The five families blended seamlessly into New York City’s spring tourist parade on Tuesday, the women in hijab of red, black and blue, the teenage boys in baseball caps. They spoke in Arabic and carried a selfie stick.
In Times Square, the families, 25 Syrian refugees in all, encountered Ecuadoreans in Elmo costumes and Nigerians hawking double-decker bus tours. In Central Park, two cousins bounded up the ancient rocks, no longer displaced persons, but 9-year-old conquerors of a famous playground. In Battery Park, a family from France watched as the group took turns posing with the Statue of Liberty in the background.
“Freedom is good,” Rihab Taki, a 33-year-old mother of four, said through a translator. Her family had spent three years in Jordan before arriving in August. Taki said she had struggled with depression while adapting to her new home in northern New Jersey. “You see life in a different way when you are in this place.”
Most New York sightseeing tours are about history. This one was about savouring the present.
Real New York Tours, a family-run outfit in its 10th year, is offering a week of free walking tours for 150 Syrian refugees who were recently resettled in New Jersey. The attendees were chosen by the state chapter of ICNA Relief, a Muslim-American social services charity.
Luke Miller, 48, founder of the tour company, said he and his wife, Amber Cameron, first had the idea to provide free tours in the days after President Donald Trump issued his first executive order suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees and banning travellers from a group of Muslim-majority countries.
“We wanted to do something to counteract this,” he recalled. “So, we said, ‘Let’s do what we’re good at’.”
Their operations manager, Kristy Powers, saw on Facebook that Emily Khan, an English teacher at Léman Manhattan Preparatory School, was volunteering to tutor through ICNA Relief. She put Powers in touch with the organisation.
Powers started a GoFundMe campaign to help defray costs and benefit the organisation, raising US$4,670 (RM20,538) as of Thursday evening. The campaign also drew some negative comments, including one that said the money should not go to immigrants “... who shouldn’t be here in the first place”, Miller said.
Including the families’ train tickets to New York, MetroCards, food and tips for street performers, the tours cost the company more than US$4,000, Miller said.
All five of the families on the tour on Tuesday had fled the war in Syria. They spent nearly three years going through security and health screenings before being resettled by a government-contracted agency, the International Rescue Committee.
“We lost everything,” said Hiba Beidak, 34, whose husband ran a pharmacy in the Syrian city of Aleppo. He had thyroid surgery before the war and needs medical care now, as does their 10-year-old daughter, who is unable to walk. Beidak brought her 6-year-old daughter on the tour.
Rihab’s older sister, Ghosoom Taki, 38, left the city of Homs for Jordan in 2011. She arrived in the United States in July with her five children, aged 3 to 16, and her husband, Tamer Khawog. They live in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“At first, I was very depressed and I was placed in a hotel in an industrial area,” Ghosoom said. “I thought, ‘Is this America?’ Four days later, when my sister came, we were in the same hotel; I felt there was hope, things are going to get better.”
Her two daughters, Hebah, 13, and Hayat, 12, speak English. Hayat wants to be a doctor.
Rihab’s family lives 4.8km away in Roselle, New Jersey. Her teenage sons do not speak English.
Laila Elfane, the refugee coordinator for ICNA Relief, said their apartment had bedbugs for months. The International Rescue Committee said it was addressing the problem and working to find a new home for the family.
The tour, on a sun-splashed day, was a revelation for the sisters, their first time in the city.
“I feel like all the negativity is melting away,” Rihab said.
“I am discovering another side of America, not like Elizabeth,” her sister said.
The day started at 10am in front of Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. After introductions, with translation from Elfane, they walked up Seventh Avenue into Times Square’s electric frenzy.
Soon, the families were on a subway to Central Park. Tynan Hooker-Haring, 31, a musician and stagehand, gave up his seat so that they could sit together.
“It’s awesome to see new neighbours being more confident, more conspicuous members of our community and not being afraid to embrace their new home,” Hooker-Haring said, adding, “the same way we should not be afraid to embrace our new neighbours.”
During the ride, Miller, who used to entertain children at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, mesmerised Ibrahim and Hamzah, the sisters’ 9-year-old sons, with magic tricks.
At the Central Park Zoo, the group watched the sea lions. After climbing the rocks, the children lined up at the Central Park carousel. Their US$3 tickets bore a familiar name: Trump. (In 2010, Trump restored the carousel, and his company signed a lease through 2020 to operate it.)
“We see some poetic justice in it,” Shawn Lynch, a Real New York Tours guide, said. NYT
Liz Robbins is a journalist with the ‘New York Times’