Her time apart from work and raising her daughter is spent advocating for the sponsorship program. She is so good at the job she wants to train as an immigration officer. With her experience, drive, and fluency in four languages, realizing her dream is just a matter of time.

Father Basha even calls her "Fadwa" instead of "Fawzia."

"Fawzia means winner," Namrood explained with a smile, "but Fadwa means `giver,' so he jokes that it is my name!"

Namrood works nights to be free in the daytime to help smooth the process for newly-arrived families.

"We at least have a couch for them to sleep on the first night, then we move them into accommodation, find them a doctor, and get the children into school," she said.

The adults, Namrood explained, enrol in ESL classes, apply for social insurance numbers so they can start jobs as soon as possible and get health insurance, open bank accounts, and learn to use buses and other transportation.

Most immigrants, Namrood said, get jobs very quickly, and she credits business owners who are parishioners at St. George's and St. Francis de Sales with offering employment.

Namrood is sometimes called into a school by a teacher concerned that a young refugee is having trouble settling in.

"The child may have seen relatives killed, and other tragedies. They may have lived in refugee camps and become traumatized, which affects their learning," she explained.

Like other St. George's parishioners, Namrood often has relatives staying with her; her 62-year-old aunt has just arrived with some health problems.

"Our community bands together, which often means helping financially," she said. "It is a very expensive process to provide the documentation, which has to be faxed everywhere. Desperate calls come day and night, so my phone is always on.

"However the reward is to see the refugees leave fear behind and rebuild their lives. I am so proud of how our community supports their families. Some have even bought apartments or houses in a short time because they work so hard.

"They are dedicated to raising their families and staying close to the Church and making room for the next ones to come."

"We cannot thank Father Basha and the parish enough for the chance for a new life with new hope."

See next week's B.C. Catholic for more on parish refugee outreach.