Journal / Kathy Borchers

EXETER — Faraj “Frank” Boutros never lost his faith, even after he was arrested in front of his pizzeria in 2003 for refusing to leave the country.

Charged as an illegal immigrant, Boutros spent 13 months in Massachusetts prisons before he was deported to Syria.

Upset about leaving his wife, two sons and two daughters back in Rhode Island, Boutros last year had a heart attack. His doctor held up a clenched fist to represent his mental state. You’re under too much stress, he said.

Still, Boutros dreamed of coming home.

“Every night I prayed to God,” the 53-year-old pizza maker said yesterday.

After a three-year legal battle, U.S. immigration officials this month granted Boutros permission to return to America. On Oct. 4 he flew from London to Boston, where his family and relatives greeted him with flowers, balloons and a banner that said, Welcome Home.

“I didn’t believe it,” said his wife, Vera, who spent yesterday taking orders at Little Country Pizza, the family restaurant on Route 3 in Exeter.

During the four years her husband was in jail or in exile, Vera refused to sleep in the bedroom of their North Kingstown home. She worked 14-hour days and took only Christmas off. “It was like living a nightmare,” she said. “I was struggling. I would cry a lot.”

Last night, however, Vera smiled as customers recognized her husband and shook his hand.

“It’s good to have you back,” said one.

In January, Vera and her daughter, Chantal, began asking U.S. immigration officials to allow Boutros back into the country.

“We had to prove extreme hardship,” Chantal said. “My mother was sleeping on the couch. She was opening the restaurant at 10 a.m. and closing it at 11 p.m., but on some nights she didn’t get home until 3 a.m. We had to celebrate every holiday and every family birthday at the restaurant, because she couldn’t leave.”

Unable to hire enough help, Vera even closed the restaurant’s ice cream parlor.

BOUTROS WAS ARRESTED on Sept. 4, 2003, as he was opening his restaurant.

He saw a van with tinted windows as he parked near the door. “All of a sudden, I saw five people over my head. One of them was my deportation officer,” he said. They guided Boutros into the van.

According to Immigration Customs and Enforcement in Boston, Boutros altered a passport in 1984 so that he, his wife and their four children could escape a bloody war in Lebanon. Boutros said he had no choice; bombs were exploding near his home.

His wife and children, born in Lebanon, received political asylum after arriving in the United States. But Boutros, the son of a Syrian shopkeeper, did not, in part because the Syrian army fired on U.S. soldiers in Lebanon.

Boutros appealed a deportation order in 1991 and lost. But nothing happened. More than decade passed before immigration officials again asked him to leave.

In the interim, Boutros bought a duplex in North Kingstown and the restaurant on Route 3. He remodeled the pizzeria, added an ice cream parlor and bought the convenience store next door.

Then, in 2003, immigration officials warned him that if he did not purchase a ticket for Syria, they would deport him.

Boutros yesterday remembered his decision. “I looked at my family and they were sad. I decided I would stay.”

The family launched a media blitz to keep Boutros in the United States. A sister-in-law sent a letter to then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee, and lawmakers and lawyers championed his case.

Immigration officials were unmoved by the outpouring. He was deported in September 2004.

Even so, Boutros does not blame immigration officials. “They were just doing their job,” he said.

He and his family, he added, want to thank loyal customers and the people who had a role in bringing him home.

“If no one had intervened,” Chantal said, “the immigration officials could have said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Boutros, but we have no reason to send you back.’ ”

Boutros spent part of the day making dough and greeting customers. He even revised the menu, which hasn’t been changed since he was arrested.

But it’s unlikely Boutros will work the long hours he once did. He is suffering from a severe pain in his hips and legs, and he tires more quickly than he once did.

“I can’t work seven days a week anymore. But I can make the dough for the pizzas,” he said. “That’s what I love to do.”

pdavis@projo.com