Voices: I lived through the Syrian war – but now I feel unsafe in Dublin

Of all days, my introvert brown-skinned, half-Palestinian, half-Syrian husband, who embraces working from home as a software engineer, is out in Dublin city centre for his work Christmas dinner. I kiss him goodbye before he takes the Luas train, oblivious to how our night is about to turn upside down.

I’ve been following the news earlier in the day. I’ve read about the horrific stabbing of kids and caretakers. As a mother of a six-year-old boy, I think of the mothers receiving the news of their worst nightmare. Why in the world would anyone commit such a terrible crime?

I search but can’t find any news on its motivation or the attacker’s identity. However, the comment section on social media has other opinions. People have long ago talked about the dark web as an enigmatic, isolated online network, but today, the web is already dark.

It must be a migrant...

That’s what happens when you open borders...

Send them all back...

I am bewildered how this seems to be always the first suggested solution to any problem recently. Who are “them” and where is “back”?

I read about plans to protest, but I don’t understand against what? Of course, we all condemn this horrendous attack. Who would be supporting it?

I text my husband to stay away from Parnell Street, where the protest is planned to take place. He informs me the tram driver announced he is stopping at St. Stephen’s Green, just a couple of stations ahead, due to problems taking place further up the road. He also tells me how, as he was about to step outside, the driver pulled him aside to warn him to stay safe and away from that area.

My husband is jokingly telling me how brown he must have looked to the concerned driver, yet he still appreciated the thoughtful gesture from an Irish stranger.

In less than an hour, after I bathed my kid and put him to bed, I check my phone only to see photos and videos of Dublin as I’ve never seen it before — hooded men in masks, a police car being set on fire, a group of riot police forming a line behind their shields to stop angry protesters from going further.

I nervously text my husband again, updating him with the recent escalation around him. He assures me everything seems normal in the restaurant, less than a kilometre from Parnell Square, and that I have nothing to worry about. He promises not to stay long after dinner.

Having lived during the Syrian war, I developed a sixth sense when it came to predicting danger. It’s mostly false positives of exaggeration or unrealistic fears, but it is too vivid this time. I’ve seen those riots before. I’ve seen the cars set on fire and heard the angry shouts. In less than 30 minutes, when a video emerges of the tram set on flames and the official public announcement to halt the transportation service, I know this will not end well.

“Please leave now!” I plead over the phone as I update him again with what’s happening outside his festival bubble.

Ten minutes later, he sends me a voice message telling me he left and that nothing around him seems out of the ordinary except for some helicopters buzzing over in the sky towards the north.

The scenes of the war in Syria keep coming back to my mind. Helicopters back then meant one thing: explosive barrels. I know this is not going to happen in Dublin, but my PTSD doesn’t.

My neck is a rock as I hold tensely to my phone. I switch between the news on social media and my husband’s shared live location on Google Maps. His phone battery is also shared, indicating 9 per cent. His location’s blue dot moves back and forth on St. Stephen’s Green Park while his battery drops fast like a spaceship countdown. I am not a neurologist, but I can feel the nerves of my brain melting one after the other.

He’ll make it back. I keep telling myself.

He made it back before, remember? When he was stuck in Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, besieged by army tanks and snipers and protesters and random air missiles. Remember? When the government disconnected all connections around his neighbourhood and you couldn’t reach him and felt the blood draining in your veins.

He’ll make it, and you’ll laugh about it as you do with everything else that went dark in your life. Maybe not soon, though.

The blue dot moves south, far from the riots but still not close enough to my point on the map. I can’t tell if he’s walking or on a bus, but I avoid texting him, worried my few words would drain his battery that’s now reaching 2 per cent.

An Irish friend is checking in and I tell her what’s happening. She offers her place in the city for him to seek refuge. “He can charge his phone, and I’ll get him a taxi,” she offers sincerely. I text him the address but I don’t get anything back. His dot makes a jump further southern, and then I see the dreaded word next to his name. Offline.

Two days ago, Patrick, a taxi driver who picked me up from the airport, cheered when he found out I was Syrian and greeted me with a few Arabic words that made me forget about a long trip. He told me about his time as a soldier in the Irish peacekeeping that served in Lebanon. “I didn’t get to visit Damascus,” he said, “but a friend of mine told me if there were heaven on earth, it would have been Damascus.”

Patrick told me heartwarming stories about home and my people: “You are welcome in this country, young lady.” Patrick said as I got ready to leave the car before he added, “Oh gosh, what am I saying? It’s your country now after 10 years! You get to welcome others here.”

As I hold my phone, watching my husband’s location go inactive, I wish I had Patrick’s number. He would’ve bolted to give him a ride out of that chaos.

MASI-Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland announces that there is “a voice note being circulated openly calling for foreign nationals to be killed.” But how do you identify a foreigner? That ugly word that haunts people like me, that crime we didn’t commit and cannot seem to redeem ourselves from.

Thirty minutes later, a text pops up on my phone.

I got on a bus and borrowed a charging cable from a guy. Don’t worry I’ll be home soon.

And I worried, until he got home, not soon, yet with a fake grin in the hope of easing my worries. I weep in his arms at the front door of our house as he assures me he is fine.

He tells me later how he marched the streets of Dublin along other stranded people for over 3km until he reached the Dublin Bus Garage at Donnybrook, where an out of courtesy bus was arranged to get him and the others to a closer point south.

After the bus, he found a taxi to drive him home safely. He falls asleep, swiftly, while I stay awake after midnight, trapped in my tense body, still pumping with adrenaline. How did Dublin turn dark overnight? I think of the Irish friends that I happened to know over the 10 years of my stay here, and I feel my anxious heartbeats slow a bit as I am warmed with the thought of their love and support.

This can’t be the new Ireland. This is just a black Friday, and it shall pass. I believe in the Irish’s thousand welcome to turn it green again.

Suad Aldarra is a Syrian-Irish writer and engineer based in Dublin. Her memoir, I Don’t Want To Talk About Home was published by Penguin in July 2022 and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Biography of the year Award