Iraqi asylum seeker lends a hand: The story of Ali and Linnéa (Finland)

[lego 44,165]

Linnéa Mynttinen is an 80-year-old Finnish pensioner who still actively participates in church and veteran events and attends functions for the hearing impaired. Ali Kamil al-Sammarnaie is a 36-year-old asylum seeker from Samarra, Iraq, a father of two who is trained as a statistician and IT engineer. When Linnéa contacted her local Evitskog asylum seeker reception centre to ask if someone there would be able to help her get around, Ali answered the call.

“I needed a little help,” explains Linnéa Myttinen, a pensioner from the southern city of Kirkkonummi whose legs had become weak. Christmas was coming and she wasn’t sure she would be able to cope on her own. All autumn she had been moving around in a wheelchair, but leaving home had started to become a near impossible chore.

“I asked a taxi driver once if one of the asylum seekers could maybe help me out. I didn’t even know then if the centre housed men or women,” Linnéa remembers.

She contacted the centre, which quickly sent a young Iraqi man to her asssistance. Linnéa said that she knew from the first moment she looked in Ali’s eyes that they would get along.

Ali made an impression on his very first day. He fixed her terrace door before she could even ask him to, and on their joint trip to the cemetery, Ali easily navigated the difficult terrain to the urn garden in order to place Linnéa’s candles on the graves of her dearly departed.  

“That’s not something that a taxi driver would have agreed to do,” Linnéa says.

Ali sits beside her and shrugs his shoulders. For him, this kind of service is normal.

“I’ve done the same thing for elderly people back at home, too - for free, because it is part of being human. I would do the same for Linnéa,” he says.

You mean you would do it even if you weren’t paid?

“Yes,” he replies.

Not counting the hours

According to their current arrangement, Ali helps Linnéa move from place to place and assists with her daily chores. The municipality of Kirkkonummi has agreed to pay him 10 euros an hour as her assistant, for about an hour’s worth of work per day.

But Ali isn’t counting the hours. He doesn’t even have a bank account yet, due to the bureaucracy involved. In Finland the law allows asylum seekers to seek employment in Finland three months after they have entered the country.

On a typical day, Ali and Linnéa do the shopping at the local Prisma market, clean up around Linnéa’s home and just talk. 

They speak together in English, a language Linnéa says she can “manage in”. Sometimes she falls back into her native Swedish however, and then Ali fishes his mobile phone out of his pocket to translate what she has said.

“Once Ali even asked if he could clean my bathroom! I said feel free!” Linnéa says.

Missing home

“He is a real gentleman. He misses his wife and daughters very much,” she says.

Ali left his family behind in Samarra, and both he and Linnéa have followed news of Islamic State advances in the area over the last few months with concern.

So why didn't Ali bring his family with him to Europe?

“Put them in a rubber boat on the open sea? At the mercy of the people smugglers? They are my children! I would never take that kind of risk,” Ali answers.

 

A long-term commitment

When the frigid temperatures set in after the holidays, former retail sales assistant Linnéa couldn’t stand to see Ali shivering in his thin jeans. She found some long underwear and insulated snowpants at her local Tokmann store and then she and Ali headed to the shoe store for a pair of decent winter shoes.

“I told him that I wasn’t giving him those things, because someday I expect him to pay me back,” Linnéa says.

“First you get your family to Finland and then you get a job. I’ve decided that someday I really am going to say to him that ‘now those things are paid for’,” she says.

Ali has already told Linnea many times that when his family joins him in Finland, he wants Linnéa to come and live with them.

“I will take care of her like my mother. Everyone needs someone, even in paradise,” he says.

 

http://yle.fi/uutiset/iraqi_asylum_seeker_lends_a_hand_the_story_of_ali_and_linnea/8623826

 

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, VampireHeart said:

Linnéa Mynttinen is an 80-year-old Finnish pensioner who still actively participates in church and veteran events and attends functions for the hearing impaired. Ali Kamil al-Sammarnaie is a 36-year-old asylum seeker from Samarra, Iraq, a father of two who is trained as a statistician and IT engineer. When Linnéa contacted her local Evitskog asylum seeker reception centre to ask if someone there would be able to help her get around, Ali answered the call.

