Connecting With Some
of the Refugees
I
first talked with some of the refugees from Syria who ended up in Chania,
Crete, Greece last September and October, when there were 45 refugees here, far fewer
than the 153 who had been brought here the previous spring after their
smugglers’ boat to Italy began to sink. Now, all but 14 of them have managed to
leave, whether by plane or on foot, heading to the more prosperous northern and
central European countries where they hoped to find family, jobs, support, and
good schools. None of the children have both parents here with them, and they are
anxious for paperwork to be processed so they can join other family members in
the countries where they have been granted asylum. They have been staying in a
beachfront hotel on a Greek island, but after their terrifying boat journey
from Egypt, with families divided and homes destroyed, this is no vacation.
Only
in May did I learn that two of the Syrian women in Chania speak some English,
and that one of the men is an artist. Apparently I wasn’t asking the right
questions before—just questions about where their families were (scattered), if
they had all survived the bombing and shooting in Syria (no), whether they
expected to be able to join surviving family members in other countries
(eventually), what had happened to their homes in Syria (destroyed), whether
they needed food and clothing (yes). Important questions, to be sure, but not
enough to learn the whole story—a story that goes way beyond the numbers, the
border policing, the boats, the smugglers, and the politics we hear about in
the news.
It
didn’t take long for me to feel like the Syrian mother I’ll call Rima was
becoming my friend. Talking with her and her friend, whom I’ll call Maram, in
the small fifth-floor walk-up hotel room where she had been living with her six
year old twins for 14 months by May, we were just mothers and daughters
together wearing similar clothes, with no veils. (“Rima,” “Maram,” and some of
the other women there spoke with me on the condition that I not use their real
names, because they are worried about relatives who are still in Syria.) Rima
and I share an interest in language and writing; she had taught Arabic and
learned to create beautiful Arabic calligraphy, while I’ve taught English and took
a calligraphy class in college. We both care about our children and try to make
the best decisions for them. But she has gone to great lengths to get hers to
safety, while I have never been seriously worried that mine could be shot,
crushed under a bombed building, or drowned in an overcrowded boat in a rough
sea.
Ordinary Families
Making Extraordinary Efforts to Escape War
Rima
says their problems started with the war in Syria. (If you prefer a very short summary
of her story, see my brief article at Lancaster Online.) Before
the war, life was perfect for her happy, loving family, with their small house
in Damascus, a car, a bank account, and the gold jewelry every husband
traditionally bought his wife. Her husband was a barber, Rima taught Arabic to
foreign women in her home, and her four daughters attended school. Now that
life is gone. Rima has a sister and brother in Egypt, and her parents and
another sister are still in a small town near Damascus. She seems worried about
them but doesn’t know what they can do, aside from crying together on the
phone.
Rima
told me her brother in law was killed when he went out to buy bread, and
Assad’s soldiers shot him repeatedly. Then, she reported, he lay on the street
in Barza (next to Damascus) for three or four hours, because people were too
scared to move him with soldiers around. There, Rima said, everyone wanted
freedom from Assad. All of Syria did, she added, but especially the people of
Barza, who demonstrated for freedom daily. Many people were killed—one or two
in every family there, she thinks. She said Maram’s 28 year old cousin was
killed, as well as three other family members, plus many of Rima’s and her
daughters’ friends, including a 12 year old boy and a 10 year old shot by a gun
from a passing car. Rima told me that on Fridays, the Muslim holy day, soldiers
came out on rooftops after prayers and shot people as they left the mosques.
She said soldiers even waited for children to leave school so they could kill
them.
So
they were afraid. Rima kept her daughters—the twins and two others who are now
15 and 17--home from school, sent them back when soldiers stopped shooting, kept
them home again, then finally gave up trying to figure out when it was safe to
venture out of the house, and left Syria. With her sister and brother and their
families, her daughters and her husband, Rima took a bus to Lebanon, stopping
at a checkpoint every half hour for questioning by Assad’s soldiers. From
Lebanon, they flew to Egypt, along with Maram’s mother and brother and their families
and many other Syrians. Maram (who is related to Rima by marriage) also
traveled to Egypt with her three daughters, but without her husband. She said they
began their trip at the very dangerous Damascus airport, with bombs falling
around them. Rima was reunited with Maram and her girls in Egypt, where they
lived on the same street. Maram had arrived earlier and ended up staying there
for 1 ½ years, while Rima and her family stayed for 11 months.
