Relief and new baby for asylum family of child suffocated in Channel crossing

First got here an electronic mail. Then, a month later, a child.

Every arrival, in its personal approach, marked a pointy swerve within the fortunes of a grief-bludgeoned Iraqi household that has spent the previous 15 years darting round Europe in a state of authorized limbo. Unable to safe asylum, or to work legally, or to name wherever dwelling.

The Alhashemi household scraped the depths of distress in April 2024. Threatened with imminent deportation from Belgium to Iraq, they tried to cross the English Channel in a small boat. Their seven-year-old daughter, Sara, died in a suffocating crush onboard – an incident we witnessed from a French seashore.

Just a little greater than a 12 months later, a life-changing electronic mail from an official French refugee company reached the household at their non permanent lodging in Rouvroy. It’s a quiet city surrounded by World Warfare One memorials and by the tall coal slag heaps that litter this stretch of northern France. The far-right French politician, Marine Le Pen, is a neighborhood MP.

“We all know our path now,” says Ahmed Alhashemi, 42, scrolling by means of the e-mail, a small smile breaking throughout his careworn face.

Throughout the hallway, in her bed room, his oldest daughter, Rahaf, 14, writes in a neat pocket book, fastidiously practising her fourth language, French.

“It is fairly onerous. I can perceive greater than I can communicate,” she says in fluent English, her third language after Swedish and Arabic.

Ahmed and his spouse, Nour, 35, met in Belgium after they had been of their 20s, having each fled Iraq. Nour says she and her brothers and sisters needed to go away due to their household’s ties to Saddam Hussein’s deposed regime. Ahmed fled due to alleged demise threats from a neighborhood militia.

Nour’s siblings shortly moved to Sweden, the place they had been all granted asylum. However Nour stayed again as a result of she had met Ahmed at a relative’s dwelling in Antwerp, and was instantly struck by his calm, thoughtful manner.

“It was love,” she acknowledges with a tragic smile, that stopped her from following her siblings to Sweden.

“If I might gone with them, my complete life would have modified. It is perhaps my destiny, or future,” she says.

As an alternative, a unique life unfolded. The couple utilized for asylum in Belgium, had been married there and went on to have three youngsters – daughters Rahaf and Sara, and a son known as Hussam.

The household did finally make their approach, through Finland, to Sweden as a result of they had been denied the correct to remain in Belgium. However early final 12 months, they had been informed that they needed to go away Sweden too.

European immigration officers had repeatedly dominated that their dwelling metropolis of Basra, in southern Iraq, was now not a struggle zone and their requests for asylum had been all declined.

However Nour and Ahmed insisted that their lives can be in peril in the event that they had been deported again to Iraq – a rustic that their youngsters had by no means recognized.

“If we thought we may truly reside [safely] in Iraq, we might have gone a very long time in the past,” says Nour.

Satisfied they may quickly be compelled to return to Basra, Ahmed reached out to an Iraqi Kurdish smuggling gang and paid them €5,250 (£4,576) to move the household by small boat to England, the place a few of their kinfolk had been already residing.

Early on 23 April final 12 months, I used to be ready with BBC colleagues on Wimereux seashore, after we noticed a smuggling gang battling in opposition to French police. Moments later, within the early daybreak mild, we noticed a person hoist a toddler onboard an inflatable boat. The woman was seven-year-old Sara. As extra folks clambered onboard, she grew to become trapped beneath her father’s legs and suffocated at nighttime, together with 4 different folks.

“I’ll by no means forgive myself. However the sea was the one likelihood I had,” Ahmed informed me quickly afterwards.

A fortnight later, Sara was buried in a cemetery within the close by metropolis of Lille.

The household was shortly moved to a migrant transit hostel in a tiny village south of Lille. There have been no retailers and little public transport. Different migrants spent solely an evening or two on the centre earlier than leaving – usually to move again to the coast to aim one other crossing. The Alhashemis remained there for nearly a 12 months.

We first visited the household on the hostel in Might final 12 months. Sara’s sister, Rahaf, spoke tearfully of her craving for a “regular” life. She had stayed in contact with faculty mates from Sweden the place she had flourished, profitable prizes for ice-skating.

Because the months started to slide by, it appeared that the Alhashemi household had grow to be trapped within the eddies of a bureaucratic whirlpool, struggling to get the youngsters into a neighborhood faculty, to obtain any kind of monetary help or to go away the crowded hostel.

