Sitting on the couch in her Edmonton home, as her children demand her attention, she stops to think.
“It wasn’t safe, we had so many incidents,” the 33-year-old woman said after a while. “I don’t want to go through that situation again.”
In the fall of 2015, Canada’s newly elected Liberal government delivered on its promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war in just 100 days.
Since then, Canada has welcomed more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.
Among them were Ms. Shamseddin, her husband Mahmoud and their children Ahmad and Ghena, who were eight and four years old when the family fled Damascus in April 2016. The family briefly stayed in Lebanon before being granted asylum in Canada.
According to Global Affairs Canada, more than 250,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict that began in 2011, and there are more than seven million internally displaced Syrians and six million Syrian refugees worldwide.
Survive day to day
After almost a decade in Canada, Ms. Shamseddin says she could never have imagined her family’s escape and the community they have now found in Edmonton. Although settling into a new country has had its challenges, their journey to safety is something she doesn’t take for granted.
“We had so much hope,” she said, smiling.
Every day in Damascus was marked by fear, Ms. Shamseddin said. Airstrikes shook their homes and countless neighbors died as they fled for their lives. Ms. Shamseddin said she was afraid to send Ahmad to school or send Ghena to kindergarten when bombs exploded in the city.
Her family members didn’t think much about the future, she points out, because they were just trying to survive day to day.
“I never thought about my life later because I didn’t know what could change,” she said. We think day by day.”
“It was terrifying.”
A resettlement that has its challenges
It was at the end of 2015 that they learned that Canada could offer them a future. They already had relatives in Alberta, who encouraged them to seek asylum. For Ms. Shamseddin, the choice was clear.
“We thought it would be a good opportunity for us and the children to have a better future,” she said. We had hope, but you never know if it’s going to happen.”
A Toronto mosque and church teamed up to sponsor the family, and by the following April they were on a plane.
Amani Shamseddin, who was only 25 at the time, said she had never traveled further than Lebanon. She remembers the moment the plane landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
“I was upset by it all. I imagined it would be paradise, she said. We were crying, we were in tears.”
At first, the family struggled to settle in Toronto, she said. They were crammed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment and faced the city’s affordability crisis. The family also regretted not having a Muslim community nearby. A different culture, language and climate were also part of the challenges.
Three years ago, they moved to Edmonton to be closer to loved ones. The relief of being near their family only increased when they officially received Canadian citizenship.
“We felt that once we got our citizenship, we could go wherever we wanted […] as if our dream came true,” she explained.
This feeling of security is something she wants for her family members who are still in Syria. Last month, the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, fled the country after opposition forces seized Damascus. This marked the end of 50 years of control of the country by the Assad family and 24 years of rule by Bashar al-Assad, marked by civil war.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Canada would continue to assess asylum applications from people who left Syria, even though some European countries suspended those applications after the fall of the Assad regime.
As of September 30, Canada had approximately 1,600 pending asylum applications from Syria.
Stay resilient
For Ms. Shamseddin, life since her arrival in Canada has not been easy. The family is still trying to keep up with the cost of living, and with now four children, she says she and her husband are always pressed for time.
But their difficulties didn’t stop them from moving forward, she said.
When she was seven months pregnant with her youngest child, Ms Shamseddin began studying to become a teacher’s aide, which she describes as “very difficult”. She graduated and now works at a local school, while her husband works in maintenance.
His eldest son, Ahmad, now 17 and in his final year of secondary school, plans to become a doctor. Ghena, now in ninth grade, hopes to become a nurse. The couple’s two youngest children, Selena and Mila, were both born in Canada and are now six and two years old.
Looking back on their years in Canada and the war they fled, Shamseddin says she encourages her children to learn from their journey and always remain resilient.
“Be the best example of a Syrian, of a Muslim, of a human being,” she stressed. It doesn’t matter what challenge you face.”
Corrected version. The Canadian Press wrote that Bashar al-Assad had a reign of 14 years. In fact, he was the head of the country for 24 years.
