flatsharing Archives

Flatsharing with a Refugee #5

26th October 2019
Deborah Seymus

As professionals in the global mobility sector we know all about managing culture shock, helping our assignees adapt to new environments, and spend a lot of time considering matters such as cost of living allowances and hardship locations. But what about those who move halfway across the globe with no help whatsoever? The people who leave their homes behind for entirely different reasons than a (temporary) foreign assignment? Freelance journalist and millennial Deborah Seymus has a monthly column on living with a young refugee with Knack online and is republished here with their permission. We look forward to bringing you her column over the coming issues as we explore a brand new view on life in Belgium.

Just over twelve months ago I met Izat*. Izat fled Afghanistan at the age of 19. He and his family lived in the village of Tagab in the northeast of Afghanistan, which has been under Taliban control since 1995. War has been raging in the region since 2001, and with Tagab trapped between the Taliban militia on the one side and government soldiers on the other, his village is under constant fire. Going to school is not an option as schools ceased to exist some time ago and career opportunities for young men are limited to being recruited by either the Taliban or the army. Realising this, his parents concluded there was no future for him in Tagab. They saved up 10,000 dollars and with a heavy heart helped their son flee to Belgium.

“Call me naive, but I hadn’t considered the impact religion might have on our cohousing experience. We talked about basic things at first.”

When I was first introduced to Izat, I was expecting to be faced with different cultural customs and habits. I had however not expected to live with someone for whom religion is such an important part of life. Call me naive, but I simply hadn’t considered it. Izat is an avid follower of Islam, but it took me a while to figure that out. Because we only talked about basic things such as housekeeping, school and work, I had no idea how important being faithful to his God was to him and how much that would end up influencing our living together.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Afghanistan had around four million inhabitants; that number has now been multiplied by at least eight. Almost all (more than 99.7%) residents are Muslim. The large majority (80 to 85%) is Sunni, a minority (15 to 19%, more than two million and mainly Hazara) is Shiite. 1% adheres to a different religion. This is because when the communist regime in Afghanistan came to an end in 1992, the Republic of Afghanistan ended too. At the end of the Afghan Civil War in 1996, the Taliban took control over Afghanistan and renamed the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

“I never expected that I would have to explain that praying is an extra, not something that precedes attending classes or going to a job interview.”

I left for my annual holiday shortly after moving in together with Izat in July 2018. Coming back from my Italian travels, I arrived at an apartment where prayers rang through the speakers. Things had changed since I left. There was, for example, a carpet in his room and Izat was dressed in a long white robe. He went to pray in his room a number of times a day, closing the door behind him. I wondered how that would work when he’d start school in September. He wouldn’t have the space and time to isolate himself four times a day. I wanted to point this out to him, but was afraid to. It was too early and our contact was still very superficial.
From September 2018, Izat started attending school and took additional courses through Curant. He also enrolled in a course to help him find a suitable job organised by JES. JES is a city lab for children and young people in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. As a partner of Curant, they strengthen the self-reliance of the refugees in our project. They organise excursions so that the group can get to know each other better and work around specific themes such as finding work.

After the course ended, the registered boys and girls were given the opportunity to show their buddies what they had learned. Just before Izat had to give his presentation he said to me: “Deborah, I have to leave now. It is time to pray.” I tried to explain this wasn’t the right time, but he had already disappeared. I spoke to one of the OCMW employees who was there too and asked for her opinion. Together we went in search of Izat to explain this wasn’t the time for prayer. He struggled with the idea that he could not pray where and when he considered it necessary.

“As an atheist, I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how dogma can make you put everything else aside to pray.”

I could not, and still do not, understand how a religion can expect you to put everything else aside so that you can pray. You also have to follow certain rituals, such as cleaning your body with water, before you can turn to Allah. Repeating the ritual and praying six times a day takes quite a bit of time. It also required a lot of empathy from me. Sometimes I came home from work late at night and then we’d sit and chat outside, until Izat’s alarm would go off: time to pray.

But as time went by, I heard his phone ring less and less often. Izat spent less time in his room praying and spent more time outside or with friends. School was going well and his Dutch progressed quickly. During Ramadan, I noticed Izat had stopped coming home in the evening and stopped sleeping in the apartment. For a month I lived there alone and when I asked him about it I received a vague answer. He said it was not my fault and that he would come home occasionally. In the meantime, I asked acquaintances, and they explained it’s not acceptable for a Muslim to live with a woman they are not married or related to.
“The only answer that became truly clear to me was that I had to look things up on Google.”

