My Experience as a Belarusian Mother Escaping the War in Syria
Yulia Rajeh writes about dealing with cultural differences as she evacuated from a still raging civil war with her family. As the departure seemed closer though, problems and dangers only escalated.
From A Powerful Job to Pregnant During a War
If you think that in the Arab world the last word is always with a man, then read this text to the end.
In 2012, I had been married to a Syrian man for seven years. We met in Minsk, my hometown, where he was an international student, and moved to Syria in 2007 as soon as he graduated.
Before moving, we visited his family in Syria several times, and I had an excellent relationship with his father, which gave me great hopes that my life there would be great.
Imagine my surprise when, having finally moved there, the first thing I heard from my husband was: “Remember, you are always in second place because the first is occupied by my mother.” I did not attach much importance to the moment, but I fully felt the meaning of the expression after the war began, when I was a young mother with six-month-old twins in my arms.
Previous to that, my work was my place of power, a breath of the European spirit in the bowels of the Arab world. I worked as a manager and interpreter at the Syrian-Belarusian Business Council and worked closely with the Embassy of Belarus in Syria.
It was an ideal job that allowed me to be back at home in Belarus on business trips every six months, not paying for the travel expenses, but earning money on my trips home. Therefore, I think it is not difficult to imagine how hard it was for me to endure my pregnancy in a Syrian village and moreover to the sound of flying military aircraft. Thank God at that time there were no bombings of Damascus and its region. All military operations were initially conducted in the east of the country around the city of Daraa.
The opportunity to leave
One day, on a sunny summer morning, when I finally decided that my colleagues had forgotten about me, the landline phone rang in our house.
From the other end of the wire, the voice of the consul of the Belarusian Embassy in Damascus came: “Yulia, hello! How are you? We are evacuating all Belarusian citizens from Syria. Would you like to go home?”
Of course, I would like to! Being in a country where there is an open military conflict, and having two babies in my arms, was not much pleasure.
I was constantly haunted by thoughts of what I would do if all of a sudden government troops started bombing our village which was located 40 kilometers from the Israeli border. If this would have happened, I could only grab the children in both hands with nothing else: no necessary things, no documents … And how far can I run away with these kids. These thoughts were frightening me to death…
In order not to keep the anxiety in me, I shared my fears with the wife of my husband’s cousin, Luda. The girl was from Moldova, and she and Tarek (her husband) also had two children. However, Luda was more positive and did not intend to leave anywhere, believing that nothing terrible could happen to our village — all battles at that point were fought either far to the north (Aleppo and the suburbs, Homs) or to the south in Daraa. She later bitterly regretted, of course, that she had not left on time …
One day, when Luda and her father-in-law went to Damascus on business, the village was surrounded by government troops and shelling began inside its territory. Luda’s and Tarek’s children, 6-year-old Lin and 3-year-old Obayda stayed inside the village with their grandmother. These shellings and the siege lasted for three days. Luda was cut off from her children, had no way to pick them up, and didn’t even know what happened to them inside… After this terrible experience, they packed their bags in a few days and left for Moldova.
Preparing for Departure and Blocked by my Mother-in-Law
All this happened after our departure, which became possible only three months after the consul’s proposal to evacuate.
Those long three months, I was a cold-blooded bitch, clearly calculating my every word and action.
The thing was that I could not leave Syria alone with the children, because according to the legislation of this country, children born in marriage, in case of divorce and separation of parents, remain with the father and he is responsible for them.
I could not leave alone, and my mother-in-law forbade us to leave together. She selfishly told her son, my husband, that she suffered enough without him for seven years when he studied in Belarus. And to my surprise, Mohamad did everything just as his mother told him.
Although, why am I surprised … after all, she was always in the first place for him, as for all other Eastern men: the mother is the first and main woman in the world. That is, the life of any man in Eastern society revolves around the women of his home.
The latter are so smart that they know how to unobtrusively control the mind of a man to get what they need. Fortunately, I had someone to learn from the art of lobbying my interests by carefully planting certain thoughts in the minds of people around my husband and his mother.
I understood that I could only escape the country with kids by leaving with my husband, who refused to go so as not to offend his mother. The Embassy called me every few days, warning that the evacuation campaign would soon end, and it would be very unfair to evacuate Belarusian citizens they did not know and leave in trouble someone with whom they closely cooperated and knew and were friends with. So, I set the goal that I would definitely take my children and husband from Syria. I needed a plan.
Influencing the Rest of the Family
Since it was useless to give arguments to my mother-in-law and my husband, I decided to act from the opposite: to make sure that they themselves made the decision that we needed to leave.
To do this, taught local tricks, I began to visit my mother-in-law’s sister and people whose opinions matter in the eyes of my relatives. I was telling them how good it was in my country, and how safe it would be for my children and my husband, who was about to be drafted into Syria’s army.
And at the end of our conversation, as if by accident, I used to add that all this would not happen, because the husband’s mother had already had a hard time all these years without her beloved son, and now we can’t leave her, and she herself is against it.
