Relief and new baby for the family of children of stifled asylum in the crossing of channels

Came an email for the first time. Then, a month later, a baby.

Each arrival, in its own way, marked a vigraram in the fortune of an Iraqi family in white sorrow which has spent the last 15 years to date Europe in a state of legal limbo. Impossible to secure asylum, or to work legally, or to call anywhere at home.

The Alhashemi family scratched the depths of misery in April 2024. Led by an imminent deportation of Belgium in Iraq, they tried to cross the Channel in English in a small boat. Their seven -year -old daughter, Sara, died in a suffocating crush – an incident of which we have witnessed a French beach.

A little more than a year later, an email that changes the life of an official French refugee agency reached the family in its temporary accommodation in Rouvroy. It is a quiet city surrounded by commemorative monuments of the First World War and by the large heaps of coal slag which litter this section of the north of France. The far -right French politician, Marine Le Pen, is a local deputy.

“We know our way now,” explains Ahmed Alhashemi, 42, scrolling through the email, a little smile crossing his face of Careworn.

In the corridor, in his room, his eldest daughter, Rahaf, 14, written in a neat notebook, carefully practicing his fourth language, French.

“It’s quite difficult. I can understand more than I can speak,” she said in fluid English, her third language after Swedish and Arabic.

Ahmed and his wife, Nour, 35, met in Belgium when they were in their twenties, both fled Iraq. Nour says that she and her brothers and sisters had to leave because of their family’s bonds with the regime deposited by Saddam Hussein. Ahmed fled due to alleged death threats of a local militia.

Nour’s brothers and sisters quickly moved to Sweden, where they all obtained asylum. But Nour remained behind because she had met Ahmed in the home of a parent in Antwerp, and was immediately struck by his calm and considerate behavior.

“It is love,” she admits with a sad smile, who prevented him from following her brothers and sisters in Sweden.

“If I went with them, my whole life would have changed. It could be my fate or my destiny,” she said.

Instead, a different life took place. The couple asked for asylum in Belgium, married there and continued to have three children – the girls Rahaf and Sara, and a son called Hussam.

The family finally made its way, via Finland, in Sweden because they were denied the right to stay in Belgium. But at the beginning of last year, they were told that they had to leave Sweden.

European immigration officials had repeatedly ruled that their hometown of Bassra, in southern Iraq, was no longer an area of ​​war and that their asylum requests were all refused.

But Nour and Ahmed insisted that their life would be in danger if they were expelled in Iraq – a country that their children had never known.

“If we think we could really live (in complete safety) in Iraq, we would have disappeared a long time ago,” explains Nour.

Convinced that they could soon be forced to return to Bassra, Ahmed contacted an Iraqi Kurdian smuggling gang and paid them € 5,250 (£ 4,576) to transport the family by Petit Bateau in England, where some of their relatives were already living.

At the beginning of April 23 of last year, I expected colleagues from the BBC on Wimereux Beach, when we spotted a smuggling gang that fights against French police. A few moments later, in the light of dawn at the beginning, we saw a man hoist a child aboard an inflatable boat. The girl was Sara, seven years old. While more people climbed on board, she became trapped under her father’s legs and stifled in darkness, with four other people.

“I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only chance that I had,” said Ahmed shortly after.

A fortnight later, Sara was buried in a cemetery in the neighboring town of Lille.

The family was quickly transferred to a migrant transit inn in a small village south of Lille. There were no stores and little public transport. Other migrants spent only one night or two in the center before leaving – often to return to the coast to try another crossing. The Alhashemis stayed there for almost a year.

We first visited the family at the Auberge in May of last year. Sara’s sister, Rahaf, spoke in tears of her desire for a “normal” life. She had stayed in touch with friends from the School of Sweden where she had prospered, winning prices for the ice skate.

While the months started to pass, it appeared that the Alhashemi family had become trapped in the whirlwinds of a bureaucratic whirlwind, fighting to bring the children into a local school, to receive a kind of financial support or to leave the crowded hostel.

