Mariam Tomeh has left the war in Syria behind her and joined her son in Ireland

In a wheelchair at the arrivals hall at Dublin Airport, 63-year-old Mariam Tomeh clutched her eight-year-old granddaughter Nada to her chest, tears streaming down her face. "You are safe, you are safe now, there is justice here!" her son told her over and over, his arms around her.

For the past year Ibrahim Saimeh, who has been living in Ireland since 2006, has been struggling to bring his mother here through the family reunification process.

“She’s an old woman, she told me if you can’t take me to you, I will stay in my home and I will die there, I can’t be a refugee in my own country,” he explained.

He had not seen his mother for four years.

Safety fears
Every day he had feared for her safety, and was concerned about the heart condition she suffers from.

She had been unable to get the medicine she needed for the past few months due to the conflict, or to leave the house to see a doctor.

“All I wanted was to see my mom, to hug her, to know she is safe,” he said, relieved.

“I can’t describe how I feel, it’s too much,” Tomeh said breathlessly, as she held and kissed the face of each family member one by one, lifting up her grandson Mohammed, just over a year old, who was born in Ireland.

She let out a joyful cry as she held him for the first time.

“Finally I have come here, to see my son, to see his family, to find some safety,” she explained, her three granddaughters standing around her, grinning through their tears.

"I can't remember the last time I saw my grandmother," said Nada, who was six when she last visited Syria with her sisters, three months after the peaceful protests in March 2011 that sparked the ongoing conflict.

Tomeh described her journey from the town of Zakia, in the suburbs of the Syrian capital, to the Lebanese border.

“There were 20 government check-points between my home and Damascus. They only cared about the passports of the men, looking for those supporting the opposition.”

Damascus was quiet that day, she said, though the sound of gunfire and shelling echoed nearby.

Upstairs in the airport food hall, surrounded by families dressed for sun holidays, Tomeh recounted the day her son Zakaria (28) was killed in October last year, leaving her living alone and then moving from house to house to escape the fighting.

Marian (12) sat beside her grandmother, her blue eyeshadow smudged from tears, as she translated matter-of-factly the details of her uncle’s death.

It was a Thursday, October 4th. Tomeh’s son didn’t eat dinner with her the night before, or have breakfast at home as usual that morning.

Shooting
On the outskirts of the town where the government forces and the Free Syrian Army often clash, she could hear shooting.

“I asked him not to go; I told him if you love your God, don’t go,” she said, her voice shaking.

The last time she saw her son he was running towards the front line, to prevent the regime from advancing on the town.

As the fighting continued, another victim of the war, Tomeh’s nephew Ibrahim, had rushed back to his sister’s house to make sure she was safe.

She watched as a sniper hiding in a water tank shot him down in the street.

The man’s father and brother took him to the nearest hospital, but the next day she learned government authorities had arrested them en route, keeping the father and son in custody overnight but leaving Ibrahim in the car.

By morning he had bled to death.

“When Zakaria had still not returned home, I went into the streets asking: where is my son?”

Neighbours told her he would come home soon, but, she said, she knew then he was dead.

In Dublin, Saimeh was collecting his daughter from school when he heard the news of his brother’s death, having spoken with him only 10 minutes previously.

“He told me he was proud of what he was doing, that he was defending his home,” he said.

Map
As the family made their way out of the airport, pushing the trolly with the few bags Tomeh brought with her, Marian showed her grandmother a map of Ireland on her phone, pointing out Dublin and telling her about the river near their home in Navan where in the evening they can walk.

“We are starting our lives from the beginning,” she smiled.