At the back of a sprawling set of garden allotments in Eastbourne, on England’s south coast, Mahmoud Al-Halabi gently pulls up two carrots for his children and gestures to a thick curtain of green vines. Parting the leaves he reveals several large bottle gourds, quite unlike anything growing in his neighbours’ plots.
“In Syria, summer is longer, and these grow even bigger,” the 33-year-old says, waving admiration aside. The beans, peppers, and kusa (squash) he’s growing are other staples from that faraway climate. It’s been eight years since Al-Halabi and his family left their home in a pummelled suburb of Damascus, fleeing a conflict that has devastated their country.
Their route to the seaside resort of Eastbourne took many years, and yet was relatively direct. Along with hundreds of thousands of others escaping the war in Syria, they first went to Jordan. Life was “very difficult” there, and Al-Halabi worked three jobs a day to keep his family fed and housed. Then in late 2018 they received a rare lifeline, admitted to the UK under a government programme to resettle the “most at risk” refugees in the Middle East displaced by the Syrian conflict. It placed them in Eastbourne with refugee status and resources for their immediate needs.
