{"id":24861,"date":"2016-01-21T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=24861"},"modified":"2016-01-21T15:01:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:01:48","slug":"syrian-family-finds-rare-path-to-call-chicago-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/syrian-family-finds-rare-path-to-call-chicago-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian family finds rare path to call Chicago home"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kat Lonsdorf <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sitting in a modest apartment in Chicago\u2019s northern Rogers Park neighborhood, Firas Jawish, 35, thought back on the 10 months he spent detained underground by the Assad regime in Syria.<\/p>\n

“We had no idea if it was day or night,” he recalled. \u00a0“But usually the torture was in the mornings–so then we knew.”<\/p>\n

He said it so matter-of-factly that it would have seemed like light conversation to a passerby.<\/p>\n

The sparsely decorated apartment is the most reliable home Firas and his wife Rehab, 29, have had in more than three years.\u00a0 For their 3-year-old son, Hasan, it\u2019s the first permanent place he\u2019s ever lived.<\/p>\n

The young family moved to Chicago in late September, joining the more than 150 Syrian refugees\u00a0that have resettled in Illinois since the start of the Syrian civil war in March 2011.<\/p>\n

Before the war began\u2014or at least before it came to them\u2014the newly married couple lived near Damascus in the northern suburb of Harasta.\u00a0Firas was an anesthesiologist working in two different ICUs. \u00a0Rehab, then pregnant, was going to school to become a textile mechanical engineer.<\/p>\n

In 2012, as the unrest of the civil war began to spread, the Assad regime started weekly bombings in Harasta, forcing Firas and Rehab to leave their home and all their brand-new wedding gifts behind.\u00a0 They moved in with family in a nearby suburb, taking only belongings they could carry.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Firas coped with the bombings the only way he knew how\u2014by helping injured civilians in his neighborhood when he wasn\u2019t working at the hospital.\u00a0It was this that eventually led to his detainment.<\/p>\n

“Even if someone is injured and goes to the regime hospital, they will kill him there, or he will just disappear forever,” Firas recounted last week in Rogers Park, explaining that the government considered anyone trying to alleviate the situation an enemy.<\/p>\n

The couple didn’t want any identifiable photos taken for fear of the safety of family members still in Syria, but they did allow audio. \u00a0 Listen below to hear Firas describe his time in detention.<\/p>\n

On the floor nearby, Hasan sat playing with a remote control car, oblivious to the dramatic tale unfolding in the living room.<\/p>\n