Fitting in: challenges, triumphs mark Kurdi children's life in Canada

Being a teenager is hard enough without having to learn a new language and adjust to a strange culture. For sister and brother Heveen and Shergo Kurdi, the challenges are many 10 months after arriving in Vancouver.

Monday to Friday, they take a bus to their high school in Coquitlam.

To look at them is to see two students like many others, in casual clothes, backpacks and bags stuffed with books as they head through the doors and into class.

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Their family came to Canada under a media spotlight after their cousin, three-year-old Alan Kurdi, drowned trying to cross into Turkey with his family. The heart-wrenching photograph of Alan's body lying face down in the sand sparked global sadness, anger and calls to action.

For the Kurdi family now here, much of the story of these last months can be told through the experiences of Heveen, 16, and Shergo, 15.

Living in exile in Turkey with their mother and three younger siblings, sister Ranim, 10, and brothers Rezan, 8, and Sherwan, 1, while their father waited for them in Germany, the two eldest stopped going to school. Instead, the teens took backbreaking jobs that paid little in exchange for long hours. 

Shergo suffered permanent burns to much of his upper body from the steam machines at the laundry where he worked in Istanbul.

For him, Canada represents a real chance to achieve his goals.

"Work no more, I go to school and that's all good for me," Shergo said in halting English. "After I study I want to work … policeman or plumber, that's my dream job."

Looking every bit the high school jock, Shergo is already playing soccer on a local team and heads to high school in a team jersey and shorts. 

But not everything is easy.

Challenges at school

Shergo has had difficulties. He tells a story about one student who refused to engage with him on social media.

"He said, 'Where you from?' I said, 'I'm from Syria.' He said, 'You Muslim?' I said yes. He said, 'OK, no Instagram. Can you turn it off? I don't need you,'" he recounted searching for the right words to explain how another boy told him he didn't want Shergo to follow him on the photo-sharing website.

"It makes me feel so sad because we are Muslims … but we are not the Muslims who kill and slaughter."

School is also critically important to Heveen, who wants to become a dentist.

She works hard, recently scoring a perfect mark on an English quiz. But Heveen has also felt the sting of being treated like an outsider.

She has abandoned the hijab, a headscarf that she wore when she first arrived in Vancouver

"My mom and dad told me to take it off. This is better for me here in this country. And I was scared that when my friends saw me [in the hijab] they would not talk to me and would view me as different," she said.

Indeed, Heveen appears to fit in, wearing typical teenage fashion: jeans, slim-fitting shirts and silver jewelry.

Still, she admits to being reduced to tears when some students refuse to talk to her.

Sadness but also hope

You can view the situation facing so many Syrian refugees through the prism of the Kurdis' experience: sadness and memories of past trauma, but also real happiness and a sense of hope.

That is especially evident in the two younger children, Rezan and Ranim.

Both are skilled at speaking English, ebullient and outgoing as they play games and talk to family and friends. But here is what Rezan tells new school friends when they ask why he left Syria.

"I tell them because there was shooting and killing." 

Rezan recounts witnessing a suicide bombing where "blood went on the walls and the ground and his head went up." The suicide bomber blew himself up outside their family's home, body parts flying in the air.

The parents are resolute in spite of all the difficulties, agreeing that the move to Canada is for the children.

The family moved into a tidy four-bedroom townhouse in Coquitlam in September, close to schools for the children. The social housing is affordable, even though parents Ghouson and Mohammad do not have full-time work.

All the Kurdis say they are happy to be in Canada and grateful for the opportunity to build a new life far away from the conflict that has killed so many. It has also cost the Kurdis greatly: not only did little Alan Kurdi lose his life, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana also drowned. 

Ghouson said she is also grieving the deaths of her own mother and father in Syria: she was unable to see them before they died.

"I still feel a lot of pain because of Syria," said the 38-year-old, "but today I am putting on a happy face for my children. If I am happy, they will be happy as well."

Even now, the ghosts of Syria haunt all of them in different ways: nightmares, harsh memories of violence no child should see and a home they loved left behind.

But Heveen said she feels thankful for all that she now has in Canada.

"I like the place, the people, because the people have a big heart to help us and they feel our suffering," she said, sharing a shy smile.