My Life Journey – Part 14:
I landed in Qatar on 30th October 2010 and started work the next day, it was the dream job… New company supported by the government, strong financial position, and well qualified team. My manager and I established the projects department. I was the one to secure and sign the first contract for the company. Then we acquired some very important contracts and were growing up so quick. There were some very good and talented people it was an honour to work with them.
There was some delay in issuing the visas for my family, it took us more than 7 months. During this time, the conflict in Syria was escalating and I was worried about the safety of my family and the dark future of my home country. I was watching the news all the time, which made me feel that I can’t go to Syria, as I may get caught by any of the conflicting parties either because of my family name or because I’m coming from a rich country which make me a great hostage. I spent few days with all these thoughts, until one day my wife advised me to stop listening to the same news channels and instead to listen to some Syrian official channels. To be frank these channels showed me that life is very normal, and everything is going on as usual with few disruptions here and there, I needed to believe them as I needed to go and say goodbye to my parents and get my family with me. And this is what had happened, I went to Syria end of June 2011 and found it not as calm as Official channels said and not on fire as other channels said. I spent few days with my boarder family and then took my wife the 2 kids and went back to Qatar in July, it was one of the rarest moments I see the tears in my father’s eyes while he was saying goodbye to his grandchildren, I will never forget those tears for ever. Please forgive me dad…
Nevertheless, we lived in a big house in a secured compound outside the capital city “Doha” there were many Syrian families, and we had many friends.
I tried to bring my parents to Qatar, but my father refused to leave his home for whatever the reason is.
To ease my feeling with guilt towards my father, we went back to Syria for another visit in November 2011, and that was my last visit to Syria.
I enjoyed living in Qatar, Qatar is a family friendly country with moderate Islamic culture.
Our company was under spot and suffered several restructurings, my situation was stable but couldn’t reach to the income I was promised to. Anyhow the last restructure merged our company with another one and my manager became the boss of our unit. And I was promoted to Operations manager, in general life was good except the heartbreaking news from my beloved home country Syria.
As I mentioned earlier, I have 2 brothers one was Dubai with my ex-employer, and one went back to Syria. The one in Dubai immigrated to Italy with his family then after Italy to Germany. The one in Syria joined us in Qatar for one year trying to start his own business there but then moved to Dubai.
In my work there was an Australian company subcontractor works under me, we had very good relationship and one day early 2012 they offered me a job in Sydney I refused, because my situation in Qatar was very good, and I did not want to migrate far from Syria. I like so many Syrians had great hope that Syria will recover shortly, but instead things were getting worst by the time.
The problem in Qatar like UAE, as far as you have a job you can stay but if you are jobless then you must leave to home country. But our home country was under fire… so the feeling of life and job security started to diminish.
To be continued …..