After a long conversation on Messenger, because live communication remained quite hard, I was finally able to explain to him why I found the situation so difficult. He seemed to understand that. He did, however, stick to what he had said. With the last months of our cohabitation coming up we both did our best to make living together as pleasant as possible. Summer had returned to Belgium, which meant that we often sat outside until late on the terrace, talking about politics in Belgium and Afghanistan, and also about faith. What particularly struck me during those conversations was that his answers were always based on what the Quran said or what someone had told him. Never on his own research or from personal experience. For example, I repeatedly asked him why a woman should wear a scarf or hijab, and added that it would seem that women had to do certain things that men needn’t do. The only clear answer to the question “why” was that I had to look things up on Google.

“To me ‘Because the Quran says so’ is not a satisfactory answer. I need to you formulate your own thoughts.”

Sometimes my relentless questioning of dogma would get him thinking however, and he’d try to find answers that he could explain within himself. To me “because the Koran says so” is not a satisfactory answer. Despite my best efforts, he kept repeating that one day I would see the light and if I spoke to a certain person (a guru who lives abroad), I would be convinced of the Islam. After a while I understood that Izat would always hope that I would repent, so that he wasn’t doing wrong by faith. Coming home and chatting with me caused him conflicting feelings. The moment I realised that, I understood I had to make a decision. It’s a shame Curant never considered how much value he attached to his faith. If they had, they would not matched a deeply faithful Islamic man and an atheist Flemish woman for a cohousing project.
Yet I don’t want to blame Curant. Izat and many of the other boys struggle to look inside or talk about their innermost musings. Their culture is one where men do not share their thoughts or feelings. This makes it difficult to paint a correct picture of the situation. Also, over 50% of the buddies in the project are female, and more than 70% of newcomers are male. Which makes it difficult for the project organisers and sometimes they have to take a gamble.

I did learn from our conversations that religion is not for me. I respect someone’s faith and their adherence to a religion, but I don’t want to be converted. And that’s exactly where the crux lies: the faithful find it incredibly difficult to understand how you cannot believe in God, Allah or YHWH. To them it feels as if you don’t believe them, which implies that where they have put their trust in, is not reliable. Some experience that as a personal rejection of their faith, and therefore also of their personality, and that is the problem for me. Because when exactly did personality become inextricably linked to religion or belief?

Flatsharing with a Refugee #4

Deborah Seymus

Just over six months ago I met Izat*. Izat fled Afghanistan at the age of 19. He and his family lived in the village of Tagab in the northeast of Afghanistan, which has been under Taliban control since 1995. War has been raging in the region since 2001, and with Tagab trapped between the Taliban militia on the one side and government soldiers on the other, his village is under constant fire. Going to school is not an option as schools ceased to exist some time ago and career opportunities for young men are limited to being recruited by either the Taliban or the army. Realising this, his parents concluded there was no future for him in Tagab. They saved up 10,000 dollars and with a heavy heart helped their son flee to Belgium.

“Our differing views are the cause of a fair amount of frustration.”

I have never asked myself so many questions about the subject of relationships, as since I’ve been living with Izat. Never before have I had so many problems expressing myself and explaining things to someone else when talk turns to the Belgian view on love and friendship. And to be honest, it’s the cause of a fair amount of frustration because our views on these themes are so vastly different.

Let me begin by answering why our views are so different. In Afghanistan almost all (99%) of inhabitants are Muslim, of which 80-85% are Sunnite. The Sunnites follow, besides the Quran, the Hadith, which is a vast collection of established Islamic legends about the life of the prophet Mohammed. The Hadith is essentially an extension and interpretation of the Quran, with often strict rules to be followed. Additionally, Sunnism is subdivided into different ‘madhahib’ – also known as hadis – which are different schools of religious thought. The most important of these are Hanafism, Malikism, Shafism and Hanbalism. Each was named after an ‘imam’, or pastor in prayer. Izat and his parents follow Hanafism, which means Izat was raised according to certain religious rules which influence his interpretation of the differences in sex, love and relationships.

“You need to be respectful of women, turning round to look at a pretty girl is not acceptable.”

One of these rules is that Muslim women should cover their entire body and wear a headscarf, or ‘hijab’ in Afghanistan. They do this so that men in the street would not look at uncovered parts of their bodies. Here in Belgium we’d be up on the barricades if we were not allowed to dress in public the way we want to, and see this as repression of women. When I speak with Izat about this, he explains: “You need to be respectful of women and turning round to look at a pretty girl is not acceptable. It’s very disrespectful for the woman, she could be married. She must be able to stay pure for Allah and her marriage.”

“My feminist beliefs tell me it sounds like a lame excuse to keep women subservient.”

