‘We Don’t Look Back, We Look Forward’: A Syrian Family Rebuilds Their Life In Murfreesboro

If you had told Kinan Alrifai 10 years ago that she would leave her family behind, move to a new country and start teaching in a different language, she’d have told you you’re dead wrong.

But 10 years ago, it was unclear how long the Syrian civil war would last, or how complicated it would be to flee.

This year marks a decade since the start of the war that has caused more than 6.5 million people to seek refuge around the world, including hundreds in Tennessee. Alrifai was one of them. She moved to Middle Tennessee in 2014, where she waited two years for her children’s applications to be approved. Her husband’s took an additional two years.

Alrifai now owns a house with her family in Murfreesboro and teaches science at John Overton High School. She spoke with WPLN News about the challenges and triumphs of rebuilding their lives in Middle Tennessee.

Below are excerpts from her interview.

Alexis Marshall WPLN News

Alrifai gets home from work most weeknights and starts cooking for her family. She says the meal she’s cooking on this night, kebab hindi, is “exactly the same thing” she’d be cooking back at her old home in Damascus.

On her life in Syria

“Syria meant a lot for me. I love it to the death. I had a ton of friends in there, you know? My whole entire (life) from the school to the university to — I used to be in a charity in the masjid for a long time — to the work. So I had a ton of friends in there that I had my most adorable memories with them.

So, I love Damascus. I really spent a lot of time after I left it just imagining going back there. However, like now, you feel like things are getting more and more complicated. And you feel like Syria is really getting worse and worse. It’s just like the idea of going back there is just kind of like vanishing day by day.”

Kinan Alrifai (right) stands with her daughter, Tala Aldairi, and husband, Ziyad Aldairi, reflecting on family photos taken over the years. Not pictured is her son, Tareq, who Alrifai says is a busy teenager with a jam-packed social and extracurricular calendar.

On raising children in a different culture

“Sometimes, I just feel like, ‘Is my kids going to even visit Syria or Damascus someday? Are they going to see where they were born?’ Raising the kids in a place that is (a) different culture, different religion, different type of thinking, different system — everything is different — is very hard for us. For kids, it’s always — they adjust to whatever. And we don’t mind. But we still want them to keep their culture. We still want them to keep their language. I fight with my daughter the whole day all day to speak Arabic.” Alrifai chuckles.

“As a mom who lost her kids for a while and stayed in a place where she was forced to not see them, I have this spot in my heart that from the time they got back to me I always feel like I don’t want to think that I’m going to lose them again.”

Ziyad Aldairi lost his job as a marine engineer when he joined his family in the United States. By the time he was allowed to reunite with them, his wife had already been here for four years, and his children for two, so he found work where they were already settled.

On rebuilding their lives

“We had tragedy, you know?” says Alrifai’s husband, Ziyad Aldairi. “Stories about our family, about our houses which we lost. We lost the money … I lost my business also there. So, we don’t look back. We look forward, you know, to build again.”

“It’s just, for us, a good feeling that we were able to rebuild,” Alrifai says. “If you (had told) me that … ‘In 10 years, you will be in America, you will be a citizen, you will have a life in there, you will speak the language, you will teach in there’ … If you really come and tell me that, I would say ‘Are you kidding me? I will never be able to do that.’

If you tell me that in the future that — for any reason — ‘you will leave your kids for two years’ … I will say, ‘That’s not me.'”

Alexis Marshall WPLN News

These images capture Alrifai’s family at different chapters through the years. The bottom photo shows the family back in Damascus, when daughter Tala was still just a tot. The middle photo was taken after the family fully reunited, after more than four years of separation while awaiting resettlement. And in the top photo, the family stands outside their house in Murfreesboro shortly after becoming homeowners.

On what people should know about immigrants and refugees

“I really need to share with people that: first, immigrants are not bad people. The only thing is that they found refuge in this country, and they were able to thrive again. But they needed time.”

Some quotes have been edited for clarity.