We both come from Aleppo and arrived in Germany in 2015. We got to know each other in 2003 during a two-year catechist training programme. In the Catholic Church, catechists are something similar to religious teachers. We had both previously been active in different parishes, because faith is very important to us.
We are convinced that our human life essentially consists of three phases, but they don't necessarily always have to happen one after the other. It is also possible that one does not experience all three phases or that one falls back into a previous phase due to life circumstances and repeats it.
The first phase is about ensuring survival: having enough to eat and drink and a roof over your head, not being in constant mortal danger.
The second phase is about achieving goals: learning, working, building a secure existence, starting a family.
The third phase is about finding meaning in your life. This phase is never complete, it is a constant search and development in which the journey is the goal, and once you have arrived on this journey, you discover the true joy of life. In Syria, we were in this third phase. We had achieved our goals, a good job, a small family, our own company, and we were on a good and meaningful path with our voluntary work in the church. Then came the war.
Fadi: I studied chemistry for four years and worked in a laboratory and a factory at the same time. I completed my bachelor's degree in 2007 and then worked for a while as an employee in the office of a company that produced chemical-based soap and cosmetic products.
Then I said: No, I don't like it like that, it has to be done better. Of course, natural Aleppo soap has been on the market for ages, I didn't invent it, but it was my goal to produce natural soap and that's why I started my own business and founded my own company in 2010. At first, I started very small at home in the kitchen. That actually worked, I sold something and soon needed larger premises.
My father had a textile factory, I got a room there, and when he gave up his company and retired, I took over his premises completely. Some of his employees, six or seven of them, sometimes helped me out. I then also had a shop, even with two sales assistants. Business went well and we continued to grow.
Nour and I got married in 2010.
After our catechist training, we taught children and young people ourselves for years. The church in Syria is much more active than it is here in Germany, and it was when everything was still in order there, before the war. So it's not as if you could say that people believe in God because they are in need. I think that there are also many people who lose faith in war because they ask themselves how God can allow something like this to happen.
Before the war, there wasn't so much poverty and hardship in Syria, people could live well there, the gap between rich and poor people wasn't so wide. There was a large, broad middle class, not just a top and bottom. But now there really only seems to be the bottom, not to say the ‘underground’ deep below the bottom!
Muslims and Christians used to have a good life, were devout, went to the mosque or church and lived together peacefully. Of course, there were arguments from time to time, but that's quite normal, as it also happens between brothers. My father's employees at the textile factory used to be about half Christian and half Muslim, and there were no problems, that was quite normal.
In the catechist training programme, we were a large group, around 500 people, who did this training for two years in order to then volunteer for others. This voluntary work gave meaning to our lives.
We taught different groups, children from kindergarten age to teenagers, once a week for an hour, also with books, but it had nothing to do with school. It was catechism lessons, but we also played with the children or went on excursions.
When you have found the meaning of life, everything is fun, even work. But finding meaning also means that you grow and develop, there is nothing fixed or final, you have to keep going.
That's what success means to me: developing further. Success comes from following, pursuing a path, moving on, keeping moving, which is of course not always fun, it can sometimes be exhausting or even painful because you have to leave things and perhaps people behind along the way. Now, for example, it's also exhausting for me to formulate my thoughts in German, but when I manage it and am successful, it's good and I'm happy.
Other people may see it differently, they simply set themselves new goals every time they achieve something: even more money, more luxury, a bigger house, a nicer car, a more expensive holiday. It wasn't our way to seek material goals, we had achieved our goals and were looking for something else: meaning.
That was our life in Syria. Why did we leave it behind?
There was, of course, the war that started in 2011, although we in Aleppo weren't really affected by it for almost a year. Then the refugees came to us in Aleppo, internally displaced people. We also looked after them in our neighbourhood, provided them with food and everything they needed, collected donations and helped them as best we could together with the JRS, the Jesuit Refugee Service.
Our first son Antonie was born in 2012. Unfortunately, the situation in Aleppo worsened. The city was encircled, at times there was no electricity and no water. Antoine was once at nursery school when a bomb hit right next to it. We heard that a child had died in another kindergarten. Nour was at school when she heard about the bomb and of course she immediately left the school and went there and my father was already there too. Of course, they wanted to check on Antoine.