Paid by sorrow, Nour had trouble leaving his bed.

“I ate there. I slept there. I sat there. I just didn’t have the energy to get out of this routine,” she said.

“It was the worst year of my life.”

The rapid turnover of new migrants by the hostel has left the children in shock and the nour haunted.

“Whenever new (migrants) arrived, they wanted to talk about the sea, how they arrived, with whom they came. I didn’t want someone to ask me questions or heard anything,” she said. She compares the inn to a prison.

The family asked for asylum in France shortly after Sara’s death.

According to the EU rules (the Dublin Convention), they could have been sent back to Belgium, where Ahmed was registered for the first time as a asylum seeker and where they had already been told that they faced an imminent deportation to Iraq. This did not happen – perhaps because the French authorities had mercy on them after Sara’s death. But that has nevertheless taken a legal dispute, and many months, so that the family obtained education and other people in France.

“It’s like a labyrinth. They are trapped by procedures,” said Claire Perinaud, a French lawyer who helped the Alhashemis.

“There is no doubt that they had the right to obtain help as asylum seekers.”

It describes complex regulations, the difficulties in reserving meetings and the difficulties encountered by those who cannot speak French.

“All these laws and obstacles are made, in a way, to prevent people from coming (as if) to say:” You are not welcome “,” she said.

But in March 2025, the family was finally transferred to their own two -room apartment in a social housing unit in Rouvroy.

Rahaf immediately put in place what she called “a sanctuary” to her sister Sara, with photos and memories, including her watch, carefully arranged on a library.

“I can breathe now,” said Nour during our visit, his hand on his neck.

At that time, the couple still dreamed of reaching Great Britain, where they have other parents. But not by small boat.

“Never,” said Nour firmly.

Then, during a summer day at the end of July, a long-awaited email from the French authorities arrived in the Ahmed reception box.

This explained that he and his children had obtained provisional asylum and permission to stay in France for the next four years. Nour has been informed that she will soon receive the same news. After that, they will all be able to request a permanent residence, paving the way for French citizenship.

“How are you?” Said Ahmed, testing his trembling French, with a smile, while he welcomes us at the entrance to the building, a few weeks later.

It is a hot Monday morning in early September, with cries and songs deriving through the parking lot of primary school nearby.

Upstairs, sitting on his bed and taking a look at a poem by Victor Hugo, Rahaf plans that his future is secure for the first time in his life.

“I was worried that we were going to be expelled. But now I am happy that we are installed here in France,” she said.

Ahmed, a Tiler by Trade, is already planning to open his own small business and has applied for jobs while waiting. Nour would like to open his own bakery.

“We have been suffering for 15 years. Still in motion,” said Ahmed.

“But now, I have the impression that my whole life has opened in front of me. I can work, I can rent, I can pay taxes and I can help my children realize their dreams.”

And there is another reason for the tangible feeling of optimism that now rises around their apartment.

“It was so calm before,” said Rahaf with a smile, to the sound of a baby crying in the living room.

Shortly before our last visit, Nour gave birth to a healthy little girl. Rahaf wanted to appoint her Lara, but the family agreed on Sally. Both wore deliberate echoes of the child they had lost.

Months ago, Nour feared that it was “too early” for another baby. But now she radiates pleasure in the presence of a new girl in the family. “It means that I can see Sara in her,” she said, wiping a tear. “God wants, Sally will be lucky in life and will achieve everything Sara could have done.”

And with that, Nour puts Sally in his pensau and takes her outside, in front of school, for his very first trip to their neighborhood.

There will be some, reading this, which will disagree, perhaps strongly, on the choices that the Alhashemis have made in recent years. Ahmed has already faced a furious online criticism to risk the life of his children in a small boat.

But after so many years of uncertainty and regret, the family now has what so many others still want – a feeling of stability and a safe place to call at home.