NINE years ago this week, Renad Soda and her family arrived in Belfast. They had fled war-ravaged Syria three years earlier at the height of the civil war, spending the next three years as refugees in Lebanon.
Renad’s family made the heart-breaking decision to leave their homeland when her older brother narrowly escaped being shot by a sniper in their home city of Aleppo. Renad’s two sisters were only babies when the family fled. Her younger brother was later born in Belfast. Renad went to St John the Baptist Primary School and then St Genevieve’s High School where she sat her GCSE’s. She is now continuing her studies at Belfast Met and working part-time in McAreavey Pharmacy on the Falls Road.
This week the 18-year-old has looked on with her family at the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, with the dictator fleeing to Moscow as Islamist militants swept across the country in the space of a week, ending the Assad family’s five-decade rule.
Renad says she finds it difficult to describe how happy she feels. The events of the past week were as unexpected as they were swift.
“When everything started to happen we were scared because Bashar was still there and Aleppo was the first city that they freed,” she said. “It was scary for us because our whole family was there and we just heard every day that another city was getting freed, but it was exciting for me.
“My dad organised that protest in the city centre to stop the bombing because at that time Russia or Bashar was bombing Aleppo and it was really close to where we lived and then the night before the protest we just wake up in the middle of the night and everyone is saying, Syria is free. It was amazing! I can’t describe what I’m feeling right now, it’s amazing.
Renad Soda on the Falls Road this week
“I still feel like I’m living a dream because my whole life it has always been, Syria is being oppressed by the war criminal Bashar. For us it felt like a prison there and I would never return back, and I was just planning my life in a different country. I have had to settle into Lebanon and then leave Lebanon to settle in here. So, I never expected it to happen. But Syria is free, we finally get to say that word after 14 years, so it’s amazing.”
Renad says that after the fall of Bashar it is not just a matter of returning to Syria. She has lived most of her childhood outside of the country.
“Arabic is my first language, yes, but when I come to write in Arabic or read in Arabic I’m not as good at it as I am in English, so even if I think I want to go back and study there in university I don’t think I’m able to. It took me ages to try and learn English and try to be on top of my education and do well here, so I think what I want to do is finish my education and hopefully I will be able to go back, but at the same time we don’t have a house. Where are we going to go? Even if I go back, my grannies, all my family members died. I only have a few family members. Who am I going to go back to? Some of them are missing, some of them died.
“My childhood friends – they are all dead. They were all killed by the bombing,” she continues. “Whenever my auntie shows me the videos, she says that’s beside our house, that could have been us. I’m so grateful I got the chance to leave. Yes, Syria’s free but they are all traumatised by what happened. Every single Syrian person has either lost someone or is missing someone. My auntie, she’s lost her husband and for 11 years she’s been looking for him and she can’t find him.
“Yes, we’re happy but at the same time we’re heartbroken watching all the people get out of the prison and watching all the families meeting with each other and everything. But at the end of the day Syria is free and I hope everything goes back to normal.”
