Pictures of a Syrian man selling cake, coffee, and Arab sahlab (a warm, milky Middle Eastern drink) on the roadside in Vancouver have made the rounds on social media this past weekend, after the revelation that the man is Mamoon al-Hamsi, a former member of the Syrian parliament before he fled the war-torn nation.
The pictures have prompted some regime supporters to mock al-Hamsi, pointing out that a man who once held a high position in government has been reduced to selling cake and coffee from a stand.
“The fate of every traitor. Mamoon al-Hamsi: from a representative of the Syrian people to a opposition member, and finally to selling coffee on the streets of Canada.”
But what’s the full story behind al-Hamsi?
Mamoun al-Hamsi was once the only independent Syrian parliamentarian in Assad’s government, notes Al Jazeera. He was the youngest member of the Syrian parliament when he was elected in 1986, holding a seat for the Damascus region until he was removed by the regime in 2001 for launching a hunger strike against the government’s curtailing of personal freedoms. He also released a declaration asking the Assad regime to respect the rights of Syrians at the time.
That same day, he was arrested in Damascus. He became the first Syrian MP to lose his diplomatic immunity and to be jailed for political reasons, detained by the government for 7 months before being dealt a prison sentence of 5 years, as per Al Jazeera.
Upon his release, he left Syria out of fear of being arrested again. He said goodbye to his family and went to Jordan and later Lebanon before applying for a refugee resettlement program. In this time period, his oldest son Yassin was arrested by the Syrian secret police and jailed for a number of months. By the time Yassin had been released, his father had been resettled by UNHCR to Vancouver, Canada.
After the elder al-Hamsi’s arrival in Canada, he immediately began working on bringing his family with him. It was a process that took 5 years, but al-Hamsi’s family was finally reunited when his two sons, Majid and Yassin, arrived in Vancouver last year as local news cameras captured the moment.
After the pictures went viral, al-Hamsi took to Facebook to explain that he and his wife make sahlab, cakes, coffee, and other traditional Syrian refreshments in order to make extra money given their difficult circumstances in their new country. To al-Hamsi, the work is not shameful - it is much more honorable than “doing business with the blood of [his countrymen].”
He signs his post “with pride” as “Mamoon al-Hamsi Abu Yassin, coffee seller in the streets of Canada”.
JC
