Hannah Godefa, Serene Cheng, Noah White
About Saeed
Throughout the course of the past semester, our group has has the privilege of conversing with Saeed Alaktaa, a young man from just outside Damascus, Syria. He fled the conflict in Syria during a very comfortable point in his life, where he was embarking in entrepreneurship and on his way to personal financial independence. He fled to Turkey, had a brief experience trying to get to Sweden by way of Morocco and ended up back in Turkey, only to be resettled in his third country of Brazil. His community is not as populous with other Syrian refugees as major cities like Rio or São Paulo, but he is finding ways to integrate into the community through learning the language and working with NaTakallam. He also has long term goals of establishing a food truck business with Syrian food to preserve a bit of the favorite part of his culture – Syrian food. In our final conversation with Saeed, we touched upon his thoughts on the more futuristic elements of his life, and his feelings towards love, family and what it truly means to resettle in a completely new and foreign place. Among the compilation of conversations we’ve had with Saeed from January to March, we hope to share the inspiring words of an extremely humble individual who is driven and bound for success.
Transcript
“I think the war not only changed my life, or changed the life of my family. It’s changed the lives of millions of people. As I told you, I never felt in my life that I was going to be in Brazil someday. There are many people like me, a lot of people like me. And when I think about that, it’s only because some people want to make more. Because of politics or religion etc., but I won’t get into that. It’s really changed the life of millions. And my family of course, for example – my sister, her husband is in engineering and he had a great job, and in a minute they caught him in the streets and they sent him to the military, so totally the life of my sister changed. The other one, her husband cannot enter into Syria anymore, he lives in Ecuador now. So, I’m not in front of my mom, I’m the only boy for my mom and in my culture I should be with my mom because I’m the only boy for her, I have to do everything before she gets older, and I’m not there. It’s changed our lives, all of our lives.”
“You know, family is everything. They support you when you are down, they support you when you are up, when you feel bad, when you feel good, always they are by your side. So for me it’s hard to be away from my family.”
“When some people, you don’t know them and they help you, this way you can see love. You can feel that there are still many people that feel love and give love for more people. He’s not waiting for you to give him something, this is a kind of love.”
“When you feel love, you cannot say I feel love if you don’t give the love for other people. When you feel it, you have to give it. If you say you keep the love for yourself – this is not love.
All the people can see the love.”
“For me – I believe that God has a plan for us. If something bad or good happens to you, God always has a plan for that. For everything I’ve passed through I still believe God has great things for me. He wants me to pass through that, to be ready for something. I think like that – he makes me ready for something. He wants me to pass through this so I can be ready for something. I don’t know if this thing is good or bad, but I know he wants me to be ready for something.”
“I’m not going to stop believing in God – I have many friends – they don’t believe in God anymore – one being the man who I live with. He says if there is a God, this wouldn’t happen to God. God loves the people; the name of God is love – He has a name. So he doesn’t believe in him anymore, and there are many people like him – but for me, no. I’m always going to believe in God. It’s something where I don’t even want to talk about him with any one of my friends who don’t believe in God anymore. I have my faith in God, and He wants me to be ready for something.”
