One Syrian refugee celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Ohio : NPR

When Syria’s dictatorship fell in early December, a celebration broke out practically 6,000 miles away in Toledo, Ohio. On the car parking zone of a Kroger grocery store, households danced and sang to Syrian music. Ladies ululated, and males wrapped themselves within the flag of their residence nation. Individuals leaned on their automobile horns, expressing their pleasure on the finish of a regime that relied on brutality and terror as a method of governing Syria for greater than half a century and waged a civil warfare that pressured thousands and thousands of individuals to change into refugees.

The first time I visited Toledo to satisfy Syrian refugees was practically a decade in the past, on my very first reporting journey as a number of All Issues Thought-about. On the time, a 22-year-old named Mohammed al-Refai had simply arrived within the metropolis of 265,000. His scenario was uncommon. After his household fled Syria throughout the border to Jordan, Mohammed acquired a visa to come back to the USA. His mother and father and siblings didn’t. No one may clarify why; the State Division normally retains households collectively.

So in Toledo in 2015, Mohammed settled into a group house with some American roommates simply out of school who took him below their wing and referred to as him Moh. He started to be taught English and acquired a job at a halal butcher store. After I first met him, a number of the few English phrases he knew have been “hen legs, hen breast, goat, steak, lamb.”

Mohammed dreamed of visiting his household in Jordan, however after Donald Trump was first elected president, leaving the nation appeared like a foul thought. Trump had run on a platform of stopping Muslims from coming to the US. Mohammed was afraid that if he went to Jordan, he won’t be allowed to return. “I would like they be protected and near me, my household, however I am unable to do something,” he instructed me simply earlier than Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. “I really feel unhealthy for they not with me.”

Later that yr, the fellows on the group home called me with an update. “I’ve my inexperienced card!” Mohammed stated. The roommates threw him a celebration with a inexperienced cake. When he referred to as his mother and father in Jordan to share the excellent news, they cried and shouted. “Come proper now, go to us!” his mom stated. However Trump had simply banned journey from a number of Muslim majority international locations, and so Mohammed sadly instructed them he would not really feel protected visiting till he had a US passport.

He grew to become eligible to use for U.S. citizenship in February of 2020. However because the coronavirus shut all the pieces down one month later, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers adopted go well with. It might be one other two years till he lastly took his citizenship examination in February of 2022. That afternoon, he joyfully called me from outdoors the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Constructing in downtown Cleveland. “Sure! Sure! Sure! I am so glad I’m now American citizen!” he stated.

And some months later, I acquired a voice memo from Mohammed. “Hey my good friend,” he stated, “I am with my household in Jordan. I have been right here two weeks.” It was the primary time he had seen his household in seven years. One of many roommates from Toledo made the journey with him.

So when Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell, I instantly considered Mohammed and gave him a name in Toledo. I requested the place he was when he heard about rebels taking up Damascus and he stated, “My dad and mother have been watching the information.” At first I did not perceive. “Was your loved ones simply visiting from Jordan? Are they residing in Ohio now?” I requested. He defined that his entire household — mother and father, brother, and sister — acquired visas to come back to the US a few yr in the past. All of them stay collectively now. They nonetheless usually see the roommates Mohammed lived with for years.

Because the household gathered to observe individuals dancing within the streets of Damascus, Mohammed’s household cried tears of pleasure. He referred to as the McDonald’s the place he now works as a grill supervisor to say he would not be coming in that day. A WhatsApp group of Syrians in Toledo shortly deliberate to satisfy on the Kroger car parking zone for an impromptu celebration.

Mohammed instructed me his household would not plan to return to Syria immediately. “I do not understand how lengthy it’ll take to repair all the pieces,” he stated. “Right here it is extra protected … however possibly we’ll go go to again there.”

His household is from Daraa, a metropolis in southern Syria the place the revolution started in 2011. He nonetheless has buddies and kinfolk within the nation, together with an aunt and uncle who fled their residence throughout the warfare. “Now they’ll discuss something about Syria,” he says. “They don’t seem to be scared about something.” They not too long ago returned residence. “They opened the home, they cleaned it,” Mohammed instructed me.

After so a few years of uncertainty and separation from his household, residing along with his mother and father and siblings in Ohio feels surreal. “We acquired right here and protected. Nobody killed. Nobody in jail. That was the dream,” he says. “And we discover a good life in the USA.”

Mohammed says he may return to Syria in 10 or 20 years. However even when he does, “We’ll love America as a result of she is saving us, and he or she took care of us.”