When the Israel-Hamas war broke out last fall, Haya Elsayyed, a young science student with an interest in biotechnology, was in Gaza visiting her family. She grew up in Gaza City but had been living in Montreal; she never expected to find herself caught in a major conflict zone.
Pretty quickly, she knew she had to get out. Elsayyed, who has Canadian permanent residency, was able to fly out and return to Quebec but her family members couldn’t get a visa to go with her. She had to leave her parents behind. “Saying goodbye to my family was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she writes in a memoir for Maclean’s about her odyssey.
Now she’s a biology master’s student at the University of Sherbrooke. Her parents have since escaped to Egypt, and now Elsayyed wants them to join her in Canada. “I hold on to hope that, one day, we will build a new life together, free from fear and uncertainty.” Elsayyed’s story, which appears in the October issue of the print magazine, is part of a monthly Maclean’s series called “My Arrival” about the newcomer experience in Canada.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