Weighed down by grief, Nour struggled to go away her mattress.

“I ate there. I slept there. I sat there. I simply did not have the vitality to get out of that routine,” she says.

“It was the worst 12 months of my life.”

The hostel’s fast turnover of latest migrants left the youngsters reeling, and Nour haunted.

“At any time when new (migrants) arrived, they wished to speak in regards to the sea, how they acquired there, who they got here with. I did not need anybody to ask me questions or to listen to something,” she says. She compares the hostel to a jail.

The household utilized for asylum in France quickly after Sara’s demise.

In accordance with EU guidelines (the Dublin Conference), they might have been despatched again to Belgium, the place Ahmed was first registered as an asylum seeker and the place they’d already been informed they confronted imminent deportation to Iraq. That did not occur – probably as a result of the French authorities took pity on them after Sara’s demise. However it nonetheless took a authorized problem, and plenty of months, for the household to safe education and different help in France.

“It is like a labyrinth. They’re trapped by the procedures,” says Claire Perinaud, a French lawyer who has been serving to the Alhashemis.

“There is not any doubt they had been entitled to get assist as asylum seekers.”

She describes the complicated rules, the struggles to guide appointments and the difficulties dealing with these unable to talk French.

“All these legal guidelines and obstacles are made, in a approach, to forestall folks to come back [as if] to say, ‘you are not welcome’,” she says.

However in March 2025, the household had been lastly moved to their very own two-bedroom residence in a social housing unit in Rouvroy.

Rahaf instantly arrange what she known as “a shrine” to her sister Sara, with images and mementoes, together with her watch, fastidiously laid out on a bookcase.

“I can breathe now,” Nour says after we go to, her hand on her neck.

At the moment the couple nonetheless dreamed about reaching Britain, the place they produce other kinfolk. However not by small boat.

“By no means,” Nour tells me, firmly.

Then, on a summer time’s day in late July, a long-awaited electronic mail from the French authorities arrived in Ahmed’s inbox.

It defined that he and his youngsters had been granted provisional asylum and permission to stay in France for the following 4 years. Nour has been informed she is going to obtain the identical information quickly. After that, they’ll all be capable to apply for everlasting residency, paving the best way in direction of French citizenship.

“Ca va?” says Ahmed, testing out his shaky French, with a smile, as he welcomes us on the entrance of the residence block, a number of weeks later.

It’s a heat Monday morning in early September, with shouts and songs drifting throughout the parking zone from the close by main faculty.

Upstairs, sitting on her mattress and glancing at a poem by Victor Hugo, Rahaf contemplates the truth that her future is safe for the primary time in her complete life.

“I used to be nervous we had been going to get expelled. However now I am blissful we’re settled right here in France,” she says.

Ahmed, a tiler by commerce, is already planning to open his personal small firm and has been making use of for jobs within the meantime. Nour want to open her personal bakery.

“We’ve suffered for 15 years. At all times on the transfer,” says Ahmed.

“However now I really feel as if my complete life has opened earlier than me. I can work, I can lease, I pays taxes, and I will help my youngsters obtain their goals.”

And there may be another excuse for the tangible sense of optimism now surging round their residence.

“It was so quiet earlier than,” says Rahaf with a smile, on the sound of a crying child in the lounge.

Not lengthy earlier than our newest go to, Nour gave beginning to a wholesome child woman. Rahaf had wished to call her Lara, however the household agreed on Sally. Each carried deliberate echoes of the kid that they had misplaced.

Months in the past, Nour had nervous it was “too quickly” for one more child. However now she beams with delight on the presence of a brand new woman within the household. “It means I can see Sara in her,” she says, wiping away a tear. “God keen, Sally shall be fortunate in life and obtain all the pieces that Sara may need accomplished.”

And with that, Nour locations Sally in her pram and takes her outdoors, previous the varsity, for her very first journey round their neighbourhood.

There shall be some, studying this, who will disagree, maybe sharply, in regards to the selections the Alhashemis have made in recent times. Ahmed has already confronted livid criticism on-line for risking the lives of his youngsters in a small boat.

However after so a few years of uncertainty and remorse, the household now have what so many others nonetheless crave – a way of stability, and a secure place to name dwelling.