I calculated every word I spoke and planned every reaction. As a result, the right people began to call my mother-in-law and ask, why doesn’t she let her son go to a safe place? Because in Arab society, public opinion and the opinion of others matter more than even personal comfort, my efforts eventually paid off.
One day, at dinner, my mother-in-law started talking about the fact that if we want, we can go with the children to Belarus. Immediately after this conversation, my husband told me to call the Embassy and let them know that we were ready to go, but only for one month until things would calm down in Syria.
It was October 2012. That is, it took me three months of chess-like strategic planning to convince my mother-in-law to let her son, his wife, and his babies go to a safe place.
By that time, my nervous system was at its limit. I restrained my emotions as much as possible, pretending that I didn’t care where I would be, in Syria or Belarus. I used to say that I didn’t even want to go anywhere, but everything inside me was burning with uncertainty and a sense of danger and anxiety for the children, who by that time had already grown up enough, and moving with them alone became even more impossible since I didn’t have either strollers or a car.
Initially, another obstacle appeared on the horizon that prevented our immediate departure. All our documents and things were in our apartment in the suburbs of Damascus, which we hastily left when the area was occupied by the rebels.
Getting Our Papers from Inside a Surrounded Area
At the time of this story, Mu’addamiyat (a southwestern suburb of Damascus above) was surrounded by government troops: no one could leave or enter. Inside there were battles for territories, civilians were subjected to shelling, and there were also cases of kidnapping by rebels.
Our apartment was next to the main square of the area on the ground floor. We left there before the start of fighting in this territory because of my pregnancy. We took with us only the necessary things because we were going to return to live there. And to that time, for more than three months, the territory there had been closed.
My husband’s second cousin, who worked as a minibus taxi driver, told us that he was going to go to Mu’addamiyat to help several families to get out of there.
There was an agreement with one of the government checkpoints to let his car through. He offered us to go with him since we needed our things. Of course, we agreed.
However, he advised me to dress as inconspicuously as possible and cover my head with a scarf so that if we met the rebels it would not be visible that I was a foreigner. I did so. On the appointed day, early in the morning, we set off on our journey, the danger of which, I think, none of us was fully aware of. It should be clarified here that in order to reach our place, which is about 35 kilometers from the place where we lived at that time, we had to go through about 10 checkpoints.
Documents were checked at each, and military guys could easily take off the minibus any men, who could easily disappear later and it was impossible to find them. That is why I was traveling with my husband — the Slavic appearance caused servility from the Syrian army and being his wife I could help him through all those checkpoints.
We arrived calmly. The driver dropped us off near the building’s entrance, said that we had one hour to get ready, and went to pick up the people with whom he agreed to meet. During this period, many drivers risked their lives to earn money for a living in this way: helping people to get out of places of danger.
We quickly entered our apartment and began to collect things and documents. About half an hour passed and we heard a strange rumble. I asked my husband what it was. He decided to go outside and take a look.
A minute later he returned, abruptly saying that the preparations were over and it was time to leave. I repeated the question — he answered: “military aircraft” … Mobile communications stopped working. We began to panic that our driver would not come for us.
Those few minutes of waiting seemed like an eternity to me. Sharif (that was the name of the driver) arrived exactly an hour later. There were about eight people in his minivan, all women. The driver looked worried and hurried on.
We quickly loaded our things into the car and drove off in the direction of our village. Remembering those events now, I understand how deeply a person does not realize the real danger being in the moment. I remember I was tense and wanted to leave this dangerous place as soon as possible, but I did not realize that I was in mortal danger there.
In the distance, we could hear periodic bursts of machine-gun fire, with military aircraft around us flying very low. Everyone inside the car was silent. I was put between two Arab women so that I would be less visible.
We were driving the same way we entered. But having reached the checkpoint, the car was turned around. I still do not know what happened there, but we abruptly turned around and drove in the opposite direction, towards Damascus. Sharif dialed one number after another and talked very emotionally with someone. We got to the second checkpoint. The car stopped, the doors opened and a military man with a machine gun appeared. They collected IDs from everyone and carried them for verification. I noticed that the driver got out and took one of the soldiers aside, probably their leader, and quietly thrust a bundle of papers — money into his hand.
Bribes were common in Syria even before the conflict. During the war, the stakes only increased. However, at that moment we were ready to pay everything we had to be released from the besieged area. Ten minutes later, we were given the documents back and safely left the area in the direction of the Israeli border, where our village was located. Everything was over. We were at home. At night, Mu’addamiyat was bombed…
After our evacuation to Belarus, we learned that our previous neighbors died from a chemical attack. Sharif was taken away by government troops. Relatives did not know anything about him for a year and a half. He returned exhausted and said that he had been in prison all this time. He was tortured after being accused of assisting the opposition.
We left Syria on November 12, 2012, through the diplomatic corridor, kindly provided to us by the staff of the Belarusian Embassy in Damascus. A month after our departure, the village where I had also lived was shelled.
Almost all the young men went into the militia and fought against the government. My husband’s parents stayed in the village and hid in a bomb shelter, carved in the rock. They survived and we met with them in the summer of 2017. However, my mother-in-law was no longer that strong woman who invisibly led all the men in the family. By then management had passed into the hands of the younger generation.
