Interview with Saeed by Abdou Diallo ’26.
Saeed currently lives in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Saeed was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. He has had many jobs since he got to Brazil from working at various restaurants, driving Uber, and now a partner with NaTakallam as a Arabic language tutor. Saeed grew up with two siblings and his parents; they split up after he decided to leave Syria to find a place for better opportunities and a better life. His sister and mother currently live in the United States; he also has family that are in Europe. His father passed away shortly after he left Syria.
Saeed decided to leave Syria because of political instability, being in a midst of war, but also because he lost his job with a tourism company in 2011. The tourism company was shut down following two suicide bombers entering Damascus in December of 2011. In the interview, Saeed mentions this moment as the reason why Syria was not the place for him any longer.
Saeed went to Lebanon for a short period of time but it was in Lebanon where he experienced racism amongst the Lebanese people who did not accept refugees from Syria. Throughout his attempts to get out of the Middle East, he had to deal with the fear of being captured at Syrian checkpoints. He later attempted to enter Europe through a series of fake passports, the police caught him and he was sent to jail. Saeed heard through a friend about the Brazilian government giving out visas for refugees from Syria. This new opportunity to get out of Syria came at a moment in his life where Saeed felt hopeless and jobless. He described the process for him to get his visa approved as a quick process and less chaotic as he thought it would have been. Saeed got his visa approved for Brazil in a week.
Despite his depressing journey, Saeed is very determined and optimistic about even greater opportunities in his life. He still has hopes of being in a country that will allow him to be financially stable so he can build a family of his own. He emphasizes how he never gave up faith in God and that his faith in God kept him from not giving up on himself to reach a place that would give him better opportunities than in Syria.
Listen to his story, below:
Transcript:
My name is Saeed and I’m from Syria. From Damascus. I was born in Damascus. I was raised in Damascus. I went to school in Damascus. All my life was in Damascus till the war started in March 2011. And I moved from Syria in the beginning of 2012. My life before the war was that I had a normal life. I was working as a manager for a tourism company. I used to travel a lot to Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, even in Syria in the north and the west. So when the war started in 2011, I was from the people who lost their job, you know, when the war started in any place, the first thing to stop was tourism. So I lost my job in 2011 since the war started, as I mentioned, in March. And then I had to move to another country. I had to move because it was dangerous especially for men from between 20 years, or 18 years, to 40 years, because you have to go to the military and there was a lot of checkpoints. If you are not in the military you are against the people who were fighting, so you should be armed and to fight with other side against, with one side against the other. Actually I didn’t want to be armed or fight, this is why it was hard for me. I knew at that time that there’s no chance to continue in Syria, no chance to have a future in Syria anymore because of the war.
So I moved to Turkey and I tried to go to Europe using a fake passport, but actually it didn’t work out. The police catch me. I tried to move from Turkey to Morocco using a fake passport, then from Morocco to Sweden using another fake passport. But the police in Morocco, they caught me and they sent me back to Turkey. I spent some days in jail in Morocco. I heard from some people in Turkey, the Brazilian consulate opened a visa like they are giving a visa for Syrian people who’s running from, escaping from the war. This is why I went to the embassy and applied. I applied for a visa and they gave me a visa in like one week. Then I moved to Brazil in 2013, it was a culture shock because, you know, it’s a totally different language, totally different culture, and a different country.
I had depression two times in Brazil. It wasn’t easy at all like being alone with yourself and looking for a job and you do not speak the language and you have nobody from your family with you or a friend of you. Every day I used to wake up in the morning to say, “I can’t be in depression. I am in a situation where I should keep going. I cannot stop. I don’t want to go back. There is nothing to go back to. You have to continue.” Now, I’m a Brazilian citizen. I have more freedom to move and travel to a different country like Europe or Asia or Asia or any other place. It’s easier than when I had only my Syrian passport.
I will tell you something. The unique thing about that keeps me moving on is my faith in God. And the only thing who helped me to recover from depression is my faith in God. It was everything in my whole journey. My faith in Allah then everything else. But without it, I believe I wouldn’t be able to get to the place I am now.
