RAMTHA — Despite having travelled the 200-kilometre route separating Damascus and Amman thousands of times, Abu Mohammed said the journey this time could not have been less familiar.

Military blockades, militia-manned roadblocks and missile craters now mark the road that was once the major artery for traffic between Jordan and Syria, a development the Syrian taxi driver said had transformed what was once a routine three-hour jaunt into a “three-day nightmare”.

“There are no more coffee stands, no gas stations, only signs of death,” said the Damascus resident, who plied the well-travelled route between the two capitals until the violence in Syria drove him to seek refuge in the Kingdom.

“It is as if you are driving to judgment day, not to Jordan.”

Now huddling under a canvas tent in a refugee camp a few hundred metres away from the very road upon which he once earned his living, the 52-year-old says the return trip to Damascus has never felt so distant.

Abu Mohammed is one of thousands of Damascus residents who have poured into Jordan over the last two weeks: a community who after months of being largely unaffected by the violence wracking their homeland suddenly find themselves in Jordanian refugee camps.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), over half of the some 10,000 Syrians who have fled to Jordan since a July 18 bombing that marked the revolution’s arrival in Damascus originate from the Syrian capital.

Their arrival marks a new trend in Jordan’s nearly 150,000-strong Syrian refugee community, the vast majority of whom, until recently, were farmers from Homs and the nearby city of Daraa.

In comparison, many Damascene refugees are merchants and traders with greater wealth and extensive knowledge of Jordan, having business interests, investments and even land in the country.

Yet these assets offer few advantages and little solace to the latest wave of Syrians fleeing to Jordan, who, like their countrymen and women before them, find themselves separated from loved ones, traumatised by violence and facing an uncertain future.

Um Samer is one of thousands of Damascene residents who fled their homes within hours of the launch of a rebel offensive last month, designed to rattle the foundations of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

According to the mother of five, her family was forced to flee their home in the Bala neighbourhood after learning that regime forces were implementing a “security sweep” in search of rebel sympathisers.

“They accused us of protecting terrorists; they were going door to door and shooting everyone,” she said as she cradled her three-year-old daughter.

“They were destroying our neighbourhood house by house.”

With her sister married to a Jordanian and her family owning a summer home in the Kingdom, the country was a natural choice when Um Samer decided to flee her ancestral home.

Yet when the family packed their bags for what was to be a two-day journey of evading checkpoints and militias, Um Samer said they had envisioned spending their stay in the Kingdom at her sister’s villa rather than a shared tent with 20 other displaced Syrians.

“We have come to Jordan hundreds of times for business, for vacation, for the holidays,” she said.

“We never thought we would come to Jordan as refugees.”

Samer, a carpenter, said his decision to leave the Syrian capital coincided with the arrival of the shabihas: roving bands of pro-Assad militias whom opposition groups and human rights activists accuse of committing mass murders and other human rights violations.

“In the streets, there were no policemen, no soldiers, only young men with guns shooting and killing as they pleased,” said the 28-year-old.

Jordan was also a natural destination for the father of three, who had previously been commissioned to engrave intricate wood carvings in villas in Amman’s upscale neighbourhoods.

Yet with no work and unable to reach his downtown workshop to retrieve his tools, Samer was forced to devise a more creative explanation for his family’s sudden departure for Jordan: an extended vacation.

“I told my children that we would spend Ramadan in Jordan,” he said. “I don’t know what we will tell them after the month is over.”

Jordan also came as a natural choice for Mohammed Al Shami, a 32-year-old jeweller whose brother owns an Amman fast-food outlet and who spent several winters on the shores of the Dead Sea.

After spending days strolling west Amman’s malls, nights in five-star hotels and restaurants, and weekend getaways at Dead Sea villas, Shami said the sand-coated trailers of the King Abdullah Park transit facility were a world away from the Jordan he knew.

“Last time I was in Jordan I was dining with ministers and businessmen,” Shami bragged as he brushed a coat of dust off his khaki slacks: the only trousers he brought with him from Damascus.

“Now I have to sit on the ground like a dog.”

As Jordan’s latest wave of Syrian guests adjusts to a life in displacement, Damascene refugees say they have learned a new lesson in equality.

“It doesn’t matter where you are from, what you do or who you know; all Syrians are now united by one single cause,” Abu Mohammed said.

“We all want to return home.”

http://jordantimes.com/for-damascene-refugees-jordan-flight-an-unfamiliar-journey-to-a-familiar-land

Syrians huddle under a tent at the King Abdullah Park transit facility in Ramtha earlier this week. Refugees from Damascus began pouring into the Kingdom in late July after rebels began an offensive against regime forces in the capital (Photo by Taylor Luck)