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Familiar Air

Back in Turkey, retracing familiar steps, sitting in cafes new and old. The Euro is on the signs at an eye-popping 6:1 to the Lira at the ripoff exchanges.

I feel like I have lost touch with what is happening here, but of course, I never was in touch in the first place. Still the Turks are friendly. Still, new businesses and cafes are opening. Still ferries are running perpetually, finished…

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Lessons Learned? Canada’s Problematic Syrian Resettlement Process

A bit of a late add, but my debut piece for Atlantic Council came out end of September. I tried to run, too briefly, through the various weaknesses in Canada’s current policy approach to refugee resettlement and the better practices that could be deployed moving forward (all in 1,200 words). Grateful for the opportunity and hopefully not the last thing I write for them.

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An Interview with Bente Scheller

My latest is also for SyriaUntold, an interview on the foreign policies of the states most interested in the Syrian case, with one of the premier (in my opinion), Syria analysts, Bente Scheller.

Whoever thinks reconstruction could be used as an incentive for the regime to become less brutal or to allow for the return of refugees; whoever believes it would be possible to set conditions and expect…

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Turkey stops registering Syrian asylum seekers

According to this HRW dispatch .

It is a wonder quite how long Turkey has been able to erect a border wall with Syria, stop admitting refugees entry, shooting and killing some who try to cross the border, and not hosting them with full rights. How long can this go on with no condemnation from Europe or Canada or the US?

At the same time those countries vilify Turkey and Turks and conflate Erdogan…

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A Portrait of the Refugee as a Young Man

“They put mein the car tire, chest to knees. They break your fingers. And they started to hit me, asking me to count. They make a joke with you — if you say it is eleven, but it is nine, then they start again from the zero. They took me out of the tire after 150 strikes and the Colonel asked me again, ‘Did you want to escape from the army?’ I fainted a few times and they were still hitting me, so…

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Canada's missing Syrians

Canada’s missing Syrians

A new piece of mine came out on Open Canada yesterday.

In the weeks and months that followed, a framed picture of the young family from Idlib would appear facing church pews, all the way in Toronto, every Sunday.

The congregation of Beaches Presbyterian had experience with sponsorship before. They previously helped a same-sex couple settle in Canada from Iran. But after a year there was no news…

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Reviewing Samar Yazbek

I had the fortune and opportunity to write a review of Samar Yazbek’s A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution for Syria Untold.

The author takes coffee with regime-loyal couples by day and revolutionaries by night. She interviews a student protestor, then an illiterate fisherman. Each speaks at their length. The latter tells her, “We want them to leave us alone so we can live…

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In Gaziantep the weather is practically balmy, the sun still beating back the chill as November gets late. But it sets early.

I am disappointed that friends here refuse group appointments because they are distrustful and grudge-bearing. I see them individually, a mixed bag of resignation and getting on with it.

A large, ongoing NGO exodus began this year, much of it unwilling. Others have set…

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...to Finland from Greece from Deir al-Zor

…to Finland from Greece from Deir al-Zor

Last time I was in Athens I met the young man from this post.

He finally got news he was being resettled in Finland a few months ago.

He says things are better there, but that he has not learned any Finnish yet.

One main complaint of his after being ‘temporarily’ in Greece for two years was that the EU resettlement plan was a lottery, so he did not know to where he would be relocated, and hence,…

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Returning to Gaziantep

We Need Our Imaginings Confirmed

The title of a recent Global News article:

How chocolate-selling Syrian-refugee family defied skeptics, made their dream in Canada

This Syrian-refugee family did not defy sketpics— another phrase overspilled on the English language from the reservoir of cliché by ESPN athlete profiles and puff pieces everywhere. The article indicates they may have been too busy: fleeing their country, surviving…

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#Canada #Global News #journalism #Justin Trudeau #refugee #Samar yazbek #sponsorship #Syria #Wendy Pearlman

Adventures in Understanding the Other

Toronto —

There is a barbershop with Arabic signage that only takes cash in my sister’s neighbourhood. As I waited on the couch for my turn — is that Turkish I hear? —

Mehmet the barber turns out to be an old man from Konya. And after I butchered some Turkish — his eyes wide enough to ask me twice where I was actually from — he was quick to get into the nitty gritty of my experiences in…

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The Shell by Mustafa Khalifa

The Shellis somehow very important and unknown. In a media landscape full of stories on Syria and opinions and panels and angles and infographics — this book, well known in the Arabic world and famous in Syria had trouble finding a publishing house in English and has received basically zero English press. I have been shopping the following review for five months now without success. I don’t think…

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? from Foreign Affairs

An overwhelming majority of those we surveyed—close to 90 percent—embraced the idea of returning to Syria when the war is over. These interviews thus provide a rare glimpse into the views of those who consider themselves part of the country’s future

This is dumb.

This glimpse isn’t rare — nor is it really a glimpse. There are millions of Syrian refugees around the world and any one of them will…

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