But it's actually madness: in a situation like this, people simply don't know where to go and just run off somewhere. It would be much more sensible to stay at home. A bomb also fell in Nour's schoolyard back then, but fortunately in the evening when nobody was there.
But it wasn't just the bombs. The food situation was also bad. On one day, for example, there was nothing to eat in the whole of Aleppo except courgettes. There were no nappies, no baby food, no medication, the whole supply situation was miserable.
Despite all this, we didn't really want to leave the country and stayed for the time being, but in the end we decided that we had to get out, especially thinking about our child.
We fled separately. In 2015, I went to Lebanon, to Beirut. Then I travelled by plane to Istanbul, where I stayed for three days. From there, I travelled to a city on the Mediterranean coast to cross over to Greece. I can't remember the name of the city, but I stayed there for a fortnight.
When I knew it was finally time to set off, I stood by the sea and looked into the darkness. It was two o'clock at night and I remembered that only the day before a boat had capsized and all the occupants had drowned, about fifty people. There were supposed to be that many in our boat, a rubber dinghy that was actually only designed for ten people. None of my people in Syria knew that I would be travelling in this boat, I hadn't told them. If I drowned, they might never know what had happened to me.
I thought: look where we were and where you are now. You don't think about goals and success anymore, you just think that you're getting on this boat with fifty other people you don't know and that you might die in half an hour and none of the people you love will know where you've got to.
I had already paid 2,000 euros for this crossing in Istanbul. I had the choice of paying 1,000 euros for an overcrowded rubber dinghy or 2,000 euros for a supposedly safer crossing in a good boat. I chose the safer option, but it was just a big scam by the smugglers, because in the end everyone was in the same boat, whether you paid 1,000 or 2,000 euros. You only had the choice of getting on or staying behind and the scammers knew very well that we had no other chance if we didn't want to turn back.
So we got on and were not allowed to take anything with us except the things we were carrying: money, papers, smartphone, clothes. During the day, you could see the Greek island we were heading for from the coast. It was only seven or eight kilometres. Normally it would have taken maybe ten minutes. But we couldn't take the direct route because of the police and the coastguard. So it ended up being over three hours full of fear in the overcrowded boat. Of course, there were also women and children on board.
I can't remember the name of the island I arrived on, but from there we travelled on to Athens legally on a large ship. There we were given a document that said we were allowed to stay in Athens.
Athens is beautiful, we were able to move around freely there, we were able to rent a house together, there were eight of us together in the house. Nevertheless, everyone tried to get further into Europe because the situation in Greece was not so good overall. There were simply too many refugees there already. As soon as someone made it, someone new moved into the house.
I wanted to go to Germany right from the start. That was the goal, the second phase, if you like. Greece was just the first step, survival. At that time, Germany was still accepting refugees who had arrived in another EU country. But when Mrs Merkel said her famous sentence: ‘We can do it’, I was already there.
I still had to travel on from Athens with false papers. The first and second time I was caught and spent a day in prison, but the third time it worked out. I flew to Poland, to Warsaw, on a tourist plane with false papers. Each of the attempts cost me 1,000 euros, so I paid 3,000 euros in total.
I think they just let some people through, it was a kind of game of chance. I was in Greece for a month and a half in total. But I came to Germany legally from Poland through family reunification, because Nour was already here.
Nour: I studied French language, literature, culture and history in Aleppo for four years and completed my Bachelor's degree. I then started my Master's degree and attended lectures for a year, but I didn't write my thesis for my Master's degree and started working instead. Alongside my studies, I also did a lot of tutoring. For a year, I worked part-time as a substitute teacher and did maternity cover. That was temporary, of course. After that, I had to sit an exam before I was offered a full-time position as a state teacher. I first taught at a secondary school and then for the last eight years at a business grammar school. In total, I worked as a full-time teacher for eleven years. I myself had French lessons as a pre-school child at a private school.
So: I completed my Bachelor's degree in 2002 and met Fadi in 2003. We got married in 2010 and Antoine was born in 2012. I practically worked through the whole pregnancy. I had four months of maternity leave, but then the war broke out and parts of Aleppo were destroyed. After maternity leave, I had to work for another two weeks, and then it was the summer holidays again, which last three months in Syria. So I was lucky that I was able to stay with my child for almost seven months. Later, when I went back to work, my mother-in-law looked after Antoine.
