Syrian refugee family escapes war and finds new home in Indianapolis

Fleeing their home under threat of sniper fire, the family became part of an exodus of refugees from Syria’s civil war.

By Michael Anthony Adams

Lona Almughrabi, seven months pregnant, was told to wear black. It was after midnight, and with luck, the gunmen wouldn’t see her riding on the back of the motorbike.

Her husband, Marwan Batman, and their three kids also hoped for luck as they followed the bike, keeping clear of the road and hugging the sidewalk to avoid being seen.

They were told that snipers were lining the rooftop of a long building they would have to pass.

It was December 2011 in Syria, and by that time, the family had become all too familiar with the crackling of sniper fire and the unsettling drum of explosions. Fierce clashes between the Syrian government and armed opposition groups had torn and twisted their once-peaceful neighborhood into a restive combat zone.

“Get out. You guys have to get out,” Marwan, speaking to The Indianapolis Star through a translator, recalls his neighbors telling him. “All the families get out.”

Earlier that night, he stood at his doorway in the dark. The electricity had been cut off, and he could see others beginning to gather in the street in front of his home.

Lona rushed down from upstairs with their children, ages 11, 10 and 3. With government forces hunting for rebels, the family knew they needed to leave. It wasn’t safe anymore.

The Batmans didn’t know it then, but they were about to become refugees of a war that has lasted more than four years and amassed at least 250,000 deaths.

Their journey is but one among the millions of Syrian refugees who have been forced to maneuver the brutal landscape of war and seek asylum in other countries, including the United States.

In interviews with The Star, the Batmans, now a family of six, shared their story of escape and survival. Despite recent backlash from political leaders regarding the country’s refugee program, living in the United States is salvation they would wish upon their friends and family still suffering in war-torn Syria.

“I’ll put you behind me on the bike, and we'll go fast,” Lona, speaking to The Star through a translator, remembers the motorbike driver saying. “Hold on, I'm going to zoom out.”

Under the cover of night, the Batmans fled from their home in western Syria, Lona on the back of the bike, and Marwan and the kids trailing. The plan, if they survived, was to run to Marwan’s parents’ house in a safer neighborhood a quarter-mile away.

They’d left with the clothes on their backs, money, gold jewelry and little else. Although it was a relief when they finally arrived at Marwan’s family's home, the stay wouldn’t be long. Their trek to freedom, which would last for the next three years, was just beginning.

***

Before a civil war erupted across Syria, the Batmans were living an upper-middle class life in Homs, Syria's third-largest city. With a nice home and their own car, Marwan said, they were living more comfortably than most Syrians. Together with his brothers, he ran a successful restaurant.

The Batmans’ neighborhood, Bab al-Sebaa, was peaceful. The mosque and the church were near each other, and when Marwan heard the muezzin recite the call to prayer at sunrise, he also could hear church bells ringing.

He called Christians and Muslims “one family.” During their respective holidays, Marwan said, Muslims and Christians would celebrate together.

“We lived side by side. Whenever there was sadness, we would be together. Whenever there was happiness, we would be together,” he said.

Then, in the spring of 2011, sparked by a revolutionary wave across the Arab world known as the Arab Spring, Syrians began to protest for democratic reform. Eventually, demonstrators sought to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Within weeks, demonstrations turned violent.

Throughout the summer and fall, the Syrian government cracked down on protesters. Hundreds were killed across Syria. By December, Assad’s forces had engaged in full-blown street battles in Homs against armed insurgents.

The Batmans' home and restaurant were reduced to rubble as violence intensified. The family shuffled from house to house, wherever they could find a safe place, trying to stay one step ahead of the fighting.

For a short time, after escaping their own home, Lona stayed with her parents. Her uncle was a physician, and she had planned to deliver her baby at his hospital. But the day her water broke, her doctor couldn’t make it.

“We went to another hospital,” she said. “A lot of the hospitals, in the beginning, they did not open up for me because it was not safe.”

One finally did, and on that rainy day in February 2012, in a city labeled by activists as the “capital of the revolution,” the Batmans’ youngest daughter was born. They named her Remas.

During the next few months, Marwan couldn’t find work. The entire area was surrounded by either Assad’s forces or rebels fighting to stave them off — in a time before the rise of Islamic State and its acts of global terrorism.

Leaving home after 5 p.m. was too dangerous. His children were kept inside, away from the windows, for “fear of shooting and missiles,” he said.

“It got very unsafe in Homs,” Lona said. “Kidnapping, raping, slaughtering people. We felt very unsafe, and we started to get worried just to go down the street.”

Marwan had been treating the wounds of those injured in the fighting. He had seen bombs filled with nails explode and rip through flesh. Afterward, he would retrieve their bodies, sometimes having to reclaim their remains from the rubble.

He attended their funerals and helped bury and pray over them. There always was someone to help or grieve for.

His family couldn’t live like this anymore, amid this theater of carnage, bloodshed and hopelessness. Many of his friends already had fled for other countries, and as summer came, he decided his family also must leave.

