‘An incredible moment’: Palestinian family reunites in Quebec after months of anxiety
Global News
A Palestinian professor at Université Laval in Quebec has finally reunited with his wife and five children, with the help of a local couple who sponsored them.
It was a moment Zakaria Helles had been dreaming of for 10 months. On June 24, he stood at Jean Lesage airport in Quebec City, surrounded by supporters, waiting to finally hold his wife, Islam, and their five children in his arms again.
“To hug them and embrace them between my arms, making sure that they are alive, they aren’t injured,” Helles says, looking back on the day from the dining room table of his temporary home. “They are still standing and they are with me in Quebec. That was an incredible moment.”
Helles first arrived in Quebec City last August, taking on a visiting professor role in civil and water engineering at Université Laval. His stay was supposed to come to an end in November, but just a month before his planned return home, disaster struck.
“That was a very horrible time and I wouldn’t like to remember it again…. The war started in Gaza at 6 a.m. and I was in Quebec where it was around (midnight). I was sleeping,” Helles recalls. “I woke up in the early morning to hundreds of messages.”
Helles couldn’t believe his eyes and tried to contact his wife immediately, but there was no electricity and no access to phone lines in their home at that point.
“After a while, I could make a (connection) with her, checking that she is alive and the family are alive.”
Helles says his family got to safety but their home in Gaza was completely destroyed, along with everything in it. His wife and children spent the following months travelling on foot, sheltering from place to place, eventually stopping in Rafah.
All the while, Helles tried desperately to find ways of getting them out.
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