The Canadian Vaccines I Never Got to Put to Test

Nabil Mohammad, a Syrian journalist and writer residing in Istanbul. He has written for many newspapers and online blogs, in addition to editing videos. In 2020, he published a novel titled “Freshmen Training” with Al-Mutawassit publishing house in Italy.

I have been in the realm of journalism for 17 years but up until today, have never found the courage to write in the first-person. However, there was no other way for me to write the following lines. This is my story and I need to narrate it to you myself.

As the vaccination campaigns started against COVID-19, a virus with the sole value of forcing isolation that aids in reflection and in later voicing those thoughts, individuals and sometimes groups of people began forming anti-vaccination positions. These individuals were largely inspired by rumors of an international conspiracy theory against humanity, and the stances they took against the vaccine were the result of distrust in the political and health systems throughout the world. They were claiming ownership, power over their bodies and the choice of accepting or rejecting whatever gets put in them. I was amazed at the position of these individuals as I welcomed the corona vaccine with open arms, for why not? I’d already had three doses of different vaccines in one day, and no real benefit seemed to come from them. To this day, I have not step foot into the country that gave me these vaccines four years ago, to protect my health when I am to supposedly live there, in Canada.

In December of 2017, I became qualified for the Group of Five refugee sponsorship program and received an interview at the Canadian embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara, 445 km away from where I live in Istanbul. The general atmosphere at the interview felt positive, friendly and full of understanding. There were questions involving every detail in my life with a focus on the difficulties of obtaining documents that provide stability, even if only temporarily in Turkey. After the interview, I was granted a paper indicating that I was to stay in Turkey while waiting to travel to Canada. I then took the medical examinations and vaccines required by residents of  Canada to prevent communicable diseases.        

News spread among all the Syrians who had interviews that same day (all currently in Canada except for me) about how the traveling procedures would progress as usual and take about 3 to 6 months. Waiting turned into despair, and after some time I moved on and managed to convince myself of settling in Istanbul, for there was no other solution. My application story set became an anecdote used when referring to any prolonged wait. In any gathering, I was present or not, waiting for a delayed meal got compared to Nabil’s ticket to the promised land. I’ve come to only mention Canada during my battles to renew my Syrian passport in front of my homeland’s consulate, or when I have to renew my short-lived tourist visa at Istanbul’s official departments for foreigners. Only in those times do I remember that dead file that could have saved me from this nonsense, when mentioning Canada is accompanied with enraged utterings that I usually reserve for talking about Syria, especially while in governmental institutions, or when I have to pay brokers (otherwise known as ‘con artist stars’).       

My file is frozen in the cabinets of  the Canadian immigration services or in the embassy in Ankara, without a clear explanation. I imagine that the humidity has eaten away at it, the sealings have worn off, the stamps fallen and perhaps mice have had their way with my photo. I can only imagine it as this file full of obsolete paper, otherwise how could an electronic version take four years to get approved? We as Middle Easterners see Canada as belonging to the postmodern era, a pioneer in modern technological systems! Canada’s section at the 2020 Expo in Dubai was an art piece manifesting beauty and development, merging arabesque art with components of Canadian identity–at least that’s what we saw through our screens. 

Every friend I have in Canada, and they’re not few, made an attempt to follow up on my application, to discover what could be possible to do at this point, but no one was able to reach a tangible answer. They all suggested I contact the embassy in Ankara, though the reply was always the same: “dear applicant, all you can do is wait”. To this I always write a response that I never end up sending, a response about waiting and all its various meanings, like a disciplining whip that keeps missing you but just knowing it could hit at any second is punishment enough. The Jordanian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah once said, “waiting is nothing but rust eating away at our bodies and souls”.  

It is certainly monotonous to describe Syrians’ experiences in Turkey, especially in the present. Is there even a foregin embassy in Turkey that is not fully aware of the exact details of their situation? Is it really okay to ruminate over this tragedy, even through a journalistic article? Such an article would be similar to an officer at the Canadian embassy trying to pinpoint a weakness in your interview so as to reject your application. Although the country for which this officer works for  advertises that it accepts refugees, it makes sure to filter them, limit their approval rate or implement strict rules that narrow their chances of actually being accepted.

A quite ironic situation occurred after the first year of waiting passed, when one of my friends in Istanbul was interviewed at the Canadian embassy in Ankara and left my phone number as his emergency contact in Turkey. Due to some kind of miscommunication, I received a text message inviting me to a hotel in Istanbul to complete the last part of my traveling procedures before leaving for Canada. I immediately contacted the person who sent the message to inquire about further information, almost sure that I was not the person intended to receive the invitation. As I had thought, the sender apologized and informed me that they had not meant to contact me, but were rather trying to reach my friend, not knowing that I had been waiting for that exact message for months. 

It has been four years, plus a year and half of application procedures and waiting for the interview, and nothing has changed except for the added difficulty in obtaining a more secure residency in Turkey. I have, so far, applied for four work permits, yet the Turkish authorities rejected to grant one for no apparent reason. I am still living in Turkey with a tourist visa for the eighth year in a row, a tourist who lives in fear of having his stay revoked, a position that many Syrians in Turkey suffer from. A tourist who has to pay  his country’s embassy and its ‘con artist’ brokers huge amounts of money every two years in exchange for the renewal of a ‘ passport that is only needed in order to extend the Turkish visa.

One question lingers as time passes without any real or positive change: “Am I still waiting to move to Canada?”. But I can’t find a clear answer. However, I know that what happened robbed me of the motivation to make an attempt with another country, or keep track of that frozen file of mine in that cold, distant nation.