‘I saw houses for the first time’: Australia’s Syrian children tell us about their lives

Last week, for the first time in her nine years of life, Aisiya left the prison camp she’s grown up in. She thought she was on her way to Australia.

But first, on the road out, there were some amazing things to see.

“I saw houses for the first time, and trees and grass, and I was very excited,” she says.

Aisiya has lived in a wind-blown tent in north-eastern Syria since Islamic State fell and her mother was arrested. Aisiya was two at the time.

Last Monday, though, along with 22 other children and 11 mothers, she felt hope. The 34 Australian citizens boarded minivans en route to a country they’ve never seen, but which all of them call home.

“I felt very happy and excited to meet my family,” Aisiya recalls.

Their hopes were soon dashed. The reality of politics in Syria forced them back to the camp, and the uncompromising words of an Australian prime minister have kept them there.

“When we had to turn back, I was very upset,” Aisiya says. “I was heartbroken. I was crying. I told my mum, ‘I don’t want to go back to the prison’.”

For more than a week, politicians have argued about these people. They’re terrorists, they say. They’re contemptible. “They made their bed,” the prime minister said, “they have to lie in it”.

Aisiya doesn’t really have a bed. She does have a clear image of home, though.

“Australia is a beautiful country with very beautiful, kind people. I want to go to school. I want to learn. I want to be a chef. And I want to go on Australia’s Got Talent,” she says, twisting a charm bracelet between childish fingers. “I want to sing and dance.”

What would she say to the Australian people, her mum prompts her?

“I want to say to them: ‘I want to go home. I want to live my life ... and I want to go to my family’.”

Another young girl, who this masthead will not name, has her own ambitions. She wants to be a doctor – though first she’d need a school to go to.

She’s firm about something else, too: “I don’t like to play with dolls. I like cooking – playing cooking”.

In her imagination, she cooks feasts of chicken burgers and pizza.

She, too, saw extraordinary things on the road away from this camp: “I saw a horse, cows and donkey.”

But when she returned hours later, she had even less than when she started – the guards had dismantled her family’s tent, assuming they were gone forever.

“The tent was not there. Everything was gone. And we had nothing,” the girl says.

“That made me feel sad and upset.”

Finally, Aisiya is asked what she wants to say to Australians – those kind, faraway people of her imagination.

“Please save us,” she says. “Please get us out of this place.”

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