Nariman From Palestine
Categories: Interview
Transcript
Fariah: Interviewer, Project Lead for Stories Without Borders
About Nariman
Nariman is an accomplished human resources professional, researcher, and medical translator, fluent in English, French, and Arabic. She is also a mother of three. Follow her on LinkedIn.
Interview Transcript
Brief Glossary
There are certain terms and phrases that may be used in this interview that are commonly used by Muslims.
Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu: May peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah (God) be upon you.
Alhumdulillah: All praise belongs to Allah
InshaAllah: God-Willing
JazakAllah Khair: May Allah reward you well
Du’a: A form of prayer
Tawakkul: Having trust in Allah
Beginning of Transcript
Fariah:
Assalamu Alaikum. Peace be upon you. Hello everyone. Welcome to Stories Without Borders, a platform to share the stories of refugees and newcomers in Canada. Today we’ll be interviewing Nariman to learn more about her life experiences.
Nariman is a former refugee and is a talented human resources professional, researcher and medical translator, fluent in English, French and Arabic. She is also a mother of three children.
Nariman, thank you so much for being with us today. To start, I wanted to ask you what was your experience like living in Canada as a newcomer? What are some barriers you faced and what helped you overcome those barriers?
Nariman:
First, thank you for having me. And my experience in Canada as a refugee and as a newcomer was a mix of safety and struggle. Coming from a place where safety is a dream and peace is a dream that we have been, we haven’t seen yet and living the safety here and be grateful for the safety I’m being in and like my kids are safe, at the same time struggling to restart again from scratch.
When I moved here, I was in my early 30s and you know, with more than 10 years experience restarting again from scratch. I tried applying everywhere and I thought at that time, being fluent in English and having this experience working with Doctors Without Borders, which is an international organization that are also working here in Canada, I thought that would help me and also having an MBA. But I struggled to have my first job here and I work my first job was data entry, which is a very entry level compared to what I used to work. This has affected me emotionally and I can say it was hard for me to keep working as in entry level jobs.
Fariah:
Thank you so much for sharing. It’s very important for us to learn about the experience of newcomers. My next question would be how does your faith support you during your experience?
Nariman:
I think my faith was and still my anchor in all the moments of fear and the moments when I experienced loss, when I was here safe and my family are struggling back home, I lost many family members and having like my faith was the main reason to build my resilience and also to help me and also keeping the faith of my job search. You know, when you are applying again and again and as I explained the way that you’re trying to go back to where you stopped, but you can’t, you will start from scratch. Having the faith that it’s all happening for a reason. Allah knows that this is the best for me, the best for my family. Seeing, believing in the result without seeing the way, Tawakkul, had helped me a lot and made a big difference even with me standing until today.
Fariah:
Thank you so much, Nariman. That’s very heartwarming and inspiring to hear. Thank you for sharing that. For my next question I wanted to ask what resources are currently missing in Canada that can help us better support refugees and newcomers.
Nariman:
I will split this question to two, the answer to two, maybe. Because when I first came here I was a refugee claimant, not as a refugee. And at that time I had very limited access to resources, even work PC services. I wasn’t eligible to, most of the services I wasn’t eligible to. So I had to fight for some resources I can say to fight for some opportunities.
And also because like it takes time until you, you became a refugee after you became a protected person, a refugee after being a refugee claimant. So I hope that in the future this process would be shorter or we can provide the refugee claimants, Canada can provide the refugee claimants with more resources during this period so that they, they could be engaged more in the community.
And, I wasn’t also eligible to most of the newcomers services, then after being a protected person and then applying to my PR there still wasn’t the main, I can say like the mental health support as I mentioned, being from a place where I wasn’t lucky to be born and raised in a place where there’s stability or peace and having all this trauma and coming here trying to find resources. There wasn’t any free resources for mental health support for refugees who are mostly coming from they have trauma whether it’s because of wars or different reasons. Even for my kids I didn’t find any resources. And when I find a resource it took two years to start counseling and by that time my kids were already engaged with the community and they were managing by themselves the way they are dealing with their trauma. So it wasn’t needed at the end. And the only time when I was eligible to free mental health support was when I had a baby. And that mental health support wasn’t related to trauma. It was more of supporting a new mom after delivering a baby.
So I think what we are missing here is a way to get refugees more like finding pathways where we can and I think this is the other part is that is shared with any other newcomers, especially professional newcomers. Finding pathway where we can make the process of doing their credential and like their experience and engaging them with the workplaces much easier and also doing a kind of counseling for like cultural counseling because it, the different culture here, the different workplace culture. Some, some points, some points as a newcomer, you won’t understand unless you face this. You know, some actions or some incidents that happen and then you understand the difference between our cultures.
Yeah, I think that’s it.
I never felt that I’m not welcomed because being different or being a refugee or being Muslim. But I, I think this is related more to having an international experience other than being in having your experience from Canada.
Fariah: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today, Nariman. Your journey is very inspiring and I appreciate your wisdom, your knowledge, honesty and insight. I wish you all the best moving forward and I hope your story inspires many others. Thank you so much. JazakaMullahu Khairan.
Nariman:
I wish you all the best too and good luck with all your initiative.
Fariah:
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
Nariman:
Yeah, maybe I would add here something more personal than being professional, that maybe you heard about the family reunification program that was issued for families in Gaza during the genocide and how this has affected us as like Gazans or Palestinians who have families in Gaza and how the government wasn’t supporting us in bringing our families to safety. This also had a big and huge impact on our lives, on our professional life because how you can function while your family are going undergoing a genocide.
Many of my friends, Palestinians who have families in Gaza, they, they were fired from their jobs, they left their jobs or they weren’t even able. They take long leave because they weren’t able to function in this, you know, hard times. The way we have been treated, whether in this TRV program or like in general, not having a support and feeling the support from our government was something very heavy on our hearts and being, yeah, like some of us are also Canadian citizens. So you consider Canada as your second home. And then feeling all this discrimination was so heartbreaking.
Fariah:
Thank you for sharing that. This is very important for us to know firsthand, like your experiences so that we can improve our communities and our society. Thank you so much for sharing that.