From Syria with love

At first, I knew only that a family of refugees were coming to our Atlanta neighborhood. I had seen a community Facebook post asking for help cleaning the apartment they would use, and I volunteered my family for the effort.

Secretly, irrationally, I already loved them. I loved them the way you love a future spouse you imagine for yourself, or how you love your children before they take root in your body and heart. These were people searching for safety, much as my Hungarian ancestors had tried to do in the 1930s before they were taken to concentration camps.

At the mere mention of this family’s existence, a kernel of worry and hope began to spin inside of me. And what is that if not the stirrings of love?

I cleaned the refrigerator with bleach and picked crumbs out of a seal with a toothpick. My son and daughter, 10 and 5, brushed away cobwebs and wiped baseboards, while my husband tackled the bathroom. With the volunteers from the co-sponsoring church, my pagan family stripped the apartment of its errant Polaroids and refrigerator magnets until it became neutral, spare, a place of refuge.

Later, we learned from the sponsoring organization, New American Pathways, that they were from Syria, a family of four with two school-age children. They would arrive in two weeks.

As the date neared, I thought of the empty refrigerator, reeking of bleach, and the cabinets, lined but bare, and took to Facebook with a plea for basics.

The packages that began arriving on my porch daily were a salve protecting me from the increasing ugliness of the presidential campaign. “I can’t hear you,” I whispered as my PayPal account grew with money earmarked for food, diversions and educational materials.

One donation labeled “For our Syrian friends” was blocked as suspicious, and my heart raged. Then the donor tried “For our friends,” and the donation sailed through. “We’re stepping over you,” I whispered to the electronic gatekeepers.

My neighbor and I went to the international market with a downloaded grocery list. She has a Southern accent, blond children and a husband who throws baseballs in the street at dusk. Here we were buying Turkish coffee, dried beans, orange blossom water and Persian cucumbers.

I posted photos of our grocery cart, and in came more donations.

I went to Walmart with my children, where they helped me pick out a toy electric keyboard, art supplies, chalk and potted plants.

On our porch, our neighbors left stuffed animals, bedsheets, pans and cutlery. We filled the apartment with all the things we hoped would telegraph our collective message: You are welcome here.

While we cleaned and shopped, the family was being interviewed and inoculated in preparation for travel as refugees to the United States. We learned their names and ages. The father and mother, 36 and 28, were parents to a daughter and son, 11 and 9. Years earlier, they had left Syria on foot, with nothing, for Jordan. They had no idea anyone would be here to welcome them.

On the day they arrived, we greeted them with a phrase we had memorized, “Ahlan wa sahlan”: “Welcome.” They greeted us with a word they had memorized: “Hello.”

I showed them how to work the stovetop, the oven and the dishwasher. They smiled, bowing their heads. The mother, Ruwaida, looked like a woman who, after spending four years in limbo, had flown through the night from one country to another only to find herself in an apartment in yet another foreign city with strangers.

“How long can we stay?” she asked the translator.

“One year in the apartment, for free,” he said.

She slumped with joy and relief. On the floor, two black suitcases contained all they owned.

Every few days, I showed up with more donated items. At night, I read about Islam until I fell asleep.

They learned “thank you” and taught me its Arabic counterpart, “shukran.” We were all like toddlers when it came to language, with maybe 20 words among us.

I brought them over-the-counter medicines, Band-Aids, a thermom