Muhammad has lived long years as an ajnabi. He was not able to study his favourite university major, nor to choose the profession he would practice, as he was stripped of all citizenship rights. The conditions left a continuous adverse effect on his psyche and life, although he eventually succeeded to obtain the Syrian nationality.
Muhammad Khair Ayed Ismail was born in Tel Hamees town, in Qamishli/Qamishlo, al- Hasakah Governorate in 1972. He is now married with four children. He submitted his papers many times trying to resolve his legal status. He eventually succeeded to fulfil his dream and became a Syrian citizen in 2011. Muhammad talked to STJ field researcher in an interview conducted in March:
"It all started when my father performed his military service during the period of unity between Syria and Egypt (between 1958 and 1961). Unfortunately, he was re-summoned for reserve service, and forced to pay a cash allowance, since he was newly married. After a period of time he was called by the Conscription division. They took his ID on the grounds that he posed a threat to the security of the state. Despite being tortured, he did not give them his military service book, which proved that he had finished performing it. Thus, my father became a maktum. They removed his file from the civil records in Tel Hamees. After a while, my father was registered ajnabi, because he had always frequented the Civil Status Department to ask about his lost papers."
“My seven brothers and I are all ajanib. My parents and brothers tried several times to resolve their legal status but to no avail. Once, a police station employee, in the Al-Qahtaniyah/Tarbassiyah town, offered to help my father resolving his legal status in an exchange for SP.25.000, but my father couldn’t afford that.”
Living as a stateless, Muhammad suffered a lot. He could not study his favourite major and attend the Railroad Institute, although he got excellent marks in the third and secondary grade:
"I tried to enrol in all institutes, but I got rejected, so I went into self-employment, doing any kind of work, then I got married. I feel really bad that I wasn’t able to attend higher education, especially when I see how many of my friends became government employees, although they weren't school valedictorian as I was. My children’s situation is no better than mine, they are maktumeen, since I am an ajnabi and their mother a citizen. My eldest son did not complete his studies, because he didn’t want to suffer the same fate as me. I still remember how in every time I went to enrol my children in school, they asked us to present IDs, and in each time I had to explain my father’s legal status and repeat why my children have no official identity documents.”
Muhammad was banned from traveling abroad for work. He remembered that once when he went to the mukhtar[1] to register his children, a security study was carried out on their situation, and they had to answer the same usual questions addressed to them: "who are you? Where are you from?” He explained:
"I named my last child Muhammad Ma’ashouq after the religious leader Sheikh Muhammad Ma’ashouq Khaznawi, and when I went to register my child at the mukhtar’s office, and answered the usual questions, he told me that I had to choose another name for the baby, because that the name was rejected. So I paid him a bribe of SP.500 and managed to keep the name."
Following the issuance of Decree No. 49 on the naturalization of the ajanib in 2011, Muhammad became a Syrian citizen, but he feels sorry for himself since he couldn’t study the field he liked, or practice his favourite professions. “It’s too late to become a citizen”, he said.