Arwa

One of Syria’s lost generation…

Before the war broke out, Arwa was granted a scholarship to study archaea-anthropology in France.

Back then, she often went back to her native Syria to do research in the Ancient City of Palmyra, among others, and of course to see her family in Damascus.

When talking about her country, she recalls people enjoying life on the many terraces shaded by orange trees and children playing football on the squares. She remembers that it was pleasant to live in Syria.

On a professional level, she was fulfilling her dream by digging in the Bronze Age, studying the habits human beings had more than four thousand years ago. Teeth and bones can tell a lot about people, even centuries later.

In 2011, the “events”, as she calls it, referring to the beginning of the demonstrations, started. In Damascus, Aleppo, Daraa and many other towns, the civil uprising was bloodily cracked down.

From then on, everything changed in Arwa’s life. Young educated Syrians were seen as a problem by the regime, a potential threat. In 2012, she was going back to Syria for a mission when she was arrested at the Damascus Airport. She spent the day in the secret police headquarters, a building where many people were seen for the last time. After hours of interrogation, she was finally released. Going back to her studies in Paris, she knew she had probably seen her family for the last time.

“A few months later, I received a notice firing me from my post at the University of Damascus, once again, without any explanation. At that moment, I made the difficult decision to apply for refugee status and to continue the second life I had started in France.”

This decision was hard to take because Arwa was already born a refugee. She never had a passport. Her father is a Palestinian refugee of 1948. She is therefore born as a Palestinian refugee in Syria.

When she decided to apply for the status in France, she had the feeling she was going through the same process all over again, in another country.

“When I applied for the refugee status here, I felt I was betraying my dreams.”

It’s been seven years. Her home country, in ashes, has been totally disfigured by human madness. Arwa’s family still lives in Damascus. She often writes to them on WhatsApp.

“When everything turned upside down, I locked myself in. I did not want to go out, I did not want to talk about Syria anymore. Because of that, I had a hard-time re-integrating myself into European society”.

Arwa rebuilt her life in Belgium when the Free University of Brussels (FUB) launched a post-doctorate scholarship for refugees. The so-called “Khaled al-Asaad” scholarship was named in tribute to the famous Syrian Archaeologist publicly beheaded by ISIS just because he was a man of knowledge. Arwa had the opportunity to work with him in the Ancient City of Palmyra.

Her project on the archaeology of the Middle East, in line with her PhD research, was successfully selected by the University. “Working on the archaeology of the Middle East is my way of staying connected to my land and somehow, my own way to contribute” she says.

When talking about herself, Arwa says she’s part of the lucky ones. “For people who come here directly, it’s another journey, it’s another story.”

Besides her research, she decided to put her personal experience at their service by dedicating her free time to RANA (“Refugees are not alone”), a non-profit organisation helping refugees to integrate in social and professional life in Belgium.

One flew into a new home is a blog page promoted by the S&D Group in the European Parliament. In the lead up to UN World Refugee Day it will tell the stories of people who have arrived in Europe as refugees and made new lives here. It aims to tell the stories of every day integration — of people who have been given a chance for a new life in Europe and how they are contributing to their new adopted homes. The S&D Group is fighting for more funds to help the integration of refugees into their new host societies and has been at the forefront of the push for reform of the EU asylum system. The Group wants to see a fairer sharing of responsibilities between all EU member states and wants to push back against the demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers that has become common from right wing media and politicians in many EU countries.