“Coming to Italy was not our choice, but one of the n options we had while living in Lebanon and fleeing the war in Syria”
Antoine was born in Aleppo in 1993, and 13 years ago everything changed in his life. In the wake of the Arab Springs, the Syrian people also began to express their dissent against an authoritarian regime in power for 40 years. Soon, peaceful demonstrations to demand freedom, democracy and dignity turned into a full-scale Revolution carried out in different parts of the country. The regime responded with an unexpected and atrocious violence. Hundreds of people were arrested and killed, and shortly after the civil war began. This spared nobody, mass disappearances and torture of dissidents characterized the conflict along with bombings of residential buildings, sieges of entire cities and war crimes.
Millions of people have been forced to flee and among them there were also Antoine and his family who left for Lebanon where still today 1.5 million Syrian refugees live. In the city of Jounieh they have lived for almost two years, certain of being in a temporary situation and, over time, they kept looking for different possibilities to leave the country. Italy was one of the last to show up and the destination of the humanitarian corridor that allowed them to leave Lebanon safely, and to have a welcome that would have not divided them.
“There are no words to thank these projects, we made a huge life change. I don’t know where and what I would have done in Lebanon if I had not accepted this proposal, especially considering the current situation, and in Syria things are not better.”
Antoine, his mother and brother arrived in Luserna San Giovanni (TO) in November 2018 and there, their reception path began. At the beginning it was not simple, the calm of a small town of the Piedmont plains can be too much when you come from a city like Aleppo, once inhabited by two million people. Moreover, while the recognition of his political refugee status as a Syrian was almost immediate, the same cannot be said for all the rest. According to Antoine, in Syria there is an image of Europe that is incorrect, exaggerated. It is seen as a dream in which everything works perfectly. On the contrary, initially, everything was very slow, waiting for multiple bureaucratic paperwork to be finalized before he could get his life back on track. In addition, he could assist to structural problems such as the behavior of police personnel toward migrant people, the lack of clear information about the legal procedures, or the difficulty to get an appointment at the police headquarters offices, even when standing in line from the early hours of sunrise.
However, when you are a political refugee your parameters change and what might have been a problem once, now it is less or not anymore. Being able to have a stable life, a secure present and future ahead and being guaranteed medical care are at the forefront for him. In Lebanon, Antoine’s mother needed significant medical care, but it came at an unaffordable cost. To see here in Italy the total reduction of these costs was extraordinary.
“Here the healthcare system is another world. If you get sick, you don’t have to be afraid that you don’t have money, and that’s something that a person who hasn’t experienced it, can’t appreciate. He can’t even understand it.”
Antoine never felt comfortable in Luserna San Giovanni, a small town with few people on the streets. But it is in Pinerolo and then in Turin, where he has been residing for three years, that he has finally found his tranquility made of chaos, street noise, people coming and going “because Aleppo is like that”.
During his last two years in Syria, Antoine studied at the University of Physics and taught physics and math to middle and high school classes, but the war started before he could graduate. Once here, he considered validating his degree but it would have been a very expensive process that was not a priority at the time. To start studying physics in a new language from his third or fourth year would have been very complex. In addition, reception pathways have a term, and after two years it is hoped that the person has worked hard and found a job and thus, an income to support himself. Enrolling in physics would not have allowed him to do that.
But sometimes you have to follow your instincts, your needs and strengths. Antoine, thanks to a training course done partly out of curiosity and to seize an opportunity, found his true passion: programming. After an internship with a company he was hired and in time became a Full Stack Developer, a job he has now been doing for four years and that makes him very happy. He is in charge of doing “all the sides we see and don’t see” of a web page, what is back-end, the database analysis part, and what is front-end, the visible part of any site. He sometimes misses the teaching part that he carried on in Syria, but with programming he found his world and was able to do something he never expected to do.
Through his knowledge, he was able to contribute during another moment of extreme need in Aleppo: the earthquake that struck the southern area of Turkey and the northeast of Syria on the night of February 6, 2023. All of these areas were devastated, but it is unimaginable the destruction that an earthquake of this magnitude could have caused in the Syrian area and particularly in the city of Aleppo, battered by decades of civil war. In such a situation, money is of little use. What do you do with a few Syrian lira when the stores have been destroyed or are submerged in rubble? Under these circumstances, people need basic necessities to survive as quickly as possible, and this is where Antoine’s work comes in. A Syrian boy had the great idea to create a site that combined the demand for goods of the people of Aleppo with the willingness to donate from the rest of the world. He asked for the availability of other programmers through a post, and within six hours there were 12 web developers, and within a week they had turned the site into a data source for multiple associations. The site was called
“أعط و خذ”
“give and take”, and it helped hundreds of people in Aleppo by getting milk for babies, diapers, blankets, mattresses, basic necessities for the elderly, and so much more. It was good to be able to do something for his people.
What does he miss most about Syria? Himself. When you go to another country you change and “adapting sometimes costs too much, tires you out, especially when you have no choice. At some point you realize that the costs of adaptation are not measurable”. What he is talking about is a change in ways of thinking and acting that have huge consequences for oneself.
However, in Turin, thanks to a colleague, he discovered another passion that he has been pursuing for years now, Caribbean dancing. Dancing is something he does for himself, to have fun. In Syria whenever there was an opportunity to dance he never backed out but there, having fun is something only young people can do. What amazed him the most here, is the possibility for all, and especially for adult women, to dance together for fun, without complications. This is something that one day he would like to see in his country.
Will the war in Syria end? Someday, when there will be the political will to come to an agreement for peace.
