'I accepted the fact that I might be killed soon': how two young scholars fled Syria and found hope in Britain

Most teenagers, having finally got their further maths A-level exams out of the way, might be enjoying a bit of a breather right now. But Elias Badin is merrily running me through the probability laws he used to determine whether he should leave his middle-class life in Damascus, not to mention dreams of becoming a doctor, behind.

“The chance of you being killed in Syria has a certain number,” he explains. “The longer you stay, the higher this number gets. If you travel through Europe and risk your life only for that journey, and then live in a safe place like the UK, you won’t have this risk always.”

It was the prospect of compulsory military service kicking in when he turned 18 that tipped the odds, and saw the thoughtful schoolboy, now 19, set off with his engineer father for a harrowing two-month journey by foot, car, boat and lorry, that brought them to British shores in September 2015.

Since then, he and his friend Sulaiman Wihba – also a 19-year-old refugee from Damascus, although the two had not met before they arriving in this country – have become two of the most unlikely success stories.   

Last August, both joined independent Brighton College on scholarships, becoming some of the first Syrian refugees to gain spots at a top British public school. 

In March, after seven months toiling in the library and laboratories, they went one better, winning ‘3 A’ offers to study medicine at Queen Mary University of London; currently ranked fourth (below only Oxford, Cambridge and Swansea) by The Complete University Guide.

Their achievement echoes Michael Gove’s comments in March, at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, that immigrant children are improving results in UK schools: he attributed it to “demanding” parents from overseas families who have “very high expectations” of British schools and push their offspring to use them to the fullest.

Unsurprisingly, Sulaiman and Elias have smiles as wide as houses when I meet them at their school in East Sussex. The boys are excited: excited to be here, excited by the fact they’re missing assembly for this interview, excited by the coffee we’re drinking. 

Elias discovered his ambition to become a neurosurgeon was on course, while sitting in the school’s library. “My hands were trembling. Sulaiman was sitting next to me. I was like, ‘I got an offer!’” 

Sulaiman, who wants to be a physician, discovered he had secured his two days earlier: “I was like, ‘cool’. It is really satisfying because you put a lot of work in on your statement and interview practice. You want to get rewarded for what you’ve done to get there.”

Both have taken their maths and further maths papers, leaving just physics and chemistry to go, and riotously talk over each other, as best friends do, rushing to finish each other’s point. 

Their families have since joined them through family reunion visas: Elias lives with his father, dentist mother and two younger sisters in Hove; Sulaiman with his parents, both engineers, and two younger brothers in Brighton. 

Two years ago, things were very different; the pair were living on opposite sides of Damascus, dodging the bombs and fire fights that rained over their city. Before civil war, which started on Sulaiman’s thirteenth birthday, they enjoyed normal, middle-class lives. But as Assad’s regime clamped down and tanks rolled in, normal life was obliterated.

“Sometimes you got to go to school,” says Sulaiman, who studied by candle light into the night to ensure he didn’t fall behind. “But when there was a battle going on you couldn’t.” 

He describes days when bombs killed 80 and injured 100; on others he might be trapped inside school for hours while a fight raged outside.

“The other part is the fear that something is going to happen. It might be a relatively good day but all the time you are thinking, ‘What is going to happen now, am I going to be safe?’”

Elias switched between three schools as each was attacked, sometimes when students were inside.

At home, in different parts of the city, both learnt the safest place to hide during bombing was in the bathroom. Syrian architecture ensured they were in the centre of the house, far away from windows, and protected by the attic above.

“I reached the level where I accepted the fact that I might be killed or dead soon,” says Elias, matter-of-factly.

Sulaiman chimes in: “It all accumulated. It got to a point where we had to either stay there or risk our lives on a journey that might get us to a better place.”

Not that discussing the journey comes easily to either. Sulaiman travelled with his mother and whips through a whistle-stop tour of his route: “It’s pretty obvious: Syria to Lebanon then Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, then Serbia, Hungry, Austria, Germany, France, Calais, England.”

In Calais, after a month of failed attempts to break into the back of lorries as drivers slept, they stowed away in a refrigerated van. “I was sitting with big boxes of frozen chips,” he giggles.

Elias describes his experience as “both interesting and horrible”. The closest he and his father came to death was on the small boat fit for seven that set sail for Greece with 40 refugees on board. But, he adds, brightly, he has good stamina.

What do they miss most from home?

At this, Elias’s voice drops. “Before the war, I miss everything - every single minute of my life.” Sulaiman misses playing guitar and jamming with friends. Both say they will return to help the rebuilding effort, once the fighting stops.

Both have been granted five years asylum. At Brighton, they have discovered the joys of rugby and fish and chips, and are both now fluent in English, which they teach to fellow refugees in their spare time through Voices In Exile, a small charity which meets in a room at Brighton College, and first alerted the school to the boys’ plight. 

Headmaster, Richard Cairns offered the boys scholarships, having visited Syria himself, 15 years ago, and being impressed by the warm reception he received. “Britain has a long history of supporting youngsters from overseas going back to the Kinder transport in the 1930s,” he says. “Governments and private institutions, like ourselves, should do more to look after these young people. They have fitted in incredibly quickly. They are also a wonderful example to our pupils [who] see these two youngsters who have got very little and come through so much yet are working so hard and are so cheerful.”

In March, the government announced an end to the Dubs Amendment child rescue scheme, capped at 350 child refugees out of a promised 3,000. It was a decision that faced strong cross-party criticism.

Elias calls himself one of the lucky ones. He used to have bad dreams about Syria but now they’ve stopped.

“We used to wake up by bombshell or by people who were shooting guns. Now we wake up to normal alarms, or the sound of seagulls.”