New start for refugees, Germany

BERLIN — Lilas Al Loulou was an English literature major in Damascus and a political activist during the Arab Spring uprising.

Firas Ibrahim owned a photo studio in Damascus that made wedding videos. Ahmed Samer ran a small business in Aleppo with his wife that sold air conditioners and fridges. All three fled Syria’s civil war and made the risky sea journey to Greece and onward to Germany in 2015.

They don’t fit the fearsome stereotypes that drove the Brexit vote and have propelled populist parties across Europe.

They are an antidote to over-hyped fears.

Ye t th es e three immigrants are not atypical of the nearly 430,000 Syrian asylum-seekers who reached Germany last year, who make up 40 percent of the 1.1 million immigrants that arrived in 2015.

Many recent Syrian refugees come from the urban middle class. They are eager to learn German and find a job, or even open their own businesses. Forward-thinking German officials see them as an asset in a country with an aging population.

This is not to deny that many Syrians, or Iraqis (who make up 11 percent of the 2015 arrivals), or Afghans (14 percent) may be less sophisticated or have more cultural conflicts with their new home. There is definitely a need to staunch the immigrant influx by tightening the European Union’s external borders, which is happening now.

But it is important to recognize the sizable number of Syrians who could become an economic asset to Germany if they receive modest assistance. Theirs are the stories the populist parties want to obscure.

I met 27-year-old Al Loulou at a conference on refugee integration sponsored by the Heinrich Boll Foundation, which has close ties to the German Green Party. She was striking in a black-and-yellow dress.

A democracy activist, she escaped to Jordan ahead of Bashar al-Assad’s police, but could not get residence and work permits there or in Egypt, where the governments are loath to accept any more Syrians. She fled alone by flimsy boat from Libya across the Mediterranean to Genoa, Italy.

Sent to a small, rural German town, she survived months of utter loneliness. She was not permitted to work or study German for 10 months until her asylum application was accepted — rules that are now being relaxed in order to speed refugee integration.

But she hung on, sometimes running at 6 in the morning to cope with tension, and then hiding in her room. She came to Berlin, found roommates and part-time jobs on her own, and is now studying German. She has just gotten engaged to a fellow Syrian.

And she is in a training program for counselors who will help other refugees. “People who have been here for two years can help integrate others,” she told the conference. “They have the culture.” Refugees such as Al Loulou are perfectly positioned to help.

Ibrahim’s video studio was destroyed by a shell at the end of 2011. The ponytailed Syrian Christian nervously recalls how he was drafted into Assad’s army, and had paid huge bribes in order to be assigned to an administrative job in Damascus. But by 2015 he knew his luck was running out.

So he forged a vacation-leave paper and headed for Damascus’ airport. He knew that, if he was caught, he would be executed as a deserter. (Two close friends had been tortured to death on that charge.)

But he was so desperate he was willing to die. By some miracle he was able to smooth-talk airport security, made the flight to northern Syria, and escaped across the Turkish border, although the smuggler he paid betrayed him and he was nearly shot by border guards.

Having survived more harrowing experiences with smugglers and thieves, he volunteered to steer a leaky rubber boat with 45 refugees from Izmir, Turkey, to a tiny Greek island. He had no choice: He’d been robbed of all his cash and the smugglers were willing to let the driver aboard for free.

After walking and riding across Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria, the 31-year-old Ibrahim finally made it to Germany, where he lives in a repurposed office building in Wilmersdorf, Berlin, that houses 1,000 refugees.

However, Ibrahim is about to move into an apartment, with the help of a German volunteer. (Hundreds of volunteers still come daily to Wilmersdorf.) He is eager to start studying German.

“I am shocked at where I am and still tired,” he says, but he smiles for the first time when he picks up the electric guitar that someone gave him. “I will apply for an internship,” he says. “After three years I can get work as a music engineer. I love rock music.” This is a man with a plan.

Of course, some middle-class Syrians hope to return home.

Samer, 43, also in Wilmersdorf, shows me smartphone photos of his gorgeous long-haired Lebanese wife and three kids. He is desperate to bring them to Germany once his status is confirmed.

Avowedly apolitical, he fled Aleppo because civilians were caught between Russian bombs and shelling by radical Islamist rebels. “I am the real Muslim,” he says angrily. “They are trying to ruin the identity of the Muslims.”

He, too, went through a hell of rapacious smugglers, a leaking, overcrowded rubber boat, and days of dazed walking across Europe. He is studying German, but is traumatized. “Just until the war is over,” he says.

Talking to these three survivors is a reminder that the Syrian refugee issue isfar more complex than the slogans the nationalists are peddling. Handled with care, it can bring benefits to the countries that take them in. trubin@phillynews.com