Then we made the decision to leave the country and Fadi went to Lebanon.
Thanks to my foreign language skills, I had the opportunity to fly to a church meeting in Italy quite legally. We were three women in total who were allowed to go. I had already decided in my heart that I didn't want to go back and had agreed with the people in charge at the church that I could take Antoine with me. I then flew from Italy to Germany legally. I also agreed this with the church representatives, but only in Italy. I told the people from the church that my husband was no longer in Syria and that I didn't want to go back there either.
Fadi was already in Lebanon. I also had to travel to Lebanon first for my trip to Italy because the airports in Syria were no longer functioning. I had taken a leave of absence from school for a year. In Syria, you are allowed to do this for a total of five years, but you only get it authorised from one year to the next and then have to apply again for another year. So I travelled to Lebanon with Antoine earlier before the trip to Italy so that I could spend a bit more time with Fadi.
After we separated there and I went to Italy, there were always longer periods when I didn't hear from him. The other two women who had travelled with me to the church meeting went back to Syria, but I flew to Munich. After landing, I spoke directly to the police and asked for asylum.
But I was only in Munich for one day, then a week in the camp in Donauwörth and then we went to Hollenbach, where we've been ever since.
We were distributed here and I was first together with another family in Hollenbach. This family was from Russia or Azerbaijan, but they weren't with us for long because their asylum application was rejected and they were deported.
In total, I was separated from Fadi for about three months after our meeting in Lebanon. After our asylum application, it took about nine months for it to be accepted. We weren't allowed to take a language course during that time, but we started learning on our own, got books and simply made contact with people here, on the street, in the playground, everywhere. At first I only had contact with people who spoke French. At that time, Caritas was responsible for us. I told them that I would like to have more contact, then I joined the MuKi group (MuKi = mother-child), but one wasn't enough for me, so I went to three different groups three times a week. There were also two mums there who spoke French. That was quite good. A woman who volunteered with refugees and spoke French also visited me from time to time.
There were also German lessons at the school in Hollenbach run by volunteers. I also took Antoine there. I think he suffered a lot because it was terribly boring for him.
Because we had learnt on our own, we were able to start an A2 course straight away after a placement test. Because of Antoine, we took turns at first, one in the morning course and one in the afternoon course.
By 2016, he was already in kindergarten and we were able to join the B2 course together. At the time, I was already pregnant with Josef, who was born shortly after the B2 course. Then I was at home with the child for a year and a half. During this time, Fadi started to work independently. When Josef started nursery school, I first helped Fadi in the shop.
I took the C1 exam in 2023, without any German course, just the exam. I wanted to study social work, so I needed C1 for university. I bought training materials and learnt on my own and passed the exam straight away. Then I studied for a month and stopped again, because it was very difficult with the children and the work in the shop and the foreign language, it was just too much. But I soon got a job as a teacher in the bridge class for refugee children through the education authority.
Fadi: After the B2 course, I first did a business start-up course at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK). It was supposed to last three years, but I only did one year. I sat there and didn't understand a word: Accounting, tax issues ..., but the Germans didn't understand anything either and sometimes even asked me questions. In any case, I did manage to graduate in 2017.
And in January 2018, I registered the company. Production started in Affing-Bergen. Nour helped out there two days a week, and we've had the shop in Hollenbach since 2019.
We're pretty well known in the region, there have been a few newspaper articles about us. We also know everyone here in the village and everyone knows us, we might even know more Hollenbachers than the Hollenbachers themselves.
That's normal for us. We know this from Syria, where everyone knows each other and we brought our way of life with us from there. We talked to people a lot on the street and in the playground, we simply approached them. It was perhaps a bit strange for people sometimes, but they were always very open nonetheless.
If you approach people, it's perhaps easier to make contact in a village than in the city. That's why we stayed here. I was on the parents' council at the kindergarten back in 2015, when I didn't actually understand a word. I was alone with four women and they were ‘chatting’, as they usually do, and I spoke English with them.
But somehow we were also active everywhere in Syria, and we wanted to do the same here, even if it is of course much more difficult.
Nour: It's difficult to find your place in life again, to find your purpose. It takes years. I never thought it would be so difficult, I had difficult years because I couldn't find my place.
