Talented Syrian refugee may take himself off to another country

Abdulmalik Baker is a 20-year-old refugee from al-Hasaka, a Kurdish-speaking area of north-east Syria, fifty kilometres from the border with Iraq to the east and 50 kilometres to the border with Turkey to the north.
 
Three years ago, with conflict in the area escalating, his parents, both professionals in their fields, father being an engineer often travelling abroad with his job, and mother a teacher, sent both their sons to Europe to get away from the warzone, where both the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and the Syrian army hope to recruit young men like their sons. Baker has ended up in Zug and, in his short time here, he has been a model of integration, even to the extent of learning Swiss-German. At present, he is attending lessons at the Cantonal School in Zug and hopes to start an apprenticeship prior to studying later. However, if bureaucracy on the part of the Swiss Secretariat for Migration (SEM) in Bern takes much longer, he is considering leaving Switzerland and heading off elsewhere, taking his many talents and skills with him.
 
The initial plan of this young refugee, who speaks Kurdish, Arabic and English, was to study IT. After an arduous journey via Greece and Austria, during which he was robbed of his possessions more than once, he finally arrived in Switzerland and was duly allocated to Zug, where he has been living at accommodation provided by the canton at the Choller Centre. It was while on this long journey from his homeland that he met an American woman, who wanted something translated from English into Turkish. After he had done this, she told him to get in touch, once had made it to Europe. Once here, Baker duly called the American woman, who had no contacts with Switzerland, but she did know someone in France, and this person happened to be related to the Könz family in Oberägeri, to whom he was duly invited. Not unsurprisingly, Baker made a very good impression on the family, getting on particularly well with their 24-year-old son, Andreas. Indeed, the Syrian refugee even joined the family on their Christmas holidays in the Engadine two years ago. Naturally all this contact helped him with his German, borrowing language books from the library and watching linguistic videos on YouTube at the same time. What needs to be mentioned here is that courses in German are not subsidised by the Swiss state for refugees who have not been granted asylum status, like Baker, but for those who have.
 
In the meantime, the soon-to-be 21-year-old set about achieving his aim of studying IT and duly applied at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HL). Incidentally, it is in Lucerne were Baker’s brother, who is four years older, now works on a kebab stand. The HL recognised his school-leaving qualifications, but as he had no C1 diploma in German, he was denied a place. However, the HL duly contacted the Cantonal School in Zug, asking the history teacher, Alexander Brogli, who is used to organising pupil exchanges, if he might help. “I have had some unusual exchange school pupils over the years but this was quite a challenge, bearing in mind how quickly everything had to be sorted out,” he said. Baker was duly admitted to the school under a special status which enables him to follow lessons without being awarded official grades, until the spring holidays provisionally, but, as he got on so well there, this was duly extended to the end of the summer term, enabling him, too, to follow a course in German as a second language.
 
Since being at the school, where he gets on very well with his fellow students, as the photograph shows, Baker has decided not to apply to study straight away, but to embark on an apprenticeship with an IT company in Lucerne. However, while this is a considerable achievement in itself, the young Syrian has one big worry, that asylum in Switzerland will not be granted soon enough to be able to embark on this. After all, he feels he has waited long enough. “Swiss people are the best people in the world,” he said, in reference to the support he has been given by the Könz family, his teachers and his fellow pupils, while at the same time expressing his frustration with the slowness of bureaucrats in Bern.
 
In order to help, Brogli has already written a supporting letter to the SEM, in the hope the process might be speeded up. The 20-year-old refugee has recently been through a particularly bad time, his home town having come under attack from the Turkish air force, cutting off communication with his family and friends there.
What is also worrying is that, if he is not given a positive response by the SEM by August, he will have to abandon his apprenticeship place. This is why he is considering taking his talents elsewhere, to a country which will not keep him in limbo so long.