Like living under fire

It’s night-time between 24 and 25 August in Aleppo, Syria. A young couple in their late twenties are standing on a balcony in the dark with their one-year-old son. The woman is seven months pregnant with the couple's second child.

They look up at the night sky above the city, which since 2012 has been transformed into one of the bloodiest war zones in the Syrian civil war between President Assad’s government forces and various rebel groups.

No one knows where or when the next rocket will strike and transform a new residential area into a chaos of despair, tears and death. 

The two young Syrians are dreaming of a different world. A world without war, a world of opportunities where they can continue their education and earn a PhD.

The couple are well on the way to realising that dream. They have spent more than six months preparing an exchange visit to a university in Denmark. All they need now is a Danish residence permit.

But there is unrest in the air tonight.

And then it happens. An ear-splitting explosion tears the silence apart and shock waves send vibrations through the concrete.

It seems the family have escaped unscathed as the rocket has hit the neighbouring building.

But the shock and fear has physically impacted the young pregnant women. She can feel the contractions start almost two months before they should. Suddenly Denmark and Aarhus seem further away than ever.

New country

Three months later Omnibus meets the Syrian couple Mohamed Muneer Alkhalef and Nermin Yahya in their small penthouse apartment in Aarhus. They are both enrolled at the Department of Food Science at Aarhus University where they will be taking graduate courses until next summer. 

We are sitting in a semi-circle in the dining alcove in the kitchen. Muneer describes the night on the balcony and the dream of Denmark. Nermin sits beside her husband and cradles their little daughter Jouli, in her arms. Jouli was born by C-section in the hospital in Aleppo on the morning of 25 August after the rocket strike on the neighbouring building.

Her curly haired older brother Ahmad struts around the kitchen floor between the chairs with a big smile on his face. He joins in the adult conversation in a language that only a child of eighteen months can understand. "What’s your name?" asks his father in Danish and gets a big smile in reply.  

On Muneer’s left sits the couple's Danish-Egyptian friend who has offered to translate between Arabic and Danish during the interview. 

"We are happy to have escaped from the war and very grateful to have the opportunity for a better future," says Muneer. 

Civil war

Muneer and Nermin’s story together begins in 2011 at the university in Aleppo. A friend who knew them both introduced them in one of the laboratories.

The couple moved in together in 2012 and had their son in 2013. All while the rebellion against President Assad intensified and developed into a full-scale civil war. A war that radically changed their daily lives, says Muneer. 

“It was like living under fire. Every day was dangerous. Some days it was just completely impossible to go outside. You couldn’t buy groceries or go to the university. And there were long periods without either water or electricity."

The circumstances made it almost impossible to study and perform the necessary tests in the laboratory.

"To analyse samples you need both water and electricity. So sometimes it took six months or more to complete one test," says Muneer.

PhD degree

For Muneer and Nermin this was a frustrating situation as they dreamed about getting a PhD degree and had spent many years working to achieve their goal. For this reason and due to the uncertain situation in their home city, at the end of 2013 they decided to apply for an exchange stay through the Erasmus Mundus programme.

They applied to three universities - one in Italy, one on Sweden and one in Denmark - and then crossed their fingers and hoped the same university would accept them both. And that was what happened. In April 2014 they learned that they had been admitted to the Department of Food Science at Aarhus University.

"I can’t describe how happy we were. I danced around the sitting room with my son," recalls Muneer.      

But that was only the first step. There was still a long road ahead to reach Aarhus.

Checkpoints

The family could not travel without a permit to live in Denmark. The application for a residence permit required a visit to the Danish Embassy in Syria, which is to say in Lebanon. Due to the civil war, the embassy had relocated to Lebanon’s capital Beirut, around 350 kilometres from Aleppo.

Both Muneer, pregnant Nermin and little Achmed had to make the trip in a taxi to be fingerprinted for the application.    

"It was very difficult to get through as there were many checkpoints on the road. Some were controlled by government forces and some by the opposition," says Muneer. 

The family made the trip south through their war-torn country from Aleppo to Beirut and back again in July.

The computer system

After that all they could do was wait. And wait. And wait. After more than a month they had still not heard anything from the Danish authorities. They were still waiting the night before they were due to begin at the university in Aarhus.

That was the night they were stood on the balcony as a rocket smashed into the next door building. And the following morning was when Nermin was admitted to hospital for a C-section. 

That evening, in the middle of all the chaos, Muneer answered a telephone call from the couple's contact person at the International Centre at Aarhus University. She had some bad news - their residence permit application had been lost. The Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment were unable to find it in their computer system.

Willpower

Miraculously the birth went well and the family was already back in their apartment on the following day. But the couple were dazed and shocked by the information about the missing application.  

"It was like taking two hard blows to the head. We were losing hope of ever coming to Denmark. All the paperwork had to be done again and now our daughter also needed documents," says Muneer. 

But the two young Syrians would not give up. And in Denmark their contact person arranged for them to email their documents to her so that everything could be handled by the International Centre at AU and the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment.   

Almost three weeks later they received a message from the embassy in Beirut telling them that their visas were ready for collection. The family could finally pack their bags and get ready for the trip to Denmark via Beirut. 

The jihadists

But the family had to go through one more shocking experience before they could escape their war-torn country. 

A couple of days before leaving, Muneer visited his birthplace outside of Aleppo to say goodbye to his parents.

It was only when he was safely back in Aleppo that he recounted what had happened on the way out of the city. There was no reason to make Nermin nervous, as he says.

Muneer had been stopped by two fighters from Islamic State (IS) who took his student card. He repeats the conversation that followed:

- Are you are a student?

- Yes.

- Why are you a student?

- Because I have a dream that I want to realise.

- No you don’t. You must come and fight together with us.

The IS fighters would not give Muneer his student card again. If he wanted it he would have to come and fetch it at their base, they said.

Muneer was allowed to continue on his way and when he reached his parents he asked his father for advice about the situation.   

His father’s reaction was: “Forget that student card, if you go there maybe they will just kill you.” Muneer followed his father's advice and returned directly home to Nermin and his two small children.   

The city of smiles  

On 22 September the family reached Beirut and they were able to pick up their visas at the embassy. A week later they landed in Denmark and were welcomed by their contact person from the International Centre.

"We feel very blessed and fortunate. It was like escaping from the flames of hell and getting into paradise," says Muneer.

The family feel welcome in Aarhus, says Muneer, who is both surprised and grateful for the openness he has been met with. 

"I had imagined that Danes were very withdrawn but they are actually the opposite. We have met a great readiness to help and I only see people smile when they see our family," he says. 

Translated by Peter Lambourne