Syrian Family Reunited, Against the Odds, in Greece

Abdul Salam Al Khawien, 37, right, and his wife Kariman, 32, left, pose with their children for a family photo, at their apartment in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
Abdul Salam Al Khawien, 37, right, and his wife Kariman, 32, left, pose with their children for a family photo, at their apartment in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
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Syrian Family Reunited, Against the Odds, in Greece

Abdul Salam Al Khawien, 37, right, and his wife Kariman, 32, left, pose with their children for a family photo, at their apartment in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)
Abdul Salam Al Khawien, 37, right, and his wife Kariman, 32, left, pose with their children for a family photo, at their apartment in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, May 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)

Torn apart in the deadly chaos of an air raid, a Syrian family of seven has been reunited, against the odds, three years later at a refugee shelter in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, a centuries-old melting point of cultures overlooking the Aegean Sea.

When the warplanes screamed in over the village of Dana, near Idlib in Syria, in September 2017, Abdul Salam Al Khawien was at home with his five children. His wife, Kariman, was out shopping in the marketplace. Bombs burst among the stalls, scattering corpses and knocking her unconscious.

She spent the next week recovering in a clinic, and by the time she was well enough to leave, Abdul had fled with the children to safety across the Turkish border, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) away.
Now in different countries, lacking mobile phones, internet or any other means of communicating or learning what had happened to each other, Kariman and Abdul each lost hope that the other had survived.

Until, one day last August, Kariman's brother discovered a social media account with a photograph of her eldest son, Hamza. It had been opened by Abdul, who had managed to reach Greece with the children — in his fifth attempt, having paid smugglers 5,000 euros ($6,000) for berths in a flimsy boat with more than 60 others — and had been granted asylum.

She immediately got in touch.

“I had a good feeling that day,” Abdul, a 37-year-old former car salesman from a village near Homs, told The Associated Press. “When I saw the message I nearly went mad with joy. I didn't tell the children, though. I thought it would be better for them to find out when she got here.”

Before, he said, whenever the children had asked about their mother, he told them she was in Syria and would rejoin them one day. “But they suspected she was dead," he said. "I had lost all hope.”
The 32-year-old mother still faced a daunting prospect: Making the dangerous — and illegal — journey from Syria to Turkey and then Greece, assisted by smuggling gangs.
“We didn't have any money (to pay them),” Kariman said, “and had to find some.”

She was able to raise the cash and entered Turkey with other Syrian refugees, finally reaching Istanbul. “From there, using smugglers, I tried to enter Greece by crossing the Evros River” that runs along the Greek-Turkish land border, she said.

But they were caught by Greek border guards and, according to Kariman, were sent back a day later to Turkey in the type of illegal action, known as a pushback, that Greece has repeatedly been accused of using against migrants slipping across the porous frontier. Greek authorities deny the practice.

Her second try, in November 2020, was successful. She found her way on foot, in the dark, to a Greek village.

“I went into a coffee shop and broke into tears,” she said. “They asked me where I was from, I said Syria, and they welcomed me. ... I sat on a balcony with a woman and drank coffee, and she made me understand, in sign language, that I was now safe.”

She was able to contact Filoxeneio, the facility set up by the Arsis NGO and the Thessaloniki municipality where Abdul and the children were living, and after registering with police the family was reunited.

Filoxeneio coordinator Manolis Zougos said he'd never encountered such a story during the 17 years he's been working with refugees.

“Up to the last minute we had thought her dead, which is what Abdul believed,” he said. “He had had a hard time. He was on his own and needed to perform multiple roles for his children.”

Even before the air raid on Dana, the family had struggled to escape violence in Syria's civil war.

“We changed locations 28 times, starting from our village near Homs in 2011,” Abdul said. “I had just built our house there, and it was destroyed. Whenever unrest came, we moved on. ... As soon as we heard a bombardment, we grabbed blankets, a tent and a generator, put them in the car and left.”

The couple tell their story with their children — Hamza, 10, Iman, 8, Layan, 7, Bayan, 5, and Safa, 3 1/2 — sitting around them. Kariman is pregnant again — “I would like a boy," Abdul said. But their travels may not yet be over.

Abdul says he wants to reach Germany, where his brother and sister live.

“Greece is a very safe country, but it is difficult to find work,” he said. “It's difficult for us.”



