Safe from Syria: Finding a new home on Northern Ireland's streets

Five Syrian families have arrived in Belfast from refugee camps in Beirut, part of a group of 1,000 refugees to come to the UK.

Over the next few weeks, they will settle into homes and communities.

They will try to integrate into a country that they know little or nothing about.

What is it like to come to Northern Ireland as a refugee? Abir and Mahfouz and their four children have lived in Lisburn for the last two years.

They do not want to use their surname, such is the fear of reprisal against family members still living in Syria.

Abir's mother is from Belfast and that meant that she and her family could build a future far from Syria

Mahfouz is a dentist but he needs to take special exams to practise in the UK

Little did Abir know when she was growing up in Syria that the fact her mother was from Belfast would secure her family's future.

Thelma was from the Lisburn Road and married a Syrian who was studying pharmacy at Queen's University in the 1960s.

"That is why I find it easy living in Northern Ireland. It's better for me and my children to come and live with my mum. It was a new culture and new friends, but I find it easy. I enjoy everything here," she said.

But that journey was not straightforward.

Abir had to leave her four children in Turkey for a year while she came to Belfast to live with her mother who returned in 2012.

Nadine was just two years old when her mother had to leave

"It was very hard to leave my children. Nadine was just two years old when I left, but I had to come to try to get passports for the children," she said.

The link to Belfast meant Abir and the children could gain residency. Her husband Mahfouz, 47, had to come as a refugee.

The family had no future in their own country, he said.

"I discovered we must find a safe place," he said.

"I told my wife because she has a foreign passport to go there and find safety for my children - anything, I told her - I'm ready to pay everything I have because there is no future in Syria within this war. No schools, no safe roads, no electricity, no drinking water, even the universities are broken. So I told her to go and find any way."

Mahfouz is a dentist, but he would have to sit exams in London costing £5,000 to be able to practise in the UK.

"I don't have the money to do that," he said.

Instead, he is working in a factory making window blinds.

"I found a job here in a factory close to my house for eight hours a day for five days a week.

"I find it good for me to busy myself - not stay at home, and to save some money for that exam.

Hamza finds Northern Ireland peaceful and quiet

"It's manual work for blinds. It's hard work - it's not easy, eight hours standing on your feet. I have been working for 22 years as a dentist and I don't want to lose my skills."

Their four children have a variety of memories of life in Syria.

Hamza, 12, said: "I remember the bombings and at night you heard the rockets."

Northern Ireland is different.

"It's really nice and peaceful and quiet and the people are really friendly. It's much better than Syria," he said.

Abir has already volunteered to help translate for the newcomer families. None of her children nor her husband had any English when they arrived, but all have worked hard to learn the language.

"At the start, my children needed extra time at school but after one year they were able to manage," she said.

Mahfouz sums up how the family now feels about living in Northern Ireland.

"We find it like a gift from the sky - anything to put our children in a safe place."