“I needed a little help,” explains Linnéa Myttinen, a pensioner from the southern city of Kirkkonummi whose legs had become weak. Christmas was coming and she wasn’t sure she would be able to cope on her own. All autumn she had been moving around in a wheelchair, but leaving home had started to become a near impossible chore.

“I asked a taxi driver once if one of the asylum seekers could maybe help me out. I didn’t even know then if the centre housed men or women,” Linnéa remembers.

She contacted the centre, which quickly sent a young Iraqi man to her asssistance. Linnéa said that she knew from the first moment she looked in Ali’s eyes that they would get along.

Ali made an impression on his very first day. He fixed her terrace door before she could even ask him to, and on their joint trip to the cemetery, Ali easily navigated the difficult terrain to the urn garden in order to place Linnéa’s candles on the graves of her dearly departed.  

“That’s not something that a taxi driver would have agreed to do,” Linnéa says.

Ali sits beside her and shrugs his shoulders. For him, this kind of service is normal.

“I’ve done the same thing for elderly people back at home, too - for free, because it is part of being human. I would do the same for Linnéa,” he says.

You mean you would do it even if you weren’t paid?

“Yes,” he replies.

Not counting the hours

According to their current arrangement, Ali helps Linnéa move from place to place and assists with her daily chores. The municipality of Kirkkonummi has agreed to pay him 10 euros an hour as her assistant, for about an hour’s worth of work per day.

But Ali isn’t counting the hours. He doesn’t even have a bank account yet, due to the bureaucracy involved. In Finland the law allows asylum seekers to seek employment in Finland three months after they have entered the country.

On a typical day, Ali and Linnéa do the shopping at the local Prisma market, clean up around Linnéa’s home and just talk. 

They speak together in English, a language Linnéa says she can “manage in”. Sometimes she falls back into her native Swedish however, and then Ali fishes his mobile phone out of his pocket to translate what she has said.

“Once Ali even asked if he could clean my bathroom! I said feel free!” Linnéa says.

Missing home

“He is a real gentleman. He misses his wife and daughters very much,” she says.

Ali left his family behind in Samarra, and both he and Linnéa have followed news of Islamic State advances in the area over the last few months with concern.

So why didn't Ali bring his family with him to Europe?

“Put them in a rubber boat on the open sea? At the mercy of the people smugglers? They are my children! I would never take that kind of risk,” Ali answers.

 

A long-term commitment

When the frigid temperatures set in after the holidays, former retail sales assistant Linnéa couldn’t stand to see Ali shivering in his thin jeans. She found some long underwear and insulated snowpants at her local Tokmann store and then she and Ali headed to the shoe store for a pair of decent winter shoes.

“I told him that I wasn’t giving him those things, because someday I expect him to pay me back,” Linnéa says.

“First you get your family to Finland and then you get a job. I’ve decided that someday I really am going to say to him that ‘now those things are paid for’,” she says.

Ali has already told Linnea many times that when his family joins him in Finland, he wants Linnéa to come and live with them.

“I will take care of her like my mother. Everyone needs someone, even in paradise,” he says.

 

http://yle.fi/uutiset/iraqi_asylum_seeker_lends_a_hand_the_story_of_ali_and_linnea/8623826

 

Sweet story!!

[lego 44,165]

VIDEO

(mostly in Finnish)

http://yle.fi/uutiset/leskirouva_linnean_ja_turvapaikanhakija_alin_tarina_nyt_videolla/8623809

 

She says in the beginning her friend told her "awful, he might rape you!"... her face is priceless. Love this granny. 

[TiphEret 1,320]

This is nice, it's nice people to help each other

[Whispering 18,865]

Awww, nice story. He helps her out and she gives him a family he is missing.