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how To hold on To summEr?
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wrEsTling is in, sofTball ball sTays Tays ou T ouT
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friday
September 13 2013 www.burnabynewsleader.com
cfl scouts have sfu’s casey chin in their sights for the draft. See page A10
Escape from a war-torn country Palestinian refugee leaves Syria, reunites with fiancé; to be married soon Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
After five years apart, Wissam’s and Marwa’s wait is over. On Tuesday, Marwa O’da arrived at Vancouver International Airport into the waiting arms of her Burnaby fiancé Wissam Nassar. “When I saw her … she was running and I hugged her,” said Wissam. “I was shaking, my heart was beating too fast … I was in another world.” With Wissam translating her Arabic, Marwa said, “I thought now I’m in a dream.” As reported in the NewsLeader, the couple has been waiting seven years to start new lives together. Now 26, Wissam and Marwa were both 19 when they met in Syria. Both are third-generation stateless Palestinians whose grandparents were forced out of Palestine in 1947, when the territory became Israel, and settled in Iraq where their parents and they themselves were born. Wissam and his family left Iraq for Syria after he and his brother were each threatened and ordered to leave the country due to their Sunni Muslim religion when sectarian conflict divided Sunni and Shia. But only two years after meeting Marwa, Wissam and his family were forced by the Syrian government, along with other stateless Palestinians, out of the country to a United Nations refugee camp. Marwa’s family was allowed to stay behind due to her sister’s kidney disease which required regular hospital treatment but were trapped amid Syria’s civil conflict. As stateless Iraqi Palestinians they are not allowed to enter the neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey. Eventually, Wissam’s family was sponsored by Ian and Heather Macdonald, Westminster Presbytery of the United Church and the Burnaby-based B.C. Muslim Association to come to Canada in 2011. please see CoupLe, A4
marwa o’da and wissam nassar were both 19 when they met in syria. WAndA ChoW/neWSLeAder
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