I travel a lot for work. When the flight home is over, and after the final exhaustion of body and soul by customs lines and luggage carousels, I used to race through the automatic doors to the international arrivals hall and grab a cab or Uber for the last twenty-one kilometres of the trip.
But for the past two
years, though still always heart-hungry to get home quickly and see my family,
I now stop and look around when I’m through those doors and free to leave.
I look for signs.
Literally. “Welcome xxx Family to Canada!” they say, and, usually "مرحبا
بكم في كندا." Sometimes "bienvenue au Canada”. If you know the
acronyms and lingo, no small talk with the signs’ bearers is needed. GAR,
JAS, or BVOR*? Have you already spoken with the family? How large is it? What
country are they from? Do they speak English? How do they feel about coming to
Canada? Do you know any of what they’ve been through? Best wishes for you all.
On June 6, I was there, in the international arrivals hall, with a sign. For the third time. I’d joined my friend Sawsan Awad and her family to greet her brother, Mahmoud, the latest human being sponsored by Ripple and it was at this exact spot in Terminal 1, in December 2015, where we had first met Sawsan, her husband Mohamad, and the rest of the Abdallah family in person.
Family reunification
is important for the wellbeing of newcomers, and was something that Sawsan had
said she wanted and needed - to restore links with some of her family after
being separated by war. And so we did not hesitate to sponsor her youngest
brother, who was still stuck in Lebanon.
It can take four hours for newcomers to walk through those automatic doors, but I always want to be there, just on the other side, even before the plane lands and for the whole time it takes them to get processed. With my sign, red and white carnations, and Canadian flag. I will not miss the moment the arrivals doors open and they come through, a moment that represents joy, journey, meaning, grace, relief, grief, sadness, happiness, weariness, survival, openness, philanthropy, resistance, resilience, family, citizenry, past, present, and future. I’m unapologetic about this. Such human moments generate more humanity. It’s a ripple effect.
Two months of
settling into his new life in Toronto, Mahmoud told me, “Arriving in Canada is
one of the best things that ever happened to me. Because I speak English, I’ve
faced nothing like the challenges faced by many newcomers. But settling in a
new community takes effort. I’m working hard and trying to get involved in the
community. I still miss my family and friends back in Syria and Lebanon. l had
no choice but to leave. After so many years, I finally reunited with my sister
and her family. She has three beautiful daughters, and the two older ones, Aya
and Reemas, are very happy and excited to have another uncle around. My sister
Sawsan was overwhelmed with joy, and burst into tears when she was at the
airport to pick me up.”
In a couple of weeks
I’ll be returning from another business trip and walking through that spot
where we first met Sawsan and her family, then Amr,
Rasha, and baby Kareem, the second Syrian family our group had sponsored, and now, Mahmoud.
And I’ll look for more signs, think with gratitude of those who’ve arrived, and
the many more we must bring through those automatic doors at arrivals.
*Government Assisted
Refugees, Joint Assistance Sponsorship, Blended Visa Office-Referred
