My experience talking to a Syrian refugee yesterday

Local gyro/ Mediterranean restaurant here so I go in to check out looking for some new food to try (amazing food btw). So I go in an Al Jazeera is on TV but in another language I'm not familiar with. I've met some Iranian's before and know about Persian food and Farcy so I asked what language it was and if it was Farcy and he said no it's an Arab language. So I told him hey I have some friends who's family are from Iraq, is that where you're from?

He responds by telling me he is from Syria and when he noticed I wasn't judging him he became very friendly and uponed up a lot about talking about Syria. Him and his family are refugee's. He's been here for a while because he got out of Syria right when everything began going crazy (by coincidence not as a refugee) however he told me he is working at this location to help his refugee family run a business because they didn't speak english.

Here's what I learned;

1. Syria was one of the safest nations in that area of the world prior to ISIS.
2. Syria took in millions of refugee's from other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars.
3. Syrian's feel that the world turned their back on them after they helped everyone and took everyone in and the countries they helped wouldn't help them in return.
4. There's a huge difference between Syrian refugee's and many of the migrants coming from other parts of the world.
5. They are very educated.
6. The people fighting the war against the Syrian government are not Syrian.
7. ISIS came out of nowhere and began attacking their communities and killing people.

Anyway, these are my main take away's and generally speaking I feel like the world needs to step up and help the Syrian people more. I am speaking specifically on that population and that doesn't mean we need to take in 50 million people from Somalia or anywhere else.

a reply to: toysforadults

You'll find a lot of truths behind the MSM crap

It's a different story when brought down to an actual person level. It's not a middle Eastern situation-these are personal tragedies. Thanks for sharing. Heartbreaking.

a reply to: Zcustosmorum

Actually he said, "I can't watch the tv it gives me a headache" and we kind of just chuckled and I fully agreed, totally different story when you can actually speak with someone

a reply to: Justso

yeah something I've learned that is the ME is not just like 1 area with 1 group of people it's very diverse and actually most Middle Eastern people are very friendly and hospitable.

a reply to: toysforadults

This right here hits it right on the money.

There are a plethora of different ethnic groups in that area. And while maybe some 9 out of 10 are muslim. There's like a dozen or more religions in the middle east.

We need to remind ourselves of these things.

a reply to: grey580

I purposely kept religion out of the conversation. I know from people that Christian's in Iraq and other parts of the ME were under persecution for the last few decades at least specific cultural backgrounds and ethnic groups.

a reply to: toysforadults


Syria has Oil.
It is in a strategically important position and is very important to Russian foreign influence in the region.

Make no mistake the war in Syria was an engineered one to drive a game of destabilization in order to place a puppet regime into power - not a democratic one that would be hostile to the Russian presence.

We used to be the good guy's, what went wrong, who is actually in control of us that we have engineered criminal endeavors to this scale, Iraq, Libya and now Syria.

Were Afghanistan is concerned our action was justified and the same in the former Baltic civil wars but these other three seem to be more about controlling region's and resources in a manner which is effectively stealing them from there native population's.

Bush wanted the oil in Iraq and he got it not the US but his corporations and circle the US and rest of the coalition were merely used to achieve these ends.

Cameron and Sarkozey felt left out when there corporations never got there share of the Iraqi oil so conspired to have the Libyan oil, the US did not want to get involved but had to since it owed them one after there help with Iraq.

Meanwhile this led to a lot of Sorrow and a vast influx or refugee's bulking out the already swelling numbers of refugee's which was already beyond crisis point whom were heading for western Europe due to poverty and famine.

Children dying, woman being raped, slavery and religious massacres really don't matter to these kind of men whom have absolutely NO empathy for the common all garden variety of people that actually live in the world around them, they think they are somehow better than those people (and by so thinking show themselves to be morally inferior and somehow mentally deficient at least in these very human faculty's and emotion's).

Most Syrian's, most Iraqi's even most Libyan's did not want to leave there nation's but these guy's used our national resources to drive there own agenda militarily in those nations' and extended regions and guess what they shall never be held to account but believe me if we could actually see there thoughts not only would they never have been elected but they would never have been allowed to leave the nearest mental facility for the duration of there existence.

Just remember our leaders - in fact leaders of the world in general - are psychopath's, sociopath's and even sadists at heart - that is why they sought power in the first place.

originally posted by: toysforadults
a reply to: Justso

yeah something I've learned that is the ME is not just like 1 area with 1 group of people it's very diverse and actually most Middle Eastern people are very friendly and hospitable.

No way really? I never thought people actually believed they were all the same.

PS. Its Farsi and usually spoken by people of Persian decent

The truth from the people, much like if you ask an American and could care less about what the media is spewing out.

Thanks for sharing.

a reply to: LABTECH767



this is a coincidence

a reply to: toysforadults

I think if you talked to Somalis or any other refugees one on one you’d feel the same.

People are people no matter where you go.

a reply to: SailorJerry

ooo Farsi yeah Persian Iran pretty close right?

I sympathize with people trying to escape bad conditions in their home country but if they are here illegally they need to be sent back just like the Mexicans. Right?

Or is their a double standard?

Kudos on the communication.

You never mentioned any thing about the meal. How was the grub?

a reply to: howtonhawky

Excellent. I needed a new place to add to my rotation

a reply to: toysforadults

People are just people and you can't judge everyone by the same cloth.

The American govt has been backing the criminal terrorist group ISIS from the get go in the mess in Syria, all out of greed!

I'm glad you actually got some real truth out of your interaction because you're never going to get it from CNN or FOX News!

a reply to: GeauxHomeYoureDrunk

nope and that's why I don't watch either

Ya...most people are just people. They don't want to be torn from their homes over some war that has nothing to do with most of them, that's being fought mostly by people from outside their country while using their country as a battleground just as much as anyone who posts here wouldn't.

Prior to the arrival of the Arab Spring, Syria was a very modern, tolerant, and Western-friendly nation, relatively secular and non-fundamentalist.

And of course Western leaders couldn't have any of that...

Same thing with Libya, really. Ghadaffi hadn't bothered anybody in 20 or 30 years.