“Fidel sensed that Lulu was having the puppies and became respectful and protective.” Ida's dog Lulu has just had a litter of six puppies. The Serbian artist lives with Syrian computer programme Mawaheb, who she recently married, and his cat Fidel. ; In 2012, Mawaheb Seraj Eddin fled Aleppo after taking part in demonstrations. In his newly adopted country he met and married the woman of his dreams, Serbian artist Ida Perisic. Ida’s dog Lulu and Mawaheb’s cat Fidel have also learned to live together in their happy household. Mawaheb works as a software programmer and has never been unemployed in all his time as a refugee. In Turkey, he worked for a global IT firm and in Serbia once he had full refugee status, he was eligible to apply for jobs. By the end of 2018, Serbia was home to 4,300 refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants, with most living in 16 governmental reception and transit centres.
Mawaheb Seraj, a refugee from Syria, used his head and followed his heart to find a new life in Serbia. Never unemployed throughout his long journey, he has secured a good job in a global company. He has married a Serbian artist, the woman of his dreams. And the cat he carried with him has learnt to live with her dog in a happy household in Belgrade.
“I know I am lucky,” says Mawaheb, 31, acknowledging that integration into a new society is usually not so easy for refugees. A combination of smart thinking and true love has brought him stand-out success.
Mawaheb left Aleppo in 2012 because of the war. He had studied computer programming at university in Aleppo and this equipped him well as he went in search of safety and opportunity. In Turkey for 18 months, he was ready to sweep the streets but it did not come to that. Instead, he picked up online work with a Japanese company that paid his bills.
He was not happy in Istanbul, though; something was calling him to Serbia. “I met some Serbian travellers in Turkey,” he says. “I felt at ease with them. They shared my mentality – enjoying the simple stuff in life, without needing much money.”
Twice he applied for a tourist visa to Serbia and on his second attempt he got one. But there was the question of what to do with his cat Fidel, whom he had inherited from flatmates in Istanbul.
“It might sound silly to people who do not own pets,” he says, “but having an animal is a responsibility. It is like having a child.”
Alone, he could have taken the cheaper sea route via Greece. “I would only have needed a backpack,” he says. “But I could not abandon Fidel.” So he put the now seven-year-old white cat in a pet carrier and flew with him to Serbia.
“For a cat, moving is very simple,” he says. “You do the tests and injections, get the papers, and that is it. For me as a human, it has been a lot more complicated.”
Soon after arriving in Serbia, Mawaheb filed for asylum. “I was reluctant to do this because I was afraid I would be put in a refugee camp,” he says. But lawyers reassured him that since he was working – still online with the Japanese company — and paying tax, he could arrange his own life. He could afford to rent a flat in Belgrade.
Once he had full refugee status, he was eligible to apply for jobs in the Serbian capital. He now does complicated computer programming for IPS Energy, a global company that finds digital solutions for the energy industry. He has been in the job for four months and with his specialist skills, earns a good salary.
“We had a standard selection,” says Ivan Petkoski, Manager of IPS Energy Serbia. “We scouted out some 20 candidates, shortlisted four and chose Mawaheb. He was the best fit because of his skills and previous work. We saw he was a fast learner and compatible with our team. Where he came from was irrelevant. We recruited him purely on merit.”
Mr. Petkoski was surprised how well Mawaheb spoke Serbian, although this was not a requirement for the job in which computer language and English are the essentials.
“It is my good luck to be a programmer,” says Mawaheb. “I know that other educated refugees like doctors and lawyers have to learn the local language and modify their qualifications. But I was able to start from zero, literally, and support myself, with no help.”
The secret of his good Serbian probably lies in his chance meeting two years ago in a park with a beautiful woman who was out walking her Jack Russell terrier.
“It was a cold day and I was walking Lulu,” recalls Ida, 34, a costume designer and illustrator, relaxing at home with Mawaheb after his day at the office. “From the moment we met, we were together all the time. We felt we knew each other. We talked about history, everything… we had a lot of conversations.”
“You know how it goes,” says Mawaheb, “you have a coffee and then you think, *Oh, my God, I want to have a coffee with this person every day*.”
The couple had a Serbian civil wedding, followed by a ceremony in a mosque. Sadly Mawaheb”s family back in Syria could not attend and have not yet met Ida. He hopes that when he gets a travel document, he and Ida will be able to go to Lebanon to see them.
Love with Ida may have been plain sailing but relations between cat Fidel and dog Lulu were initially tense, so much so that the pets had to be kept in separate flats.
But now all are joined together in a spacious, airy, rented flat, decorated with Ida”s paintings. Lulu has just had a litter of six puppies and Fidel mostly keeps out of the way, sitting in his box in the bathroom.
When in the mood, cat and dog run merrily round the flat together. “They are totally fine now,” says Mawaheb. “Fidel sensed that Lulu was having the puppies and he became very respectful and protective.”
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