They
sold some of their gold jewelry in Syria and the rest of it in Egypt, because
their money ran out. All the furniture in their houses, even down to the light
switches, has been stolen, according to friends who have been there since Rima
left. The houses on her street were bombed or shot full of bullet holes. Maram
showed me before and after photos of her once beautiful living room, with
orange draperies and fabrics complemented by paler colors before the bombing,
and then a complete mess with holes in the walls and huge pieces of cement all
over afterwards. It is good these people got away. But now they have no homes.
Crowded
together with her and her brother’s families in one unimpressive house in Egypt
to save money, Rima cried daily and told her husband she wanted to return to
Syria. He said they could be killed if they did. All the men were scared to go
back, lest they be taken by soldiers and never heard from again. Rima told me
the teacher at the dirty school her girls attended insulted the children and
beat them with a wooden rod, so the girls didn’t want to attend. It was also
very hot in Egypt, with biting insects that prevented sleep and made the girls
look ill. Egyptians asked why they came, told them to leave, swore at them, and
expected the women to be their prostitutes. Rima was scared; she said they left
because it was almost as bad as Syria. Greeks are not like that, she told me:
Rima can walk alone in the streets at night here as she could not in Egypt.
Rima,
Maram, and their families left Egypt together. They were told they’d travel on
a good boat featuring cabins with beds, food, water, and even wi fi, but the
smuggler lied to them. He charged $2500 per adult, and half that for each
child. A small wooden boat took them to a medium sized one where they spent one
night with just enough room to sit up next to all the other Syrians. After one
day, they had to jump from the medium boat to a large one, the one that later
broke down. There was no bridge, so men threw the women and children up to the
larger boat like sacks, while big waves rocked the boats. One man bumped his
head, got dizzy, and fell down. One heavy woman fell down, lost her shoes,
robe, and scarf, and suffered pain for two days. Rima and Maram think two or
three people died on that boat, perhaps from drug overdoses; it came from
Morocco, and they believe it was carrying heroin as well as refugees and migrants
from Syria and Egypt.
It
was Rima and Maram’s first time on a boat, and they became seasick. Two of
their daughters couldn’t eat or even drink water properly for four days—they
managed only drops of water, fresh lemon, and salt. Everyone ate lemons which a
man brought around along with bags for seasickness. Everyone vomited in the
bags, so they ran out of them. Although they had brought plenty of food with
them (including chocolate, bread, and cheese), they were too seasick to eat it.
After
two days on the big boat, a large wave broke a window, and sea water washed
over Rima’s little twin girls, leaving them wet and cold. The children were
crying; everyone was crying. Rima’s husband couldn’t look at his daughters.
They thought they’d die. They prayed. The boat rocked wildly. After four days
and five nights, the boat broke down in the middle of the sea.
They
hoped for help from Italians, since they were trying to get to Italy, and then
to Germany, but Greeks came to the rescue. The refugees thanked God for their
rescuers and their children’s lives and health, but they were upset to learn
that they were put on a Greek boat. They didn’t want to come to Greece, because
they knew it was hard to get to Germany from here.
Rima
said Greece “closes the door – if we go in Greece we can’t go out” because the
authorities don’t let them board planes. Rima tried twice, Maram once; Maram’s
older daughters (who are 19 and 21) tried once a week, ten or twelve times, and
finally succeeded. They paid $150 for a fake ID from Belgium or France, or $300
for a fake passport from the Czech Republic. One friend with a lot of money got
through the first time. But generally officials took the fake ID, destroyed it,
and refused to let them travel, so they lost the money paid for all the plane
tickets as well as the IDs.
Why
keep breaking the law, then, and giving their limited savings to criminals?