In May, Marwan made the two-hour drive to Damascus to apply for a new family booklet and travel documents — required paperwork to exit the country, he said.

Then, on the morning of June 28, 2012, he called a taxi cab driver, who agreed to drive his family roughly 40 miles to the Lebanese border.

***

The Batmans were among more than 126,000 Syrians who would flee into Lebanon by the end of 2012, according to a United Nations report.

Lona and the kids settled into an apartment they rented in a Tripoli suburb. Marwan traveled into the city to register his family for refugee status at a U.N. office.

For the next year and a half, the Batmans scraped by. Marwan struggled to find work.

One Lebanese man, Marwan said, offered to start a small food stand with him. The man asked him for seed money but ended up pocketing the cash. Marwan never heard from him again.

“The problem is, the law is always with the Lebanese, not with the refugees,” he said. “They use refugees. They pay them so little, and even then, sometimes at the end of the month, they do not pay them at all.”

Lona was forced to sell her jewelry to help pay rent.

Despite the lack of work, the Batmans enjoyed some aspects of normalcy. With Tripoli being relatively close to Homs, the family knew other refugees. They felt a sense of community and still took part in Friday prayer at a local mosque.

Like most other Syrian refugees there, according to a U.N. report, two of the children — Rama and her younger brother, Rakan — were able to continue their schooling.

After the Batmans had been living in Tripoli for a little more than a year, one of Marwan’s older brothers came from Homs. He had been detained by the Syrian government for four months.

While he was in prison, security forces had tied his hands behind his back and suspended him from his arms for six to eight hours every day. They forced him to confess, Marwan said, that another one of his brothers, who died in Homs, was involved in demonstrations against Assad.

By the time he was released and reached Marwan, he weighed 70 pounds and his hands were badly injured.

“I took him to the U.N. to get registered and applied for him to be sent to Europe for treatment,” Marwan said. “When they saw him like that, they requested he go directly someplace (for treatment).”

When U.N. workers learned Marwan’s brother was staying with him, they recorded his phone number and told him they’d call. A short time later, he was invited back for an interview. They wanted to know whether he and his family were interested in resettlement.

There are a number of ways a family can be considered for resettlement, according to a recent TIME report, and the U.N. treats each on a case-by-case basis. Even if a family, such as the Batmans, is referred for resettlement by an internal U.N. official, approval isn't guaranteed.

The initial assessment interview is followed by a review. Then more interviews. More reviews. In between, there’s waiting, a lot of waiting, while the U.N. runs background checks on the family and processes biological screenings.

Meanwhile, the Batmans were running short on cash. Marwan still couldn’t find work. With no money left, he had no choice but to contact his nephews in Beirut, southwest of Tripoli, who lent him the rent he owed.

Two months had passed before Marwan received word from the U.N.: Go to the U.S. Embassy, they told him. Another interview awaited him.

At the embassy near Beirut, an officer questioned him for hours. Officials wanted to know about the most intimate details of his life: Was he for or against the Assad regime? Did he participate in protests? Did he carry a weapon? Did he think about carrying a weapon? Had he ever committed a crime? Had he spent time in jail? Had he ever served in the military? What did he do for work? Had he gone to school, and if so, what did he study?

When it was over, he was given the same line he’d heard many times before: We’ll call you.

This time, the wait wouldn’t be long.

***

Ten days later, the neighbors rushed to see what was wrong when they heard Lona screaming and something pounding against the floor.

They arrived to find tears welling up in Lona’s eyes. But she wasn’t crying; she was singing. She was dancing.

“I lost my mind,” she said.

The Batmans had received word by phone that their application for resettlement had been accepted.

They would be moving to the United States.

***

The Batmans’ friends were wary.

“A lot of people told us, 'You're going to a place that has so much disbelief and so much corruption,’” Marwan said.

Even Marwan was a little apprehensive. He was accustomed to Syrian media portraying the U.S. as an evil country.

As a teenager, Rakan’s fears were more innocent.

"I was thinking, like, how can I come to here? I don't know anyone,” he told The Star, using English. “I was thinking it would be a hard time.”

Having moved into three apartments during their time in Tripoli, the Batmans were once again packing their things.

In November 2014, almost three years after fleeing their home, the family boarded a flight in Beirut that took them to London. From there, they flew to Miami. Finally, to Indianapolis.

***

Four years after that night with the motorbike, the Batmans are finally living a normal life again.

Exodus Refugee Immigration, a nonprofit organization, helped the Batmans establish their life in Indiana. Volunteers found them an apartment on the Northeastside, and three of the kids — Rama, 15; Rakan, 14; and Raghad, 7 — were enrolled in school. In January, the Batmans were assigned their own mentor, Natalie Church, someone they now consider family.

Before the Batmans owned a car, Church would drive them to Saraga International Grocery on the Westside, where they could find specialty food items usually sold only in the Middle East.

