As soon as Mirna Yazji heard news of the mass shooting that occurred in Nova Scotia, flashbacks from her war-torn home country started to surface.
“That brought back memories, that’s for sure, from back home, how people could just get killed like this. (It’s) so sad,” said Yazji, a Syrian refugee who came to Nova Scotia with her daughter in 2016.
“I was literally in the middle of shootings for five years in (Homs), the city I lived in, just so much bad memories.”
Among the memories, she recalled hearing and watching people get killed, losing friends and having to escape her home in Homs in the middle of the night with her family after it was devastated by bombs in 2012.
But ever since she arrived in Nova Scotia, Yazji has felt safe, she said, adding this past weekend’s tragedy will not rob that sense of security from her and should not rob it from others living in the province or hoping to move here.
“This could happen in any place in the world. This is not a common situation,” said Yazji.
“This is not going to (change) Nova Scotia. It’s going to stay a peaceful place, with the kindest people in the world.”
Loai Al Rifai, co-founder of the Nova Scotian Syrian Society, similarly was brought back to events he encountered in Syria when he learned of the tragedy on Sunday. He said he kept reading updates, watching the number of lives lost climb over a span of hours.
“It was a difficult moment,” said Al Rifai, who also arrived in Nova Scotia in 2016, as part of a wave of Syrian refugees who came to Canada.
“The same subject was in my country, when I was in Syria. I saw lots of people killed by bombs or by shootings.”
He, too, said the tragedy did not make him feel any less safe living in Nova Scotia, which he has called home for the past four years.
“It was just one time. I hope it doesn’t happen again, but it is safe here in this province,” he said.
Moustafa Alkrad, who is also a Syrian refugee living in Nova Scotia, echoed these remarks.
Alkrad said he knows all too well how a tragedy “causes you so much pain and so much agony,” and said he feels "very sorry' for the families who have lost their loved ones from the mass shooting.
“I would like to tell them that we are with them, we are a community, and we pray for them,” he said.
Having had to come to grips with horrific events back home, Yazji shared one piece of advice for Nova Scotians who are now coming to terms with the mass shooting: “Just have faith.”
“Goodness will be more than the bad in this world. There’s a few bad people in this world, but there’s good people all over the world,” she said.
