Kinda Alsamara, a Syrian, lived in Damascus where she studied journalism and worked at the university until 2013. She left Syria and arrived to Australia in 2013 as a single person after travelling from Damascus to Beirut (Lebanon) and to Doha (Qatar) and then to Perth until her final destination, Adelaide. After settling in Adelaide Kinda focused on her education. At the University of Adelaide, the Centre for Asia and Middle Eastern Architecture, she met a supervisor who was originally from Syria. At the University she finished her MA in the architecture school.


Living in Adelaide, Kinda resided at the home of an old Australian couple who were in their 80s. She remembers her first experience after her arrival in Australia: This family treated me well as if I belonged to them, as a member of their family. They drove car almost on a daily basis bringing me to the University or to the city for free. Later they also helped me to move to Melbourne by transporting my stuff to a new address.


Living in Australia, Kinda cherishes nice memories of her hometown, family and friends which she left before the war in Syria escalated. In Adelaide Kinda organised a display on Syria wishing to show Australian people about the spirituality of the place, its tradition and culture.


After completing her MA in Adelaide, Kinda moved to Melbourne and continued her PhD studies in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne. Nowadays she teaches Arabic at Deakin University and Islamic culture and Arabic at the Centre for Adult Education and also at the Eastern Language Centre. She is the member of Ibn Arabi Sufi reading group in Melbourne. She always emphasises as Sufis do, a 'love is beautiful and lasting'. In her spare time, Kinda wrote a book of poetry in Arabic, 'Words and Letters', and also is writing a novel. In Melbourne Kinda lives a creative and dynamic social life. She met people of many different backgrounds - 'multiculturalism is a gate to meet different people' - 'they are nice to me and I feel that I belong to this country, she said.

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