Soon after the morning sun began shining down on the desert border post, the families started packing up and warmly bidding each other goodbye and good luck.

Ahmed grasped the hand of Dr. Saad, an optician who had been turned back from traveling to Amman to sit for his final board exams, wishing him a safe journey back home to Baghdad. Next he said goodbye to Dr. Bassima, who has a Phd in nursing from Britain, and was turned away though she is a professor at a Jordanian university. The females in the families kissed one another for farewell before the Ahmed family loaded into their rented GMC.

Three hours after setting out, Ahmed and his family arrived at the Iraqi border with Syria. Displaced Iraqis crowded the main hall of the border post compound, and angry shouts rang through the air as Saif entered.

Locating the source of the conflict, Ahmed cringed at yet another scene of Iraqi humiliation. Some families had just arrived who appeared to have fled in haste after the male head of the family was arrested or taken prisoner. But Syrian law forbids entry to any woman unaccompanied by a man, so these families were being turned away.

The driver advised Ahmed to slip some money into their passports before showing them to the border police, in order to ease their entry and avoid the long queue. The money helped expedite things, and the family was through much sooner than could have been expected, considering the massive crowd of refugees still waiting as they pulled away from the Iraqi border and pointed the GMC towards Damascus.

Welcome to Syria

A few hours later, the exhausted crew arrived at the outskirts of the capital city, where they would all cram into Ahmed’s nephews flat for a few days while searching for their own new home.

With Damascus teeming with an influx of Iraq refugees, the search for an apartment became a hassle bordering on nightmare. Whether the result of scheming real estate agents or the housing demands of displaced Iraqis, Ahmed discovered they faced painfully exorbitant rental rates. Most Iraqi refugee families have a limited supply of money to sustain themselves, but are forced to accept the expensive rents because they have no other choice.

The Ahmed family split into two groups so they could cover more ground, and for days canvassed neighborhoods looking for a good home for a decent price. Ahmed decided to leave the decision-making to his wife, who settled on a modest flat, overpriced at US$800 a month.

After a week of much-needed rest in his new home, Ahmed entered a world of agony as he began negotiating Syrian bureaucracy, seeking to enroll his youngest son, Abbas, in school. Ahmed hadn’t thought to bring documentation of his son’s educational record, which the Syrian authorities required for enrollment.

Faced with the prospect that his son could fall behind in his studies, Ahmed called his sister in Baghdad immediately and asked her to hire someone who could follow-up on the necessary paperwork. The multiple stops and stamps the documents required took more than a month and cost a healthy sum because of regular curfews and the risks the man had to take in traversing the insecurity of Baghdad.

Bouncing Through Bureaucracy

First, the man had to retrieve a document and have it stamped at Abbas’s old school, thus establishing the level of education he had completed. Then that document required a second stamp from the education department in Kharkh region, on the west side of Baghdad where the family had lived, then to the foreign ministry for authentication. Finally, the Syrian embassy in Baghdad had to authenticate the document before sending it on to Syria.

Once the document arrived in Syria, Ahmed's agony started once more. Syria allows Iraqi students to study until the paperwork is processed, but once the document arrived, Ahmed had to take it for another whirlwind tour through bureaucratic authentication. First, the Iraqi embassy had to approve, then the authentication department in the Syrian foreign ministry. Third, the document had to pass through the Syrian Education Ministry en route to the Damascus Education Department. Once Abbas’s status was approved, the department would issue a letter to the school, which Ahmed would then have to hand-deliver.

By the time all bureaucratic hurdles had been overcome, Abbas had missed the 1st and mid-year exams, but in a goodwill gesture the Damascus Education Department agreed to allow Abbas’s 2nd-term and final exams to make up for it.

After all the trouble, Ahmed was ecstatic when Abbas succeeded in his exams, but then the reverse trip of annoying but necessary documentation began. Ahmed had to take Abbas's report card to the Education Department, then the Education Ministry, the Foreign Ministry’s authentication department, and finally the Iraqi embassy.

By keeping the embassy’s culture section updated on Abbas’s educational advances, in theory his records should be registered with the Education Ministry in Baghdad, which would keep the paperwork in order if the Ahmed family ever returns to Iraq.

Sadoun al-Janabi is an Iraqi journalist. The names of the subjects of this story have been changed for their own protection.

See here for Part I of the Ahmed family's flight from Iraq, which recounts the reasons for their abrupt departure and their rejection from the Jordanian border. Watch Slogger Sunday for part three of the story, as Ahmed learns his family's passports have been voided.