Month: May 2019

In August 2015, Suhair and her children, Naela, then 26, Maisam, 19, and Yousef, 13, fled Syria to reunite with her daughter Souad, 22, risking a dangerous journey across 15 miles of the Aegean Sea in a motor-powered inflatable raft. They had one main goal: to all live together again in safety. They were willing to bear the many indignities that would come with the journey and with being Arab and Muslim and Syrian refugees — if it meant being together. But in the end, the five of them would be scattered in four different cities, across two different European countries. (Out of concern for their security in a new country and the safety of their relatives in Syria, they asked The Times not to divulge their last name).

They joined one million others who also decided in 2015 to escape the catastrophes home had become. The overwhelming majority of them were Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans. While their countries had come apart in different and specific ways, their disasters shared some common origins, including the ruinous consequences of decades of American wars and sanctions. [full story]

At the end of her shift in January 2019, Suhair was listening intently to Bjorn Muller, a former line chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Inter Scaldes, as he explained in Dutch to her and the other kitchen trainees what each did well that day and what they could improve upon. Though she was not 100 percent sure what was being said, Suhair laughed when the others did. She had been studying the language for more than a year, but those lessons about van Gogh and Rembrandt, Dutch birthday traditions, the Netherlands’ history and the requisite forms for navigating its bureaucracy weren’t proving entirely relevant here at Orionis, a work-placement agency in Vlissingen, a seaside town in the southern province of Zeeland. Muller was talking about menus, work flow and hygiene as he gestured to notes he had made in washable marker on the stainless-steel countertops, where they prepare each day’s lunch.

The kitchen at Orionis is a vocational-training site, the heart of a fully functional restaurant and a cafeteria for the agency’s employees and students. The goal is to make the people who train here, who now include Syrian refugees like Suhair, employable in any restaurant. “I’ve never done this before; all my life was house and kids,” Suhair said in Arabic. “The last thing I thought about was Suhair. But it’s not wrong to try new things.” (Out of concern for her security in a new country and the safety of her relatives in Syria, Suhair asked to use only her first name.) [full story]