I struggle with this last part. My feminist beliefs make me think it sounds like a lame excuse to keep women under some sort of control and keep them subservient. Even so, I can’t deny the fact that I’ve been stared at hundreds of times and don’t particularly enjoy it. When I confront Izat with the fact that I’ve been stared at by Muslim men too, he explains that not all Muslims know how to behave as they don’t know or understand enough about our Belgian customs.

“Many of the young men who come here for the first time are simply shocked by what they see. This can cause strange behaviour or expressions that we struggle to understand in Belgium. Good guidance and follow-up are essential so that newcomers learn how to deal with differences and not to misinterpret Western behaviour, or dress sense,” Anneloes Van Osselaer, project leader at Curant explains. “A few lessons during an integration programme simply aren’t enough as these programmes usually only cover some theoretical knowledge. In the best case we can discuss these topics in a group with other young refugees. Themes like these require more in-depth and sustainable guidance and follow-up; by OKAN schools, teachers, imams, role models from their own culture, social assistants and youth workers.”

“No matter how hard he tries to explain the premise of our cohousing project, his friends don’t understand.”

I can imagine that it’s not easy to understand Belgian freedom when you come from a completely different culture. And if you have to make do with the limited information given during your integration course, you end up with more questions than answers. Izat honestly shares with me that he’s looked at a woman here before. His friends tell him off immediately; he’s not supposed to be looking at women when he has one at home (me). No matter how hard he tries to explain the premise of our cohousing project, the boys don’t – or won’t – understand. As far as their concerned, when you live with a woman, even in Belgium, you are a couple.

Within the Afghan culture, women stay at home to take care of the children. They run the household and the man has very little input on this. Most adult Afghan women have never been to school, but considering the country has been plagued by war for 30 years, this is hardly surprising. Even so, things are slowly beginning to change within the educational system. Girls in Kabul have been going to school for a while now and a school has just been built in Tagab* where young girls can follow classes.

“Who else would take care of the children and the family?”

When I ask Izat whether men and women are equal in his culture, he emphasises they are equally worthy and women are considered enormously important. Families in Afghanistan are almost always large, with everyone living together under the same roof. “Without women, who would take care of the children and the family?” It’s not because women don’t work, raising large families instead, that they are treated as lesser.

Afghan women’s lives are traditionally controlled by their male relatives. Women symbolise the honour of the family and community and they are expected to be pure and modest. Over the last two decades however, armed groups have used these cultural norms as a weapon. The arrival of the Taliban in 1994 caused an extreme increase in violence against Afghan women. Using rape and sexual assault, they are able to dishonour entire communities. So what does this daily reality do to your views on sexuality and relationships as a young man?

“You need to be respectful of women and turning to look at a pretty woman is not acceptable.”

When Izat and I had been living together for about a month, I met someone. Just like many Belgian couples, we regularly met up and started spending the night together. I always let Izat know whether we would be staying at our apartment or at his place. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, because I soon realised that Izat would disappear anytime we were in my room. When I asked him about this, he pretended nothing was wrong and he had no idea what I was talking about. His curt reply was clear: “no, no problem”.

Only after many conversations with him did I begin to understand how incredibly uncomfortable this made him feel in his own home. He was already living with an open minded young woman he often struggled to know how to be around. But her sleeping with a partner who was not her husband, was simply too difficult to understand. Staying over at a friend’s house seemed to be the right solution; this way I wouldn’t feel guilty. I’ve now come to accept this, after all, it seems a little absurd to change my love life to meet his religious standards.

The truth? Living together will always be a quest to find the perfect middle ground, but I consider the freedom women enjoy here a vested right. A hard earned right I wouldn’t like to see changed.

Flatsharing with a Refugee #3

25th February 2019
Deborah Seymus

“If it doesn’t happen today, it’ll happen tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then surely another time.”

Time is precious. For most of us probably so much so that it takes up a large amount of our lives. Making and planning our time for all sorts of things such as work, appointments, social occasions, ourselves and our partners, can be quite frankly, exhausting. Like no other people, the Flemish are masters at explaining why we really can’t meet for at least another three weeks because, well, our diaries simply won’t allow it.

When Izat* arrived here he had no idea about the busy lives we lead. Our lives are controlled by time and finding yourself suddenly thrown into such a hectic rollercoaster is anything but self-evident. His biggest obstacle, to this day, is the concept of dividing and scheduling time. In Afghanistan there is no such thing as an agenda. You live from day to day, especially in the region where he’s from. What doesn’t happen today is for tomorrow, and if it’s not tomorrow then it will certainly happen another time. This also means he experiences time differently than we do. When Izat first arrived, he only knew the terms ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’. Imagine trying to adapt to our ridiculously hectic lives, full of tight schedules and double bookings.

