Twin sisters Nevart and Silva are celebrating their first Christmas with their family in Australia for the first time after fleeing war-ravaged Syria.
The siblings, who fleeing the city of Aleppo for western Sydney, have put up a Christmas tree and decorations to celebrate their first feast with Nevart’s son since they were separated 13 years ago.
The sisters arrived in Australia as refugees last December and, after a few months of staying with family and looking for a suitable home in a tight rental market, they are finally able to gather under one roof for Christmas.
It is a far cry from living under constant bombardment in Syria during a decade-long civil war that claimed more than 500,000 lives and displaced more than 10 million people including the sisters.
‘It’s happiness for me to be reunited with my only son after 13 years,’ Nevart said.
‘Every time we talked to him it was after a bomb had gone off here and there.
‘We left our home in Aleppo not knowing if we’d ever go back there again. It was terrifying … we didn’t know if a missile would fall on us.’
The regime of long-time autocrat Bashar al-Assad fell in December in a lightning offensive by Turkish-backed Islamist rebels.
Twin sisters Nevart and Silva (pictured) are celebrating their first Christmas with their family after they arrived in Australia as refugees in December 2023
The sisters fled Aleppo and sought refuge in neighbouring Lebanon in 2017 – part of the exodus of 1.5 million Syrians who moved there following the outbreak of the war.
Like most of their compatriots, they could not secure permanent residency and were rendered illegals.
They made ends meet by teaching and caring for the elderly for three years until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shuttering their meagre sources of income.
Further tragedy hit in August 2020 when the port of Beirut exploded, killing more than 200 people including an Australian toddler.
‘It was so scary … at first we thought someone had made a (suicide) bombing … we didn’t think it was that far away in the port,’ Nevart said.
The explosion triggered memories of the missile strikes and barrel bombs the sisters had fled in Aleppo.
‘It was all fear. We didn’t know what the future would hold – there was darkness.’
The darkness was also literal, with electricity only available for a couple of hours during the day. Water in the household was considered a luxury and clothes were washed by hand.
Determined to enjoy a better life, they decided to move to Australia.
The twin Armenian-Syrian sisters, who now live in multicultural western Sydney, have put up a Christmas tree and decorations to celebrate the festivities (pictured residents in Sydney’s west visiting a home with Christmas decorations)
‘We feel safe in Australia … there’s no bombings, water is on all the time, electricity is available always,’ Nevart said.
Rima Ramdani, the sisters’ casework manager with not-for-profit refugee resettlement agency Settlement Services International, said acclimatising to life in Australia could be challenging, with each new arrival’s unique journey depending on their circumstances.
‘We advocate on their (refugees’) behalf – from doctors to employers to driving schools,’ she said.
‘We are here to orient them so they can be independent.’
It was not the first time the twin sisters had escaped war. They previously fled Kuwait, where they had a comfortable life with their parents after Iraq invaded the oil-rich Gulf country in 1990.
Silva has been busy whipping up a Christmas storm of delectable Armenian and Middle Eastern dishes from kibbeh traboulsieh (fried meat and bulgur) to muhammara (roasted red pepper and walnut dip) and ouzi (a lamb and rice dish).
The sisters were among 10 million people, who were displaced, during the decade long civil war in Syria (pictured a refugee camp in Syria)
‘We were two women only by ourselves which was hard … we only had God. We prayed to him and he answered our prayers,’ Silva said of the six years she lived through the brutal conflict in Aleppo.
‘We are totally different but inseparable. We feel each other always,’ the sisters said in unison, laughing.
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