A refugee fled Syria via Lebanon to Merseyside after nine members of his family were killed in a missile strike.
Nader Aljomaa left the war-torn country when his family home was blown up by a rocket and has now spoken about his journey, for Refugee Week 2022. The dad, who now lives in Bootle, is learning English in the hope of getting a job in Merseyside. He said he is still haunted by what happened to him and his family, revealing how his son is living with a piece of debris in his skull after the missile strike.
He said: "They said in Lebanon that my son needed an operation on his brain because he had a small piece of metal stuck in his head from the war. Bashar [al-Assad, the Syrian president] is a very bad person. He fired a rocket at our house, I lost nine people from my family because my family were inside of the house."
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Despite being told in Lebanon that his son needed an urgent operation, since moving to the UK he has been told that he doesn't and five years on is now living in South Sefton. He added: "There was a lot of metal stuck in my son's head but the doctors in England said he didn't need the operation, he just needed to be looked after.
"The happiest day of my life was when I held the ticket to travel to the UK, when I was in Lebanon. It was very hard when I lived in Lebanon, there was nowhere to study for my children. My oldest son was very sick, he had to stay at the hospital every four to five days.
"The doctor told me my son needed a big operation, it would be expensive - maybe $100,000 - so we spoke to immigration to find a place abroad where we could get this operation. Immigration told me I would have to travel to the UK, when I arrived in this country, in Liverpool, it was a special day, believe me.
"Now I am studying English language and I am looking for a company to work [for]. My son was taking lots of medicine in Lebanon, he was dizzy all the time.
"After we came here we had a meeting with a doctor and he saw all the medicine, I had an ASDA bag full of medicine. The doctor told me to throw it away. He said he did not need it and he did not need any type of operation that they said in Lebanon."
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