“Our lives are controlled by managing time and making our schedules work.”

I came home one evening and told him that I was sleeping badly as my mattress needed replacing. He suggested buying a mattress tomorrow to which I replied that driving to IKEA next week suited me better. I might as well have said next month, because he didn’t understand. “What does next week mean, Deborah?” I tried explaining that next week is the week following after this one, but that the day itself needn’t be set yet. “So next week can be in four days, but also nine days?” He looked even more confused. I nodded and told him we Flemish people are a little weird with time. Unsurprisingly, he struggled with interpreting a ‘next week’ appointment for a long time.

In the early days I sent him two messages per appointment. One to confirm that he had an appointment and a second message as a reminder an hour or two before the appointment. I also made a weekly schedule and hung this on the fridge. This way he gradually started learning about the concept of having appointments and meeting them. And although Izat still isn’t quite ready yet for the kind of carefully planned lives we Belgians lead, he has come a long way these last six months. He understands what it means when I tell him that I am away next weekend, but even so, the social worker and I still send him a message the day before one of his appointments to be safe.

“Family responsibilities.”

Since two months Izat has a job. On weekends he works as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. Never has he been late, and he isn’t happy when they ring to cancel his shift. His motives are different than mine. Every hour he works is an hour he earns money. Part of the money he earns goes to his family in Afghanistan. Now that the Taliban have shot his father in the leg, he is no longer able to work. Izat feels responsible for his family and sends money each month. To put this into perspective: a newcomer can earn up to €240 per month on top of his integration income. Any more than that and his living wage is docked. Considering that this is just €910,52, there is little room left to save, and time is running out.

“The programme deals with what is right in front of us, but spends very little time on what will happen after it ends.”

Izat and I will live together for a year and a half. We’re now six months in. In October 2019 the project ends and he will be expected to have learned enough to live completely independently. It frightens me. He is progressing in leaps and bounds and was recently crowned top of his class, but even with the money he can(not) save right now, things are going to be very difficult.

The project focuses on the situation now and current issues (such as Izat’s unstable health), however very little time is spent on preparing the boys for what will happen once the programme ends. Key of course is helping them integrate into society as quickly as possible, but that’s a long process. Social workers have a very limited amount of time per client. Each social worker has to make priorities, and oftentimes this is a choice between head and heart. They are exceptionally aware of how difficult it is for newcomers to create a sustainable future.

When Izat first arrived in Brussels he was sent from pillar to post. For forty days he was dependent on a crisis centre where, if he was lucky and on time, he could eat and spend the night. Sometimes he couldn’t. Then he’d sleep in the Maximilliaan Park. “That was very cold, often I do not eat or sleep,” he tells me.

While we sit here talking on our settee, I look outside. I’ve just come back indoors after managing not even five minutes on our terrace. I try and imagine lying on a park bench in these temperatures, surrounded by people who only wish for the night and time to pass by faster. What must it be like to not know anyone? To be surrounded by strangers speaking a strange language? I brush away a tear. Sometimes I struggle to grasp what he has gone through just to get here.

“A pretty impressive workload if you ask me.”

From Monday to Friday Izat attends school fulltime. On top of this he follows a course on ‘social interaction’ on Tuesday evenings that aims to teach him how we communicate in Flanders. Topics such as how to cope with stress, how to manage time, habits and customs between men and women, and more are discussed here. And then he works on weekends. Depending on the restaurant’s need, one or two days. Which I consider a pretty impressive workload.

His parents have no idea what his life here is like, how much time he spends practicing the au-sound or the word ‘voraw’ (vrouw) or even that he is living together and spending time with a female who is not his wife. During those early months Izat spent a lot of time in his room, alone. Slowly he has started to get to know me and open up to me. Not an easy task for someone who has been through so much and has had his trust abused so regularly through the constant transfers and leaving behind of friends. The trust he places in me, the openness with which he speaks now and the moments he wants to spend together mean the world to me.

“Never ever have I experienced such respect and generosity.”

I’ve a fair amount of experience of living together with people. But I have never enjoyed the respect and generosity that I am given by this young man, in any kind of relationship. Recently he came home after a long weekend’s work with some money in his pocket. “For you,” he said “because I see you replace lamps and they expensive.” I was left speechless. Of course I couldn’t accept the money, but his offer said so much more. We’re a family now and we share expenses so I want to contribute was what he was really saying. Is there anything more heart warming to start the year with?