That's why we sometimes said: it was easier for us to find meaning during the war because we could help. I often thought: I'm sitting here as a refugee, not really wanted by the others and nobody needs me. That's a bad feeling.
Fadi: I think the need for meaning is greater here, not just for us, but for everyone. Everyone is looking for something, but it's harder to find here than in Syria. There they are desperately looking for a livelihood, here people have that, but they can't find meaning.
It was important for us here to secure our survival and find work, we had to start from scratch.
Here in Germany you can keep yourself busy; people are busy with all sorts of things, skiing, holidays, achieving goals, but mostly not with other people, just with themselves. In Syria, we were busy with others. Being preoccupied only with yourself makes people empty, they have everything they need materially and are just killing time. If you're only busy working in order to achieve more material things, you might not even realise that you're actually missing the most important things because you don't have time to think about them.
Nour: In Syria, we were also able to help other people meet their spiritual needs with our catechetical work, but we can't do that here because people aren't interested. Before the war, work wasn't everything for us, but here work is already the centre of our lives. But that's the case for most people here, because work gives them a sense of independence and autonomy. It gives people a sense of security. In Syria, we were used to doing everything together, sticking together, that was our security.
Here, we don't have a centre of life outside of work. There are practically only four of us together all week, which is also a bit strange for us. Even at the weekend, we usually only do things with the family. We lack friends and relatives here, even though we probably have a lot of contacts here compared to other refugees and know a lot of people, but the relationships are mostly superficial.
Fadi: My brother is also here in Germany, but he is in Essen with his family and we only see each other once or twice a year. His wife was only able to join him after almost two years. They also have a son called Antoine. It's a tradition in Syria that the first-born son is given the grandfather's name.
Otherwise, we mainly have contact with Germans, not really at all with other refugees. In the beginning, when the first big wave of refugees arrived, I helped out as a translator at the district office with English and Arabic, but now I no longer have time for that and the need is no longer so great.
Nour: Life in Syria is also more spontaneous than here, here you need an appointment for everything. If you want to meet up, everyone pulls out their diary in which they have written down all their appointments until next year. Of course, I also have appointments for work and the children, but I can't plan all my private appointments for a long time in advance. The spontaneity is missing here, so it's kind of cold for us, even though we know so many people. The difference between the cultures is simply still there.
Fadi: And of course it's also exhausting for us when we want to talk about more in-depth things, we're totally tired after an hour and a half.
We have secured our survival here. Most people think that's the most important thing in life, but for us, meaning is the most important thing. And it's the same for most other refugees: they come here and once they have secured their livelihood, they set themselves goals, a better flat, a bigger car, more and more goals. But life is not just about survival, you can survive here as a refugee, but really living is much more difficult. Nobody talks about that when it comes to refugees. Everyone says: they have food and drink and protection! What more do they want? But the animals here have that too. The word ‘survive’ somehow also implies that you ‘skip’ life, so to speak, that you might miss out on the most important things.
Nour: I'm actually more afraid here than I was during the war in Syria. I don't feel safe here. It's not xenophobia at all, there isn't any here in the village, at least we don't feel it personally. But of course we hear about it in the media. When we first watched TV, we didn't understand much, but we always read the words "asylum" and "refugees", even when we switched to other channels, the same words everywhere, you had the feeling that that was all they were talking about. Until Corona came along.
But the xenophobia doesn't really scare me. It's more the feeling that I can't cope with life here. It's a rather vague fear because life here is very complicated for me. Of course it offers many advantages, but it's also a hard road to get these advantages.
Of course, life in Syria today can no longer be compared with the life we had there. Unfortunately, there are no advantages there anymore, except perhaps in a spiritual sense.
Formally speaking, we have been German citizens since August 2023, including the children. We had also applied for asylum for Josef when he was born. When we received the asylum decision, we immediately received an obligation for him to attend an integration course. That was nonsense, of course, because he was still a baby, but that's just how German bureaucracy is sometimes.
Overall, the bureaucracy was not such a big problem for us. That only came with self-employment, which was more difficult. But we had support from volunteers when we applied for asylum. What we have noticed, however, is that everything goes very slowly here. For example, the asylum decision only came after nine months, although it came much faster for us than for many others.
