'I was given a new life': Non-English speaking Syrian refugee escaped war to score 96 ATAR at Aussie school
A Syrian refugee who fled mortars and airstrikes graduated from an Australian high school with top honors just two years after beginning to learn English.
Saad Al-Kassab and his family fled the bloody civil war in Syria to Egypt via Lebanon before eventually seeking refuge with an uncle in Australia in 2013.
Three years later, Saad earned a Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of 96.65 and graduated dux from Catholic Regional College Sydenham, Melbourne.
"I'm really grateful for being given the opportunity to be able to come to Australia and study here. Despite all the difficulties, I was given a new life," he told ABC.
He said his initial poor English skills made it tough to get into a high school when he first arrived in Australia in June of 2014.
The young man, who worked as the school gardener and has now been offered a college scholarship at Monash University to study medicine.
Saad, now 19, taught himself how to speak English by using his fathers English-Arab dictionary and watching Question Time in Federal Parliament.
"The way they speak, they speak proper English. They speak slowly, so you can catch words," he said.
Saad said the community was "lovely" to him and wants to "pay it back one day".
In Syria, over one million people have been killed, detained or are currently missing.
At the age of 15, Saad's school was turned into a refugee camp as conflicts rose between the Bashar al-Assad regime and the military.
He and his brother, Omar, still tried to get an education by travelling through checkpoints to makeshift exam centres in cinemas and sports ground while sheltering themselves from mortars and airstrikes.
The brothers were also part of the Syrian Scouts and provided food and aide to those affected by the bloody war.
"We acted as distributors of the international aide and collected food for the displaced people in Syria," Omar said in a Scouts Victoria video.
Their scout leader was kidnapped and tortured to death during a targeted attack when police caught wind of the humanitarian work being carried out.
"The scout hall only had food inside, but still his (scout leader's) life was not spared," he said.
The brothers also spoke at a Ted Talk in Canberra and said they can still hear the sound of the mortars passing over them.
“The rule I have leaned about hearing the sound or mortars was a sound that it had passed over you,” Saad said.
“When I heard that flying over me I would count the amount of seconds before it had landed.
“You would have three seconds to get to cover."
