Omar Alhaj Ali remembers how he and his brother, Mohammad, felt when they first arrived in the UK from Syria in 2014. “We were so happy to be safe”, he says. “We knew that we were going to have a good life here”. Mohammad, he says, was “a very positive person. He wouldn't complain about anything unless it was really major, and he always had positive thoughts about our future.” Along with another brother, Hashem, Mohammed and Omar had fled Daraa, where civil war was unfolding, and arrived in England seeking asylum. Their family were thousands of miles away; they knew no one in the UK; and couldn’t yet speak English. But they had each other to lean on.
“We used to look the same as well,” says Omar, of those days, when he and Mohammad had matching haircuts and beards. “Some people would think I was Mohammad, and they would call him Omar.” The pair eventually settled in west London, in a newly refurbished flat where they would listen to music, talk about home, and host their new friends. “Even though it was a short time, we built a lot of memories,” he says.
