Nabih Ayoub would pause every few moments as he told his story. With his broad hands clasped together and his eyes hidden behind his large-framed glasses, he would sigh, unable to comprehend why he and his family are being denied citizenship in Canada.

Nabih and his brother Khalil are Palestinian refugees. After living in Quebec for nearly three years, the two brothers and Nabih’s wife, Thérèse Boulos Haddad received an order of deportation.

The family of Melkite Catholics, all over 60 years old, sought refuge in the basement of Notre Dame de Grâce Roman Catholic Church, where the Ayoubs and Haddad sit with sympathetic visitors and tell their story with hope, expressing their desire, in fact, their need, to stay in Canada.

“If they send me to America, America will throw me on the street. They want to send me to Lebanon; I don’t have a home in Lebanon. They want me to sleep on the street?” said Nabih Ayoub.

The Ayoub family spent most of their lives in the refugee camps of Lebanon, where, like other Palestinians, they had no right to adequate housing, education and employment.

As the oldest child, Nabih explained that he could not count the number of random jobs he worked in the past, just to make one lira a day, which translates to less than 50 cents. Under Lebanese laws, Palestinians are forbidden from working in over 70 types of positions. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) an estimated 60 per cent of Palestinians are living below the poverty line.

Before they came to Canada they were staying at a camp called Ein El Hilweh. In 2001, they obtained an exit visa to go to the U.S. but ended up in Quebec where they asked for refugee status. They were denied and eventually received an order for deportation.

“One day after three years they told me I have to go back,” Nabih said, questioning why they didn’t just send him back when he first got here.

“Here we found peace,” said Khalil. “For 53 years we have been living without peace.”

The Ayoubs were born in the 1930s, in a small village in Palestine. In 1948, when Israel was created, they were driven out of their village, expecting to return in 18 days.

Nabih explained that after the Deir Yassin massacre, where about 250 villagers were killed by invading Israeli forces, and reassurance by the Arab armies that they would be able to return, they left their homes.

“From fear we left everything and fled,” Nabih recollected as though it were yesterday.

After a few weeks in Lebanon, they wanted to return, but an Israeli soldier informed them that they would not be allowed back. He asked Nabih where he wanted to go. “I told him I want to go back to Palestine, my country.” The soldier patted him on the head, Nabih explained, mimicking the act, and then replied, “Take this idea out of hereâe¦we are four million, you are four million, there is no room.”

The Ayoubs spent the next 53 years in refugee camps. “In the camps, under the tents, the rocksâe¦ you hear your neighbour, your neighbour hears youâe¦one toilet for all. Fifty-three years (as) refugees,” said Khalil with a sense of disbelief, looking at his passport, at the word “refugee.”

Although Nabih seemed the most willing to accept what may be their fate, the despair is reflected in them all when they talk about being sent back to Lebanon.

Maya Antaki, a church employee, is on a committee asking the Canadian government to intervene with the expert authorities. They are requesting that the family be granted permanent status, and that the hundreds of other Palestinian refugees in Canada have their deportation orders dropped and their cases re-examined. She explained that the hardships refugees are facing in seeking asylum stems from a number of problems with the immigration system in Canada, one of which is the possibility of appeal. Antaki said that although there has been an opportunity to appeal in the law since 2002, it does not exist in practice.

There are also flaws regarding the judges. The judges are hand-picked individuals who meet people of all countries, “but they don’t know what is happening in those countries. They are human beings; they can’t have the knowledge of all that.”

That is why Antaki believes there should be a panel of two or three judges. “There is only one judge meeting the refugee. This is not right.”

The nine-person committee Antaki is working with is asking the Canadian government to re-examine the Ayoub/Haddad case based on humanitarian grounds. “Accept us as human refugees,” said the younger brother.

Khalil sits back. A smile comes across his round face when he talks about Canada. “We felt a peace here in this country. Let us live three or four yearsâe¦let me live five years in peace. From 1948 I have no passportâe¦no passport, no country, no identity.” In his thick Arabic accent, he dreamed, “I want to be like other people who have a country. To feel that I am humanâe¦to feel that I am human.”