The tale of a Syrian refugee: from Turkey to Michelle Obama’s guest box

 

He applied for a job at a university in İstanbul where they teach a book that he wrote. He was rejected. This Syrian refugee, “The Scientist,” could barely make ends meet. But now he has listened to President Barack Obama from the first lady's guest box.

Refaai Hamo, a scientist and architect, grew up in Syria and "gave everything up" to become a scientist. He worked on construction sites in the evenings to pay for his schooling and graduated from university at the top of his class. He turned out to be a successful scientist and built four large compounds adjacent to each other in the capital, Damascus. His dream came to an abrupt halt when an anti-personnel missile fired by Syrian troops tore through the complex he designed and built. He lost his wife and one of his daughters, along with five members of his brother's family. In that incident, 16 people were killed, seven of whom were part of his family.

Two days after the incident, his entire house was ransacked. He was left with nothing. He decided to flee to Turkey to rebuild the life that he had in Syria, or at least some part of it. From 2013 until recently he lived in İstanbul. He applied for jobs that he was overqualified for, but was rejected from all of them because he had no work permit. He was diagnosed with gastric cancer, for which he could have been cured by simple surgery. But all the hospitals he went to in İstanbul either turned him down or asked for his insurance details.

His case gained international prominence when popular blog Humans of New York (HONY) interviewed him at his house in İstanbul last month. In the blog he said his situation was so dire that he could not even pay the rent of his apartment.

"I've been in Turkey for two years now. I'm dead here. I have no life, no respect and my children aren't going to school," Hamo said.

He has a Ph.D. but was not allowed to work. He applied for a job at a university nearby that teaches a book he wrote, but still he was not given a job. He said he was forced to create designs for projects and give them away to Turkish citizens who used them as their own, "taking all the credit and paying me barely enough to cover the costs of the materials."

He recalled that he drafted blueprints for a giant construction project of 270 big houses, but was paid maybe 1 percent of that which a Turkish citizen would have earned.

"There is no respect for my work here. Only money is respected.”

He believes the cancer came from sadness and stress. "The only reason I can speak to you right now is because I've taken a painkiller. I can barely eat. I'm bleeding internally," Hamo told HONY.

Despite his struggle to survive in a country that is hosting more than 2 million refugees, Hamo is still obsessed with giving back to humanity. "If I had TL 100, I would spend it on a book. My ultimate goal is to become a great scientist and make a lasting contribution to humanity,” Hamo said.

At a time when Hamo was fighting a battle against time, hoping that the cancer could be removed before it spread to other parts of his body, the US granted him refugee status and informed him that he could travel to Troy, Michigan. Obama was one of the first to congratulate him.

"As a husband and a father, I cannot even begin to imagine the loss you've endured," Obama wrote to Hamo on Facebook after the interview. "Yes, you can still make a difference in the world, and we're proud that you'll pursue your dreams here. Welcome to your new home. You're part of what makes America great," Obama wrote.

Hamo's plight came into the spotlight when the Republican Party White House hopefuls were debating whether or not the US should allow Syrian Muslim immigrants into the country. Republican front-runner Donald Trump even suggested putting a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US "until we figure out what's going on." The Republican-dominated Congress halted the program to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees late last year.

Last week the White House said Hamo was to sit in First Lady Michelle Obama's guest box during Tuesday's State of the Union address in Congress. The White House said the guests of the first lady in the viewing box exemplify the themes and ideals that the president lays out in his address.

Hamo said in a statement he was thrilled when he heard that President Obama was welcoming his family to the US. "I felt that hope had been revived, as well as my strength and ambition to continue with my dreams in my new country."

He told HONY he has several inventions that he is hoping to patent once he gets to America. He said one of them is being used right now in the İstanbul metro system by which electricity is generated from the movement of the train. He also has sketches for a plane that can fly for 48 hours without refueling and is working on a device that can predict earthquakes weeks before they happen. Ten days after the interview was published, Hamo arrived in Detroit with his daughters and son.

The interview created a massive outpouring of sympathy. American actor and filmmaker Edward Norton started a fundraising campaign for Hamo. He raised nearly half a million dollars in just 20 days.

"Let's reject the 'anti-human' voices that tell us to fear refugees and show this man and his family what Americans are really made of," Norton wrote on fundraising website Crowdrise (http://www.people.com/article/edward-norton-funraiser-syrian-refugee) as he launched the campaign.

Just one day before Hamo was to listen to President Obama in Congress, Turkey moved to grant work permits to Syrian refugees. Turkish government spokesman Numan Kurtulmuş said following a bi-weekly Cabinet meeting that Turkey will allow 2,411,000 Syrian refugees to work in the country, albeit with some restrictions.

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