Hobbiesshirt - Share Our Similarities Celebrate Our Differences Shirt

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In 2015, at the Share Our Similarities Celebrate Our Differences Shirt it is in the first place but age of 16, Maya Ghazal was forced to flee her home in Damascus, Syria, with her mother and two younger brothers, and go to the U.K. where they were reunited with her father, who had arrived in the country a year earlier. Ghazal saw this move as her “great new beginning.” She had big hopes and dreams and believed life would get back to some kind of normality, but unfortunately, this was not the case at first and she experienced  tigmatization and hostility. In her 2018 TEDxPalaisDesNationsWomen talk, she pinpointed the one big difference between refugees and most other people: “We lost our homes and have been forced to seek safety in another country. But that is a change of circumstances… not a change from a person into a problem.” She went on to deliver five important steps that restored her hope and should be available for every refugee: do not label; regard education as important as food, water and safety; support university places for refugees; girls can do anything; and believe in us. This year, the 22-year-old was appointed goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency. Through powerful speeches, which she has delivered all over the world, Ghazal advocates for refugee inclusion, access to education and job opportunities, and counters negative stereotypes. In 2020, she fulfilled her goal of becoming the first female Syrian refugee pilot, and now has ambitions of becoming a commercial airline pilot. In the days preceding World Refugee Day—held every year on June 20—Ghazal shared her story with Vogue, from her early life in Damascus to her career in the sky.

Vogue: What are some of your last memories of life in Syria before you left? Maya Ghazal: When the Share Our Similarities Celebrate Our Differences Shirt it is in the first place but conflict in Syria started in 2011, I was about 12 years old. We were in Damascus so at first we weren’t affected directly. Knowing it was the foundation of our future, my parents were keen for my two brothers and I to continue our education. I had to change schools about three times because the areas that were safest from bombing kept changing. Whenever our parents left for work (my father owned a shop and my mother is a photographer), we said goodbye in case we never saw them again. That was the situation for many years and we had to normalize it; children mature so much quicker because death is never far away. Can you recall your first impressions of the U.K.? One of the first encounters my mum, brothers and I had was with U.K. customs. Even though we had refugee status and came into the country legally on family reunion grounds, uniformed officers took us into a room and questioned us after our long journey via Beirut and Turkey. They pulled out a map of Syria and asked us where we were from and where my dad was. The only English I knew was what I had learned from Grey’s Anatomy and 50 First Dates [laughs]. At one point, I started to cry and that’s when they finally let us through. We initially settled in Birmingham before moving to London.

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