With family in Germany, which has been giving asylum and support to the Syrian
refugees who get there, while Greece is unable to support its own citizens during
an economic crisis comparable to America’s Great Depression, and incapable of guaranteeing
support or jobs for refugees, what would you have them do? Most refugees cannot
find legal ways to reach a safe, prosperous country; one father said he went
from embassy to embassy in Egypt in vain. A UN HCR representative informed me
that for those who “have no documentation in Greece, there is no legal way for
them to travel to EU or other countries unless embassies of such countries
issue visas for humanitarian or other grounds, which is in practice very
difficult”—except when an immediate family member is there already. So at least
one family member must get to a land of safety and prosperity however they can.
That is what current laws push them to do.
So
Rima’s husband came to Crete with his wife and their daughters, but then he
walked for 40 days to reach Germany. He now has the asylum he sought there, so
the rest of the family will eventually be able to join him. Her husband would
have stayed in Greece if he could have found work; Rima likes Greece. But like
many Syrian refugees, Rima and Maram want to go to Germany because they expect
to be able to find the jobs, support, and educational opportunities their
families need, especially since the kids have barely attended school for three
years. There was a good university in Syria, but now Rima supposes her girls
will go to a German university after they finish high school. Once her husband
learns German and gets the appropriate permit, Rima expects him to be able to
cut hair or fix cars. Meanwhile, the German government is supporting him. Rima
may look for a job once her girls return to school. She and Maram are thinking
of opening a small restaurant featuring Syrian food, because they are good
cooks—as I know from sampling some of their tasty cooking.
Additional Obstacles,
Cultural, Legal, Residential, and Financial
Maram’s
husband lives in Germany, where he also has a German wife. Islamic law allows
up to four wives, but since German law does not, he has told German officials
that he and Maram are divorced. This makes it more difficult for Maram to get
permission to go there, although her husband’s German wife has shown
compassionate concern for her and her children. Two of Maram’s daughters joined
their father in Germany six months ago. A German friend who lives here in
Greece tells us that according to the Dublin Regulation, children are supposed
to be reunited with both parents, whether the parents are divorced or not. She
has been trying to help Maram with paperwork to enable a family reunion in
Germany. If the Germans don’t make an exception for a Syrian refugee, the
Dublin Regulation may help. I very much hope Maram won’t be left behind when
the rest of her family is reunited.
Maram,
Rima, and some of the other refugees from Syria have been living for 17 months
in small rooms in a hotel whose owner the Greek government promised to pay for
their lodging. Any time I asked the owner or his son, however, they said that
they had not been paid and were having serious financial difficulties, losing
income from tourists for two summers while facing bills, taxes, and loan
payments. But there is nowhere else for the refugee families, which include
children, to go; Crete has no shelter for them, and in Athens and other parts
of Greece thousands of refugees are sleeping on the streets or in parks while
waiting for their documents to be processed. The government managed to move a
couple hundred out of an Athens park where they’d been camping, and into some
prefabricated housing, but there are still thousands of homeless migrants and
refugees waiting for processing.
Another
mother I met (from Aleppo) came here with her three boys. Her husband visited
from Sweden, where he’d been granted asylum. When I gave them a ride back to
the hotel from the Anti-Racist Festival earlier this summer, I was struck by how little he fit the stereotype of a Muslim man
or an Arab refugee. A fairly short, slim man with light skin and light, reddish
curly hair, he spoke with sensitivity in very good English. His wife and her
younger boys expect to join him in Sweden without any problem, but that’s not
true of their 18 year old son, who is not eligible for family reunification
under the Dublin Regulation at his age. Unwilling to remain in Greece without
his family, any connections, knowledge of the language, or employment
prospects, the 18 year old set out on the long road travelled by so many
refugees, walking to Sweden from Greece to join his father. He seems to have preferred
to walk that far alone, rather than remain in a foreign country by himself. I
just hope Sweden will grant him asylum once he gets there.
As
Europe awaits the result of Greece’s upcoming sixth general election in eight
years—a pro-European majority or a revitalization of anti-bailout
parties—refugees from Syria wait for permission to join family members elsewhere
in Europe. Of course, these are the lucky ones, not the relatives left behind
in Syria, where their houses may be bombed or their children may be shot. These
are the lucky ones who made it out of the chaos of Egypt and Libya, beyond the
crowded refugee camps or slums of Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Most of them
used to be well-off, so they could afford to pay what the smugglers demanded,
and what the long journey required, assuming things went smoothly. However, their
shipwreck further complicated their lives and strained their resources.
