Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Close to eight years af­ter Is­mael Roberts re­turned to T&T with his moth­er, Mar­sha Roberts, from ISIS-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ries in Syr­ia, he is still un­able to at­tend school, with­out doc­u­ments and is, for all in­tents and pur­pos­es, state­less.

Is­mael, eight, and 38-year-old Mar­sha were repa­tri­at­ed to T&T from Turkey in Oc­to­ber 2015 af­ter three years in the Mid­dle East.

Mar­sha said gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials helped their fam­i­ly to re­turn home but she now feels like her son has been aban­doned and dis­card­ed by the state.

“With­out a child hav­ing an iden­ti­ty, with­out a child hav­ing a chance to be in school and get an ed­u­ca­tion, what will you leave him to come out to be? And then you’ll blame it on ISIS but he’s back home and we are try­ing to live a dif­fer­ent life,” Mar­sha said.

“I just want my child to have a fair chance in life. When I re­turned, he was one-year-old, and now he’s 8, and he hasn’t been in school. I have to be un­em­ployed and home­school him and teach him to read and write. I want a bet­ter life for him.

“I feel the pain most­ly in the evenings be­cause I will see chil­dren com­ing from school and my son will say, ‘Mom­my, I want to go to school’. He says, ‘My friends ask me if I go to school and I have to lie and say I go to school’. This has been hap­pen­ing over and over for years with­out any help. I reach out for help in pri­vate schools, gov­ern­ment schools, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on my own, go­ing in on my own and every­body shut­ting me down,” Mar­sha said, as her eyes turned red and filled with tears.

A room at the front of their one-sto­ry home in Mal­oney is Is­mael’s makeshift class­room. His en­tire ed­u­ca­tion has been de­vel­oped by his moth­er in this six-by-sev­en-foot room. On one of the walls rests a white­board. Math­e­mat­ics was Sat­ur­day’s sub­ject of the day when the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed.

“I feel my son has been aban­doned. Every day I feel deep pain be­cause I want the best for my son, and it’s like we’re go­ing deep­er down a hole be­cause it’s like he doesn’t ex­ist. He has no iden­ti­ty here.

“I would like my son to have a nor­mal life as any child, any cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I would like to see him in a school, play­ing with chil­dren his age. Be able to get den­tal, free den­tal, and health­care. Every­thing as a nor­mal av­er­age child,” Mar­sha said.

Since their re­turn, Mar­sha said they’ve not been of­fered any form of sup­port from the state, or any pro­fes­sion­al coun­selling or re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

She said: “Noth­ing was put in place. I have to re­ha­bil­i­tate my­self. At the same time, teach my son and fight up and make it hap­pen where I think that they can do bet­ter. I think noth­ing was put in place here.

“I don’t know if the prob­lem is the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be­cause if you all grant us repa­tri­a­tion back home, then what is the is­sue? Why do we have to be vic­tim­ized like that? Every day my son asks me to be around chil­dren his age, and it’s a big hold-up. I don’t know what’s the prob­lem, and I would like to see my son smile again.”

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Is­mael, who was born in Syr­ia, walked about and spoke with the Sun­day Guardian. He was re­spect­ful and friend­ly and, like his fa­ther who died in Syr­ia, he loves foot­ball.

He longs for a chance to talk foot­ball with class­mates.

His old­er sis­ter has had an eas­i­er time wit­th rein­te­gra­tion as she was born in T&T. She is cur­rent­ly at­tend­ing a sec­ondary school in east Trinidad.

The long road home

To the av­er­age per­son, what Mar­sha and her son sur­vived is un­fath­omable. She lived for two years in ISIS-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry where Is­mael was born

“Yeah, it’s a whole dif­fer­ent cul­ture. The lan­guages be­ing spo­ken, the food, bombs falling, and peo­ple dy­ing. It’s a life that you can’t re­al­ly ad­just to. You just get up every day and just try to make it, try to sur­vive, try to seek the best in­ter­est of your chil­dren. It was re­al­ly a sur­vival for life,” she re­called.

It was just shy of 11 years ago that Mar­sha and Is­mael’s old­er sis­ter were car­ried to Turkey by her hus­band who told them he had fi­nal­ly man­aged to get a long-await­ed break­through - a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball con­tract with a Turk­ish club.

“We spent some days in Turkey but my hus­band would al­ways hold on to the pass­ports. I didn’t see any­thing strange be­cause he cared. He was al­ways a car­ing fel­la. Every­thing is bor­ders. So it was like the Sa­van­nah there, and we crossed the road in­to ISIS . . . as you cross, they tell you ‘Wel­come to ISIS.’

“You can’t even talk. You, as a woman, are not sup­posed to talk around men. I got locked up plen­ty of times over there be­cause I was al­ways against (the poli­cies). I am a per­son that al­ways speaks their mind. It had some­where they would put the women in rooms and you can’t see out­side at all,” Mar­sha said.

Af­ter two years in the city of Raqqa in ISIS-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry, Mar­sha worked up the courage to risk her life to save her chil­dren. They es­caped across the bor­der to Turkey and af­ter be­ing held by Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties for sev­en months, they were repa­tri­at­ed to T&T.

But life in Trinidad has been dif­fi­cult for the fam­i­ly.

“I nev­er re­al­ly get a fair life again be­cause to get through with any­thing is al­ways a prob­lem. They al­ways bring up the past with ISIS all with­in my com­mu­ni­ty. Yeah, it’s al­ways, it’s al­ways ISIS and they watch you as dan­ger­ous. So, when you think that you try­ing to do bet­ter for your­self and go for­ward, it’s like you al­ways have a stain on your name,” she said.

“It was very painful, but I think the en­vi­ron­ment that I came from back in Trinidad, I had the mind and the will to es­cape, but I don’t know if the oth­er peo­ple there had the mind and the will. They don’t know if they were go­ing to es­cape in­to death.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day as calls to her phone went unan­swered.

T&T is one of 66 coun­tries with cit­i­zens, most­ly women and chil­dren , de­tained in camps in north-east­ern Syr­ia. Be­tween 2013 and 2016, at least 130 T&T na­tion­als trav­elled to ISIS-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ries - the most peo­ple per capi­ta in the west­ern hemi­sphere, ac­cord­ing to Hu­man Rights Watch.

In late Feb­ru­ary, Hu­man Rights Watch called on the T&T gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens from camps in Syr­ia, say­ing there are more than 90 na­tion­als, in­clud­ing at least 56 chil­dren, in refugee camps and de­ten­tion cen­tres there.