Mariela, 24 years old: “Performing music has always been my dream. When the civil war began, I started trying like crazy to get out of Syria. I learned that there are some fellowships for Syrians, so I sent a video of my concert in Aleppo and they were impressed.

The situation back home is very terrible. Everyone there wants to leave. Everyone wants to have a decent life. I keep thinking about the children there, about my friends, about future generations. I realized after I came to the United States that I have no hope of going back. I feel this is my home now.”

It was a hot summer afternoon on the road from Aleppo, Syria when the music changed for Mariela. “They saw my violin case and they were afraid it was a gun,” the 24-year-old classical musician from the northern Syrian city explains. On the day she and other students fled Syria, they had to pass through several military checkpoints. “We were ordered off the bus at each checkpoint and told to stand at the side of the road. They made me open my violin case each time, and they inspected it thoroughly, inside and out. Two days after we passed through, buses started being fired on. People I know were killed on that road.”

It was a terrifying, 17-hour journey. But Mariela was determined to escape the violence in her homeland to pursue her lifelong study of music in a safer place. She reached Beirut and spent just one night there with friends, before boarding a plane to the United States on July 15, 2013.

“I feel like it was here, in the United States, where I began my life,” Mariela says in fluent English, stressing her gratitude to the US government for giving her asylum and to groups like the Syrian Community Network that have eased her transition to life in her new country. Mariela, who graduated from the Arabic Institute of Music in Aleppo in 2004, continued her music studies at Monmouth College in Illinois. She is now the Concertmaster of Monmouth Orchestra. She will begin work on a master’s degree at DePaul University in the autumn.

Mariela misses her family who remain in Aleppo. She spoke with her mother on the phone recently and heard mortar explosions that damaged the neighbouring apartment building. She looks forward to the day when they are reunited. For the moment at least, her home away from home is in the United States. “I feel very attached to America and I hope that one day I can bring back to Syria love and peace though my music,” Mariela says.

Refugees. Ordinary people living through extraordinary times. Share their stories.