While
talking with me, one of the women mentioned that they’d lost everything, left
everything behind in Syria—their work and routines, their neighborhoods, their
homes, and all that was in them. Tears came to their eyes as they thought about
it, and all I could think of to say was “you still have your family.” But that
isn’t quite right, since the surviving members of their families are scattered
in several different countries.
A Lonely Artist Who
Longs for His Family
Like
Shamsalddin, a Palestinian refugee who had been living in Syria with his wife
and two small daughters before the war, I am drawn to the arts and artistic
expression, although I focus on writing and photography, while he paints and
draws, and I have not been separated from my spouse and children for a year. I
am not so depressed that I can barely function and don’t have the will for
self-expression. I do not wonder when paperwork will be completed so I can join
little six and eight year old daughters I haven’t seen all year. I have not
lived in a lonely room without the job I need to support my children, worried
that they might not be allowed to continue attending school since the answer to
their mother’s asylum request was delayed for more than ten months.
Shamsalddin
told me he used to have a good life as an artist in Syria. But then his
computer, paintings, and entire home were bombed, and now they’re gone. All he
has left are a few imperfect smart phone photos of his art work (pictured here). His wife and
daughters are safe in Sweden, but they were granted asylum and a residence
permit only recently, after a long wait. Since others received residence
permits a few months after getting to Sweden, or even just two or three weeks
after their arrival, Shamsalddin didn’t see why the Swedish officials wouldn’t
give his wife a permit earlier. He doubted they understood how hard things were
for him and his family, who live in a modest hotel like the one he is in here
and eat with other asylum seekers, not at home with their family.
For
many months, Shamsalddin worried that everyone in the hotel except him would
soon join their families in other countries. Although he smiled at me
occasionally when I visited, Shamsalddin said he worried too much about his
wife and little girls to focus on painting or drawing; he just wasn’t in the
mood for it. He emphasized his loneliness, and he didn’t seem to talk with
other people much. He said when he is happy, he can paint very well, but when he
isn’t happy he doesn’t want to paint. I tried to talk with him about letting
out our pain through writing (in my case) or painting and drawing (in his
case), reminding him that all art isn’t rooted in happiness. Some of his art
suggests he already knows that perfectly well, but maybe he would have been
more convinced to try to express himself now if I’d discussed my writing about
my parents and my feelings after they died. That is the only suffering I have
endured that can begin to compare with what these refugees have faced, although
the circumstances were very different.
Never
allow the numbers and politics to let you forget that these refugees are people
like you, people with talents, skills, needs, feelings, problems, and children.
The difference is that they fled cities plagued by bombing and shooting to save
their children’s lives, and now they are looking for places where their
children can have a safe, healthy future, an education, and hope. Yes, some
refugees may have crossed borders without the appropriate papers, but if you
couldn’t find a legal way out of a war zone, wouldn’t you get your children to
safety any way you could? Yes, everyone has problems, yes, there are
unemployment and need among the native population everywhere, but would you
keep your children in a city full of bombing and shooting, or in a refugee camp
or slum plagued by overcrowding, health, safety, and sanitation problems,
inadequate food and water supplies, and unemployment, or would you try to take
them somewhere with more to offer?
An Overview of the
News and the Numbers
Recently,
the New York Times and NPR have been following fleeing refugees
up to and beyond the Greek islands closest to Turkey, which has become refugees’
preferred starting point this summer on the way to more prosperous central and
northern European countries. Some Greek islands in the eastern Aegean have been
overwhelmed by tens of thousands of needy refugees, who then head north from
mainland Greece to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia,
and the European country of Hungary. Aside from a short-lived struggle on the
border with FYROM, Greece and its impoverished Balkan neighbors have tended to
allow desperate refugees and migrants to pass through on their way to countries
where they hope to find more jobs and governmental support, but Hungary has
almost finished a giant wall along its 109-mile border with Serbia that is
meant to push migrants and refugees away.