Fadi: To get back to the main point: people are preoccupied with their goals, their house, their car, their vacation, and they don't have time to think. We have now secured our survival and achieved our goals. We have a family and the shop. We have our livelihood. Now we are looking for meaning again. We also hold regular meditation groups here in the shop and talk about the Bible. But it is difficult to talk about our experiences.
I see the Bible as a great gift. It is not important to me whether I believe in Jesus as a historical person or not, whether I believe that Jesus actually lived or not. What is written in the Bible is definitely a gift for me. It doesn't matter whether he actually walked on water, what is important is that I can "walk on water" as a result. That is something different from religion, that is faith, not religion. I am not religious, but I believe.
I am not fixated on one religion, I believe that every religion can lead to God, and that you can find him without religion.
Each of these stories in the Bible means something to my life. It doesn't matter whether they really happened or not. It's like with good literature, you could say we meditate with literature, not just with the Bible. The Koran, and indeed all the holy scriptures, want to tell us something for our current life, and it's not about any facts.
Nour: At the meditation circles we tell friends and acquaintances and anyone who is interested to just come along. We always wanted the shop to be more than just a store. It should become a kind of meeting place or place to meet. The library in Hollenbach, for example, wanted to hold a reading here, but I don't know when yet.
Fadi: Of course I also find a bit of meaning in my work by producing sustainably and doing something for the environment. But I also get money for it. That's why it's just work for me and not really fulfilling.
I've received so much in my life and unfortunately I can't give much back here because the language and culture still hinder me.
I want to work with the church, but people here have a different attitude towards the church. In Syria, Christians are less critical of their church and have a more positive attitude towards it. That may also be due in part to the history here in Europe, the Crusades, the indulgence trade, the religious wars. Even today, churches in Europe are often just cold, without joy. There are no real celebrations. People sit there and are given an explanation from above. That's no fun. Fun means contact and community. That's especially important for refugees, as they often sit alone at home.
We went to Syria again in 2023 as German citizens and saw that we cannot go back for the time being. We want to, but we cannot. Just because of the children and the political situation in the country.
We know the country and were not afraid. If you have come across the sea in a rubber dinghy, something like that cannot scare you anymore.
The situation there is very bad. Nevertheless, I originally had the idea of producing my soap in Syria for the business here. My thought was that the people there need work. We wanted to help. But that is not possible. The infrastructure is broken, no electricity, no water, people have no time to work because they stand in line for days to get a loaf of bread. There is theft and crime.
Our dream was always not only to give people work, but also to provide them with training. Many children in Syria can't read or write now. They have to work. There are now millions of children in Syria who can't read. And because they lack education, these people are very easy to control, manipulate and radicalize. You give them a little money and then they do everything you tell them.
If I wanted to produce in Syria, I would have to be there very often. That would also be very difficult. And we now have to make sure that business here is running smoothly. The war in Ukraine is also having an impact on our shop. People have less money to buy sustainable organic products.
We have practically no walk-in customers, but sell larger quantities to wholesalers, to shops that then sell them on. Of course, people who know us also come here and buy something, but most of the sales come through other retailers, such as world shops. However, the war in Ukraine has also caused some of the retailers to disappear, due to bankruptcy or closure.
Acquisition is also difficult. There is still this mistrust because of language and origin. People think: He can't speak German properly and wants to have his own company, how is that supposed to work! I experience things like that again and again.
Nour: Our visit to Syria was very moving and especially important for our parents because we left so quickly and so suddenly and they hadn't seen us for so many years. After eight years, the reunion was very special.
That's why we want to try to do it again this year. We want to try to go there regularly, of course also so that the children can get to know their grandparents and their roots.
Fadi: Yes, we dream of going back home one day and helping the people there when the children are grown up and the political situation allows it. But maybe we won't live to see that. So we're making the best of it here. I've now signed up for a course, training to become a spiritual guide with the Jesuits, a two-year course. For that I first have to go through an application process with four phases. It won't be easy for me. I'm not getting my hopes up too much, because I think that this kind of training requires a different level of language, which I may not yet have.
It wasn't a problem in Syria, I didn't even have to apply, they came to me and asked me if I wanted to do something like that.
Well, I'll definitely try, and if I don't make it the first time, then I'll try the second or third time. It's just important to me to be on the right path...
Thank you, Fadi and Nour, for your courage in telling this story here!