STUDENT. For two of the students who have now enrolled in the Medical Program in Gothenburg, the courses truly represent a fresh start. Not long ago Atiya and Sara individually made the dangerous journey from the war in the Middle East through Europe to Sweden.
Atiya Alzouby, 24, and Sara Rizk, 20, listen intently when Professor Per Lindahl begins the morning’s lecture on the medical history and structure of cells. The fact that they got a place in the Medical Program seems like a dream come true – a feeling they no doubt share with many other students in the rows, but that Atiya and Sara had to fight hard to achieve.
“My dad is a doctor, and when I was little, I used to go with him to the hospital in Damascus,” says Sara, who is thinking of specializing in child psychiatry eventually. “He didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps. He thought being a doctor is too burdensome and difficult. But I have not abandoned my dream of becoming a doctor.”
A journey to forget
A little more than two years have passed since Sara fled the war along with her mother and three younger sisters, who at the time were only eight, six and four years old. Their father remained in the Middle East and is now waiting to be reunited with his family in Sweden. She says she would prefer to forget the journey across the Balkans, a trip she never would make with such young children:
“We walked and walked and walked. It was cold. My mother cried because she was not able to keep her children warm. My sisters didn’t understand what was happening. We tried to pretend it was an adventurous game, but that didn’t help much.”
Her family still lives in the small apartment to which they were referred in Lund – four people in less than 50 square meters. Sara got a chance to leave the asylum lodgings through a job with Save the Children in western Sweden, and she moved to Gothenburg. She worked here in a full-time job and pursued half-time studies simultaneously, all the time with an eye to attaining the high demands for entering the Medical Program.
A journey to grow by
Atiya’s family currently is living in Turkey, near the border with Syria. The family operates a farm just across the border in Syria, where they grow pistachios and vegetables. That keeps them there, despite the fact that the war has become increasingly evident in the area. But the war and the dream of becoming a doctor impelled Atiya to try to get away, and after a chaotic journey across the Mediterranean and through Italy – on truck beds and for long distances on foot – he managed to get to Sweden. That was four years ago.
“The trip was like a movie, a thriller, though for real,” Atiya says. “I tagged along with a group of people that I didn’t know, and we were led by a stranger through Europe. It was a difficult journey, but in retrospect I think that it’s an experience I will carry with me, and one that makes me a stronger and perhaps better person.”
Both Atiya and Sara are living right now on Donsö with Henrik Sjövall, who is a professor of gastroenterology at Sahlgrenska Academy. Atiya moved in first. He shares an old house with two other Syrian young men, a house that Henrik’s family rents out to help refugees. Atiya has worked really hard to keep up with the supplementary qualifications in the grades required to get into the Medical Program.
Henrik smiles, shaking his head, and says:
“I could walk past the house late at night and see Atiya through the window, completely exhausted. He was half asleep above his computer, with a mountain of books on the table.”
English wasn’t Atiya’s strongest suit, but he coped with that, too, with the help of Sara, whom he did not know before. When Sara needed somewhere to stay, Atiya asked Henrik if he and his wife, Marie, could contemplate taking a lodger into their own home. And that was that. After six months Sara can now confirm that it did wonders for her knowledge of Swedish – and besides there are plenty of books in the house to read. And Henrik and Marie she now regards almost as family.
TEXT AND PHOTO: ELIN LINDSTRÖM CLAESSEN
