Iceland review - 2016, Page 39

ICELAND REVIEW 37
10, 13, 17 and 18, this takes some time—
and head out onto the quiet street where
the photographer is waiting to take their
portrait against the snowy backdrop of
the central Akureyri neighborhood. After
a fresh dumping of snow in the preceding
days, the weather is calm and the temper-
ature a relatively mild -4ºC (25ºF). The
family is naturally still adjusting to the
climate (Akureyri is located just south of
the Arctic Circle). When they left Beirut
it was considerably warmer, or 15-20ºC
(59-68ºF). Eager to get back inside once
the shoot is finished, they invite us in for
tea. Khattab tells me he had originally
hoped to move to Australia but that
plan hadn’t worked out. Last year, the
UN asked if he would like to resettle
in Iceland. “‘Where’s Iceland?’ I asked.
‘It’s next to Norway,’ they told me. Later
I discovered that it was actualy 1,000
miles [1,600 km] away!” he says laugh-
ing. Thankfully, he says, he had been
warned about the cool climate when he
was exploring the option of relocating
to Iceland. “The weather is cold but it’s
not that cold ... Before we prepared for
our arrival here, everyone said ‘don’t go
to Iceland, it’s like a freezer, it’s barren,
there’s nothing there,’ but we saw on
social media that we had a lot of support,
that the people here were good, so we
thought ‘OK, it will be fine.’”
The support Khattab refers to is the
thousands of comments posted on the
Facebook event page ‘Kæra Eygló Harðar
– Sýrland kallar’ (‘Dear [Minister of Social
Affairs] Eygló Harðar[dóttir] – Syria is
calling’) in late August-early September
last year. The page was set up by assistant
professor at the Iceland Academy of the
Arts Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir as an appeal
to the Icelandic public to demonstrate to
the minister that the nation could, and
should, accept more than the proposed 55
refugees over a two-year period. Within
12 hours, 1,000 people had signed up to
Bryndís’ virtual event with offers of both
material and other support to refugees.
Within a week, when the event formally
ended, 16,000 people had joined. News
of the initiative spread internationally
and Khattab and his family—still in
Lebanon at the time—learned of it, too.
“I would like to thank Bryndís because
she reflected in the media the support
that existed in Iceland. Thousands of
people in Iceland demonstrated that they
were ready to support us [refugees].” In
addition, 25 of Iceland’s 74 municipali-
ties expressed their interest in resettling
refugees. In late September, Icelandic
authorities sent a formal letter to the
UNHCR, informing the agency that the
nation was willing to receive refugees
from war-torn areas.
I quickly learn that speaking to the
media is Khattab’s way of showing his
appreciation to Icelanders; he’s been
interviewed many times in the past two
weeks. Because he speaks good English—
back in Syria he worked as an English
teacher and tourist guide—journalists
have been able to interview him without
the help of a translator.
ARRIVING IN ICELAND
Two weeks earlier, the Syrians arrived
at Keflavík International Airport to
a crowd of two dozen journalists and
SYRIANS
Taking selfies with
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson,
Iceland’s prime minister.