War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
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War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)

In a park overlooking Damascus, 25-year-old Khaldoun Hallak has spent the past few evenings with his friends, drinking yerba mate, snacking on nuts, smoking hookah pipes and watching the sky for missiles streaking overhead.

“We’ve been through 14 years of war, and this is the first time Syria has nothing to do with it and we’re just spectators,” Hallak said.

Since Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Iran last week and Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against Israel, neighboring countries have been in the flight path.

Outside the scope

Downed missiles and drones have fallen in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, damaging houses, causing fires and reportedly killing one woman in Syria. But those countries have so far not been dragged directly into the conflict, which had killed at least 224 people in Iran and 24 in Israel as of Tuesday, and many in their war-weary populations are hoping it stays that way.

In Lebanon, which is still reeling from last year’s war between Israel and the Hezbollah party, videos making the rounds on social media have shown revelers dancing on rooftops while projectiles flash across the sky in the background.

Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy organization, happened to be visiting Lebanon when the conflict broke out and was attending a wedding when a parade of missiles began lighting up the sky as the DJ played ABBA’s disco hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”. He posted a video of the scene that went viral.

“Certainly most in Lebanon and also Syria are very satisfied to be outside the scope of this,” Maksad said.

No longer in the spotlight, a sense of relief

For some in the region, there is also measure of schadenfreude in watching the two sides exchange blows.

There’s a Syrian expression that literally translates as, “The fang of a dog in the hide of a pig.” It means that two people perceived as despicable are fighting with each other. The phrase has surfaced frequently on social media as Syrians express their feelings about the Israel-Iran conflict.

Watching from a park

Many Syrians resented Iran’s heavy-handed intervention in support of former President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s civil war, but are also angered by Israel’s incursions and airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s fall. The Syrian population also widely sympathizes with the Palestinians, particularly with civilians killed and displaced by the ongoing war in Gaza.

“May God set the oppressors against each other,” said Ahmad al-Hussein, 18, in Damascus, who was sitting in a park with friends waiting to see missiles pass overhead Monday night. “I hope it continues. We’ve been harmed by both of them.”

Hallak echoed the sentiment.

“Every time we see a missile going up, we say, may God pour gasoline on this conflict,” he said. “If one side is hit, we will be happy, and if the other side is hit, we will also be happy. We will only be upset if there is a reconciliation between them.”

In Lebanon, where last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, and left destruction in wide swathes of the country’s south and east and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some see retribution in the footage of destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah remains largely quiet

A US-brokered ceasefire deal brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. The group, which lost much of its senior leadership and arsenal in the conflict, has remained largely quiet since then and has given no indication that it intends to join the fray between Israel and Iran.

Israeli forces have continued to occupy several border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out regular airstrikes on what Israel says are Hezbollah facilities since the ceasefire.

“Of course I am against the Israeli occupation, and Iran is an Islamic country standing up to it,” said Hussein al-Walid, 34, a welder in the southern coastal city of Sidon.

Iran's axis

Despite the dramatic scenes of buildings reduced to rubble in Israel, Tehran and other Iranian cities have taken a worse pounding and other regional countries, including Lebanon, could still be pulled into the conflict.

Caroline Rose, a director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute think tank said that while it seems “clear that Iran-backed proxies across the region, particularly Hezbollah, just do not have the capacity” to enter the fray, Israel could decide to expand the scope of its offensive beyond Iran.

One of the goals announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to eliminate Iran’s “axis of terrorism” - the coalition of Tehran-backed armed groups across the region known as the “Axis of Resistance.”

That goal “is ambiguous and offers Israel the operational space to expand this war to countries it deems are hosting Iran-backed proxies, no matter how weak they may be,” Rose said.

Al-Walid shrugged off the possibility of a new war in Lebanon.

“The war is already present in Lebanon,” he said. “Israel isn’t abiding by the agreement and is striking every day.”

Hassan Shreif, a 26-year-old student from the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong base of support, said that after last year’s war in Lebanon and the heavy losses suffered by the group, many of its supporters “were clearly anguished and didn’t feel vindicated.”

“So, anything, even a window breaking in Tel Aviv, is (now) a victory for them,” he said. Every time Iranian missiles pass overhead, he said, people in the area break out in shouts of jubilation.

At the same time, Shreif said, “there’s always a silent group hugging the wall as we say in Arabic, treading carefully and praying we stay out of it.”