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About 6,000 Syrian Army soldiers were deployed; hundreds of people were arrested; and water, power and phone lines were shut off. “We were not allowed to leave our house for 20 days,” Al Zoubi recalls.

His sister, Yesra, who suffered from uterine cancer, could not obtain medical treatment and died. Al Zoubi worried that his first-born son, Amir, who was then three months old, would not survive the siege.

“It was a sad life — it wasn’t safe,” says Al Zoubi.

He explains that over the next six months, the situation somewhat improved for women and children — but not for men, who were being forced to either serve in the Syrian Army or with the police.

Determining that his family was safer without him, Al Zoubi went to Jordan. His wife and son joined him six months later.

Like many Syrian refugees, Al Zoubi had his eye on Germany and thought that he and his family would settle there. But he changed his mind when he heard reports that migrants and refugees had drowned when crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey — the route he would have chosen.

In November 2015, Al Zoubi got a call from the United Nations Refugee Agency and was told that Canada would accept him and his family as refugees.

“It was the best news I’ve ever had,” he says. “Canada was always a big dream for me. It’s the greatest country where I could speak English and not have to learn German, which is a hard language.”

“Canada was always a big dream for me.

Al Zoubi says that he thinks about Syria “every minute of the day” and hopes that he can eventually return there for a visit.