Every
time another fence is erected, that simply pushes migrants and refugees in a
different direction, or toward more unscrupulous smugglers, such as those who seem to have let
71 people die in a truck in Austria last week. Fences between Turkey and Bulgaria, Turkey and northeastern Greece, and Morocco
and the Spanish territories in North Africa don’t stop people who are desperate
to reach a land of opportunity, such as Germany, Sweden, Austria, France, or
the UK. Germany expects to receive as many as 800,000 migrants and asylum
seekers this year, and it has been the most generous country for refugees, but
its leaders have warned that the country cannot continue to care for such large
numbers of needy human beings.
This
year, many countries—including Greece, which now has a caretaker government
until the September 20 election—are struggling to cope with the huge influx of
refugees, mostly from Syria, some from Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Volunteers and NGOs offer some of the food, clothing, care, services, and
shelter governments do not provide, but everyone is overwhelmed by the numbers.
The UN recently reported
that about 310,000 refugees and migrants
have crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year, with almost
200,000 of them coming to Greece, which has replaced Italy as their most
popular initial destination within Europe. The UNHCR announced a 750% increase in refugees and migrants
arriving in Greece by sea from January to the end of last month, compared with
the same period last year, and about 76,000 more have come since then. Again
and again this year, the media spotlight has reminded people that migrants and
refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea at unprecedented rates. According to the UN,
more than 2500 people have already died this year in their dangerous efforts to
cross the sea.
In
spite of repeated calls for an organized, united European response to save
lives and reduce the burden on Greece and Italy, tentative agreements to
relocate a mere 40,000 of the refugees in other EU countries have led to little
action and many arguments with countries that just don’t want to accept
refugees. The issue of migration has joined that of the common currency during
the extended Greek economic crisis to raise the question of whether a united
Europe remains possible. With about 3.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey,
Jordan, and Lebanon, it seems clear to me that prosperous countries in Europe,
North America, the Middle East, and elsewhere should, in all fairness, act on
their claims to support human rights by accepting far more refugees than they
have so far agreed to.
Of
course, the best solution is to solve the problems that make people leave their
homelands—war, other violence, famine, poverty, forced military conscription--but
that has proven extremely difficult so far. In the meantime, human beings
fleeing dangerous situations need good, viable options. They do not find these
in the overburdened refugee camps bordering conflict zones, or—even worse--the
other spaces refugees manage to live in, many of them plagued by crime, safety
concerns, and a lack of adequate healthcare, education, food, clean water, and hope.
Prosperous nations need to provide more legal channels for migration and,
especially, asylum for refugees, including different types of humanitarian and
temporary visas and more choices and help for people fleeing war zones. These
legal avenues need to be within reach of the desperate people who need them, in
or near the troubled areas. If only unscrupulous smugglers offer so-called “help”
to refugees, where do you expect them to turn?
Nils Muiznieks, Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, argues that
“European countries have lost all sense of proportion. With a total population
estimated at more than 740 million, they are among the richest and most stable
countries in the world, but they pretend to be threatened by the idea of
admitting 600,000 asylum seekers a year…. The values of tolerance, acceptance
and solidarity have defined the European project. We cannot abandon them now,
over this.” Hear, hear! Americans and others should think
about the way a very similar argument applies to them, too.
Updates on Some of
the Refugees Who Have Left Crete
Having
seen his baby son Adam only in cell phone photos, the former Syrian restaurant
owner Abdulkader Alkadi recently flew with his four children (ages 7 to 13) to
join their mother and new baby brother in London, where Mrs. Alkadi had flown
alone when she was pregnant, in search of medical care and a residence permit. Mohammed,
whose badly burned wife Hanan is in Malta with four of their seven children,
went to Athens, planning to join his family in Malta. Mahmoud, the first of the
refugees to speak with me here, is in Germany with his family.
Adeeb
Mayyasa, the father with a heart problem who was here with his 9-year old
daughter Jode, has gone to Athens with her to request asylum in Greece. Last I
heard, his wife, 17-year-old daughter, and 22-year-old son were in Egypt; some
family members were unreachable, while others were killed in Syria. Mohammed
Khalid and his daughter Besan are also in Athens to apply for asylum in Greece.
Although they did not want to remain in Greece, given 25% unemployment and
limited support services, they have no family in a prosperous nation, so they
have no better prospects for asylum.
Suggestions for Further
Reading
