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Fatima Sua’lfan takes after her father Bassam — she’s a communicator, she wants to understand and be understood. Like Bassam, she smiles a lot.

“My name is pronounced Fat’ma,” she says, “but here everyone says Fateema. I don’t mind.”

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Since the Syrian family arrived in Canada in January 2016 as government-sponsored refugees, 14-year-old Fatima has become the voice of her family. She shoulders the responsibility of translating without a speck of resentment, although it sometimes interferes with her favourite activity: studying. “I only want to study,” says the straight-A Grade 9 student at Guildford Secondary.

For Fatima, studying is a luxury.

“In Syria, it was very hard to study,” says Fatima. “In Jordan, we were refugees and we didn’t have a lot of money and it was expensive to go to school, so it was hard there too.”

But Fatima has to take time off school when her mother, who is eight months pregnant with the family’s eighth child, has a medical appointment, or when her family needs help with something like a negotiation with a prospective landlord.