Lona, 34, does most of the cooking and often has to make things from scratch because she still can’t find some of the ingredients at Saraga. Recently, their friend urged them to try burritos. She was unsuccessful at persuading the kids to like pancakes and waffles.

During the week, Marwan, 48, has returned to doing what he loves. He works as a chef at Al-Rayan Restaurant and International Market on the Westside, where he prepares shawarma from marinated chicken, kneads ground lamb around skewers for kabobs, chops vegetables for the day’s meals and stocks fresh meat cuts in the market next door.

Eventually, he hopes to open his own restaurant again. He said he wants the entire place to be run by refugees.

Lona stays at home and cares for Remas. The Batmans wanted to enroll her in preschool, but Lona still is learning how to drive, and they have no way to take their daughter back and forth to day care. Once she receives her driver's license, she would like to work, but doing something easier than cooking, she said, laughing.

As Marwan and Lona learn English, Church acts as a liaison to the older kids’ teachers at school.

The Batmans’ second-youngest, Raghad, who’s in first grade, is friends with everyone. She’s young enough, Church said, that the cultural differences aren’t as obvious.

But Rama is the only Arabic speaker at her high school, and Rakan is one of two in his middle school. Church attends their parent-teacher conferences and helps them if they’re struggling in certain classes.

“It's difficult coming into a new school,” Church said. “Then picture not being proficient at the language and being the only Muslim at your school. (Rama) does wear the hijab, so she stands out. That's tough for her. She's making friends, she's doing great. But it's difficult.”

Rakan also faced a challenging situation after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that killed 130 in Paris.

In an Indianapolis middle school, Rakan was approached and asked whether he was a terrorist.

"They asked me, 'Are you from ISIS? Are you a Muslim from ISIS?' I said, 'That's not Muslim. I'm not from ISIS, and I don't like ISIS.’"

The Paris attacks also led to Gov. Mike Pence calling for the suspension of resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana.

He joined at least 24 other governors who said they wouldn't accept Syrian refugees after reports suggested one of the attackers may have posed as a Syrian refugee.

Marwan was shocked when he learned of Pence’s decision.

“I am heartbroken, because I know the situation for these refugees and how they are waiting by the seconds just to hear if they're accepted somewhere,” Marwan said. “This restriction is only going to cause the death of a Syrian child or the hunger of a Syrian child.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit on behalf of Exodus — the same nonprofit that helped the Batmans — accusing Pence of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by accepting refugees from other countries but not those from Syria.

Another organization, Catholic Charities Indianapolis, decided to simply defy the order. They resettled a family of four, who had "fled the violence of terrorists," in Indianapolis.

Marwan told The Star that his family was fortunate to receive the opportunity to come to the U.S. Without it, he said, they would have been like many others who are fleeing, crossing dangerous borders and sneaking onto boats to escape the violence.

“We have left our countries because of ISIS and Assad,” he said. “People are really suffering badly. People are living a very devastating life. They just want to be able to live in a place that they are not afraid someone is going to kill them or torture them or their children.”

***

Sitting cross-legged on the sofa in their Northeastside apartment on a recent November evening, wearing a thin sweater and an even thinner beard, Marwan told The Star this was the freedom from violence that he wanted for his family.

Across the room, Raghad played "Grand Theft Auto" on the family computer while her younger sister, Remas, sat next to Lona, asking questions in what her parents call the child's “special language,” a hodgepodge of English, Arabic and something they're not quite sure of. Rakan was putting on his coat. He was headed out to see a friend in the apartment complex.

Even if Syria were free from Assad and ISIS — which Marwan refers to as the "Destruction of Islam in Syria and Iraq" — he said he wouldn't return there to live. He does his best to keep in touch with family back in Syria through WhatsApp and Facebook, but he wishes they could come to America, too.

He would still visit, he said, because he owns property there, but he wants his family to be a part of American society now.

"My first wish is for my children to become educated," Marwan said. "I want them to continue their studies and to be productive members in this society ... so they can not only help people here, but help people overseas, especially people back in Syria."

To Marwan, America isn’t the evil that Syrian media portrays. And it’s a country that’s more than governors turning away refugees of war and presidential candidates calling for surveillance of Muslims.

He recalls the day his family landed at Indianapolis International Airport. It was cold, below freezing. They were met by members from Exodus, and the first thing Marwan remembers happening was a volunteer putting shoes on Remas.

“They put clothes on (the kids),” he said. “They put gloves and little jackets, and they took them outside to the car, because it was cold.”

Marwan hadn't expected any of it. What he experienced was a kindness unlike any he had seen during the family's time in Lebanon. Not even a single Muslim, he said, or anybody else during his family’s struggle, ever welcomed them the way the volunteers from Exodus welcomed them.

"I want to keep painting the image to all of my family and friends about the goodness of the American people," he said. "I wish other refugees would be able to come and experience the same things we have experienced ... to find the same happiness we have found here."

This article originally appeared on IndyStar.com.