In Germany,

the challenge was to bring a family back together.

Before the war, before the separation and before she was diagnosed with cancer, Manal al-Aydi was a dynamic, diligent bank manager in Damascus. Tiny yet formidable, with a degree in economics and a movie-star smile that made even strangers feel at ease, she was one of nine siblings in a close-knit family of Palestinian descent.

Rafat al-Aydi, 20, holds his aunt Manal, 45, who suffered from advanced cancer. Desperate to reach her family, she paid smugglers $15,000 to travel from Turkey to Germany.

“Our whole family worked together,” her brother Wisam recalled. “We opened a bakery, a clothing shop a jewelry store, two gas stations.”

Wisam ran the gas stations, and another brother, Mwafak, ran the jewelry store. The siblings often met at the family bakery, which specialized in the puffy, pita-like Palestinian bread, producing a pleasing scent that wafted through their neighborhood, Yarmouk. On Fridays, they often gathered at a family-owned apartment building for barbecues on the rooftop terrace.

“It was a quiet life and a beautiful life,” Wisam said. “It was our life.”

Wisam al-Aydi bakes traditional bread on an electric stove. After fleeing his home in Damascus, he and his family were scattered to three different countries and endured multiple moves in an effort to reunite.

The war shattered that life. First, one of Wisam’s sons was injured by shrapnel. Then shelling destroyed their neighborhood. Using their savings, the siblings paid smugglers to get their families out of Syria.

But they were separated. Manal went to Lebanon, Wisam to Egypt, Mwafak to Turkey.

After they left, the family apartment building was bombed and gutted. When I visited Wisam, he showed me a cellphone photo.

“This was our bedroom, and I think that might have been our bed,” he said, pointing at the remains of a charred room. “That was our living room. This house carried all of our memories, my son’s violins, the children’s things. So many years of work, all gone.”

The siblings deeply missed each other. They bounced around from place to place, seeking a more permanent home, but eventually Wisam and Mwafak, along with their families, reunited in the north of Germany, the country that receives the highest number of refugees in Europe.

“Germany is safe and takes care of us,” Wisam said. “But it is so isolating to be without your friends and your family, without your language. You are not comfortable. You are always lonely.”

Wisam’s wife, Nesrine al-Aydi, travels alone with her five children to reunite the family in Lueneburg, Germany. The family has lived in a dozen places in the past four years. Upon arrival at yet another home, 4-year-old Dalaa’s princess castle is one of the first things to be unpacked.

Wisam, Dalaa, and Nowras al-Aydi wait for a bus to take them to downtown Lueneburg, Germany.

Manal, meanwhile, had moved to Istanbul. She had been diagnosed with advanced cancer and was desperate for treatment.

Late last October, she paid a smuggler for a fake Spanish passport and flew to southern Germany. German police, spotting her fake documents, detained her on arrival.

“I told the police, please, I have cancer, I need to go to hospital,” she recalled when I met her last fall. “Everyone was yelling at me. But I said, ‘Please, help me. I am from Syria. I am sick. I need your help.’ ”

She collapsed. A few hours later, the police sent her to a hospital.

Wisam sent his two oldest sons, who were staying nearby, to meet her. The boys had not seen Manal for two years, and they both gasped when they saw her. She was thin, frail and scared. When they reached her bedside, she cried out.

“Please, please don’t leave me alone!” she said, clutching them. “I don’t want to die!”

Mwafak (left) at the bedside of his sister, Manal.

Mwafak arrived the next day with fresh lemons to steep in hot tea for his sister. His eyes glistened as he held her hand.

“My brother, my family,” she said.

Mwafak eventually got permission to transfer Manal to a hospital in Wolfsburg, in northern Germany. Wisam and his family traveled there, too. “We are going to heal her with love,” one of Mwafak’s daughters said.

But Manal al-Aydi lost her battle with cancer on Jan. 31. She was just shy of turning 46. Her brothers and their families were at her side.

“We are all to God,” Wisam wrote to his family after her death, “and to God we return.”

Nesrine, Dalaa and Wisam spend time with friends in a park. When they left Syria, Wisam said, he thought the family could travel for a couple of years and return when things calmed down. But their home has been destroyed and the war is still raging. “We really thought we could build our home again in Syria.”

Keeping the family together and healthy is one challenge. Integrating into a new culture is another. And life in a strange land is often even stranger for refugees who don’t share a culture or religion.