"Yes, we were scared, because we had our kids with us. And we were afraid that we would lose everyone in the family with one bomb," said Asmat Dado, a Syrian refugee recently placed in the city's West Rogers Park neighborhood.
Dado and his wife Rasmiah have four children; the youngest, 5-year-old Simaf, is disabled. They had only minutes to race across a Turkish border in 2013 that was guarded by armed men and peppered with landmines. The promise of freedom outweighed the danger they faced. Life in Syria had become unsustainable.
"My husband could not go to work, my kids could not go to school anymore and they were watching the airplanes throwing bombs at us," said Rasmiah Mohammad.
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"I looked back to Syria and felt bad. I felt sad leaving my country and felt sad for what's happening," Dado said.
The family says they were overcome by tears as they crossed into Turkey, but any relief they felt at having escaped a brutal civil war was quickly trumped by new doubts.
"Of course it was really, really difficult to leave your country, leave your family, leave your friends, the place that you grew up in to go somewhere you don't know what the future will have for you," Mohammad said.
They settled in Istanbul and registered with the United Nations. They didn't expect to leave but were offered the opportunity to resettle in the U.S. They eagerly accepted and arrived last month.
"My kids could go to school, I could be treated as any human on this world, my kid who is mute and deaf, she could get treatment," Dado said.
The family stays in touch with friends in Syria using social media and they admit the images they see can be upsetting. They are among a fortunate few who have escaped when others could not.
"We are one of many people that registered with the U.N. in Turkey," Mohammad said. "And people were saying, 'We start losing hope that no one will call us from the U.N.'"