“Habibi!” — — Attaf Rsheidat cried out, overcome with emotion seeing her daughter, Baraah Mohammad, son-in-law and two young grandchildren on Canadian soil for the very first time.

The long-awaited reunion at Calgary International Airport on Monday came nearly a decade after some members of the Syrian family escaped the civil war back home, forced to flee at first to Jordan, where they lived in a refugee camp, before making their way to Alberta.

“I’m so happy, so happy to see my daughter, to be with [all my] kids here,” Rsheidat, who settled in Lethbridge, Alta., told CBC News minutes after the reunion.

The night before, she said, she couldn’t sleep as she was thinking about having her family in one place, together.

Speaking in Arabic — her brother Abdullah translating for her — Baraah

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