“I do not want to adapt here, honestly. We want to go abroad.”
We met Samer for the first time in 2019, three years after his arrival in Jordan. In his opinion, integration in Jordan is neither possible nor desirable for his family. The traumatic experiences he faced in Iraq had made it hard for him to trust people around him. He was not interested in making friends with Jordanians or anyone else for that matter, not even Iraqis.
Sitting in his temporary home in Amman, Samer, an Iraqi citizen in his sixties, recalls a time when life was relatively comfortable for his family. Samer has a bachelor’s degree in physics and worked as a teacher in his home country. The family, which includes his wife and eight children, managed to live a decent life, especially after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 when teachers’ salaries increased.
Their entire life turned upside down when the Islamic State attacked their hometown of Mosul in 2014. Forced to flee for their lives, Samer’s family sought refuge in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. He tried to work as a teacher in Erbil, but the living expenses became more demanding, making it difficult to make ends meet. They felt that they had no future in Iraq as they saw that the return to their home in Mosul was next to impossible.
“The lessons that we have learned with the conflict in Iraq were very harsh. We started thinking, ‘What if we go back home and something bad happens again?’ At the moment, there is ISIS, but maybe later there would be other invasions. What could we do then? Should we keep building houses, working and saving up only to have other people come and take everything overnight? Or maybe getting killed? Would I allow this to happen to my family again? No, never!”
Traumatized by the conflict in Iraq, Samer’s family decided to move to Australia where some of their close family lived. For this to be possible, they had to move to another country where they could register as refugees and apply for resettlement at the Australian Embassy through the sponsorship route. They had the option to go to either Jordan or Turkey. They decided to come to Jordan because they heard from others who came before them that the process would be easier and faster there.
Samer explained that the decision was final, and so the family arrived in Jordan in 2017. Ever since, they have been focused on arranging everything for their move to Australia. However, it has taken much longer than they expected. As they waited to move to their final destination, they remained “stuck” in Jordan which was just meant to be a transit country. Unable to work, they struggled to cover their basic expenses of rent, food, and medication.
Stuck in transit
“Living expenses in Jordan are very high, even Jordanians are having a hard time, let alone refugees.” All Samer could think of was moving to Australia where he believed his family could lead a decent life and enjoy the safety and freedom that would enable them to move around, study, and work without fear.
But the process to apply for the visa to Australia has not been easy. Their application was already rejected five times by the Australian Embassy. The first time it was rejected because Samer’s son had returned to Kurdistan. Kurdistan was a safe area in Iraq where his son hoped to find some work and finally support the rest of the family who stayed in Jordan. They had no idea that the effort to earn a little money to support themselves could jeopardize their future.
Samer decided that no one in the family would travel to Iraq going forward, even if that meant they had to live with financial hardships until the time they left for Australia. Samer even needed to go back to Iraq to complete the paperwork for his pension, which could have supported their financial situation, but decided against it out of fear of jeopardizing their applications a second time.
In the next attempts they applied through agents and got rejected every time due to incomplete documents. The rejection of their visa applications had been really hard on the family. Not only did it delay their plans, but also caused a huge financial burden as they had to pay substantial processing fees for their big family with each application submission. One of his sons has developed diabetes due to the continuous stress, further adding to their financial pressures.
Waiting for “magic” to happen
Each time their application was rejected, they had no choice but to apply again and hope for some “magic” to happen the next time around. Until that time, they had to find money to pay the rent, put food on the table, buy medicines, and of course pay for the visa application submissions. The family did not receive any regular humanitarian assistance. They were supported in the initial months by the church, but that stopped due to limited funds.
As a result, the family felt forced to look for other sources of income, no matter how unstable or meagre they may be. Samer’s two sons would find daily wage work with a catering company whenever there were events. The work was never regular, and events came to a complete halt with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Samer’s wife, Reem, also worked with a local NGO sewing clothes, bags, and other craft products with traditional designs. She hoped to earn money and support her family. The income she could earn hardly helped. She used to receive only 1.5 JOD (~$2) per hour worked, and even this was paid only once the products she made were sold. She said she had earned 27 JOD (~$38) in the four months before we met her. She could not depend on this money but thought that at least she had a chance to get out of the house and meet other women at the workshop.
With highly irregular and insufficient income, the family had to depend on assistance from family members abroad. They insisted that these amounts were “debts” that they had to pay them back once they settled in a third country and started working there. This burden of debt deeply troubled Samer and also affected the relations with his family members. But he had no other option.
Searching for a dignified life
Throughout our conversations with Samer, it was obvious he was deeply frustrated with humanitarian organizations and the way they distributed aid. He felt the systems were unfair and had established hierarchies among refugees based on the country of origin. He thought that people, including other Iraqi refugees he knew, would manipulate social workers, and convince them that they qualified for assistance even though they did not.
“I can leave this apartment and go live in a place with poor conditions, one that is damp and moldy with broken furniture. But I cannot compromise on my dignity to qualify for assistance.”
Samer insisted that such a compromise would be against his principles. He simply needs some monthly assistance to help his family survive until the time they can leave for their final destination—a country where they can work and earn their living, and live self-sufficient, dignified lives.
In the meantime, while this dream remains unrealized, Samer and his family are barely getting by. They often have to resort to survival strategies such as cutting down on daily meals, buying from secondhand markets, keeping a diligent watch for discounts, and using home remedies when someone is sick in the family. Reem needs a surgery that they cannot afford. At best, Caritas, an international NGO, will partially cover the costs, but that is not enough. There is no way they can afford the remaining expense. The only thing they can do is to wait to either find enough money or move to Australia where Reem could be treated.
For many Iraqis, especially those who came from the Mosul area in 2014–2015, Jordan can never be their home. Samer feels the same, but the seemingly endless wait for resettlement has taken a toll on their financial and psychological situation. His family has not found proper jobs or made any friends. They have lived “in transit” for half a decade, which isn’t really living at all.