Greek Crisis, Summer 2015, Part 2: Syrian Refugees in Greece

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

Migrant or Refugee? There Is a Difference, With Legal Implications

Up to 200 dead after boat carrying refugees sinks off Libya

Dealing With the Influx of Migrants and Refugees

 

Migrants Face Fortress Europe’s Deadly Moat

  

Migrants Race North as Hungary Builds a Border Fence

  

Europe still has time to help Greece with its refugee crisis

 

In Testy Debate, E.U. Leaders Fail to Agree on Quotas to Spread Migrants Across Bloc

   

A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone 

Syrian Refugees in Chania: An In-Depth Update, After 7 Months Here

Fleeing Bombs, Facing the Waves, Fearing the Future

 

Mahmoud was not happy to be staying in a beachfront hotel on a Greek island. He hated the beach and the sea. For migrants like him who fled the war in Syria, life in Greece is no vacation. He and 152 other refugees from Syria were brought to the island of Crete (where I live) against their will last spring, when their rusty, overloaded smugglers’ boat could not make it to Italy, which many refugees view as a gateway to the countries in Europe that are most hospitable to them.

I spoke with Mahmoud, Adeeb, Abed, Samir, and several other Syrian and Palestinian refugees here in Chania, Crete three times recently, once after taking them a carload of food that families at my children’s Greek public school had gathered for the refugee families (thirty-five or forty people, including fifteen to twenty children) who are still here. These refugees have been stuck here since the Greek Coast Guard brought them to the island on March 31. I think that’s their boat in the photo from The Guardian linked here; the caption certainly seems to refer to them. 

I can turn away from the cell phone video taken on the twenty-four-meter boat carrying over four hundred migrants from Egypt and Syria when the rough waters of the Mediterranean make the boat rock so much that it upsets my stomach just to watch the video. I don’t have to stay on the boat for ten days to escape falling bombs and buildings that crash down on top of men, women, children, and babies. I can turn away from the crumpled  photo of Hanan, the Syrian mother of seven whose right arm was so severely burned when a bomb struck her Damascus home that most of the skin is red and raw, and metal instruments are poking into it. I don’t have to feel the terror or the pain of the burn; I don’t have to live with the scar or fear that my arm may be amputated. I can turn away from the video of some men torturing another man with a knife, and then stabbing him, which I was told came from somewhere in Syria. I am in little danger of torture or stabbing here on a Greek island. But when I pull the smart phone showing the video away from four year old Joad, the fathers from Syria who showed it to me tell me that I don’t need to protect their children from a mere video, since they have already seen a hundred real dead bodies.

And they could not simply turn away from them. Struggling to protect their children from real dangers, the refugees attempted a risky voyage on a small, overloaded boat where the food ran out after six days, and water was rationed for another four, before it began to take on water, and a rescue became necessary. I can barely imagine tolerating ten days like that myself, let alone with my children hungry, thirsty, and exhausted beside me. And then the terror of sinking into the waves.

An End to Life as They Knew It: “The War Is Eating Everything”

The Syrians and Egyptians on that boat, and the Palestinians who had lived in Syria, did tolerate it. Even so, they did not reach their intended destination; they were brought to Crete in Greece, leaving many separated from mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, or brothers. The seriously injured Hanan’s husband Samir ended up in Crete. Hanan and four of their children, ages 1 ½, 7, 14, and 23, were on another boat that began to sink, and they were taken to Malta. Samir told me his wife was informed that she and her sick toddler could only receive hospital care there if they first applied for asylum in the tiny island nation, where they have no desire to stay. (Is that not a human rights violation? I have asked someone at the UNHCR.) They want to go to Sweden or some other country with a good program to help refugees, a country that would allow surgery on her arm to save it from the amputation they fear could be necessary without prompt treatment. But Hanan and the children are stuck on one island, and Samir is stuck on another. Their married children are in Syria, Turkey, and Jordan. They don’t know what to do.

Adeeb, here with his delicate, bashful 9-year old daughter Jode, told me that in Syria he had money, a home, a job—a comfortable life. He traveled to Italy, India, and the USA. But that is all in the past. His four-story building was destroyed by a bomb. He said, “The war is eating everything … my home, my car, everything.” Jode has not been to school in three years; none of these children have, aside from a month now in the local Greek school with a language foreign to them. Adeeb’s wife, 17-year-old daughter, and 22-year-old son are in Egypt. Three other grown children and two grandchildren were living in Duma, Syria (near Damascus) when he last heard from them two years ago, but he recently decided that they must have been killed in the war. He learned on the internet that his wife’s sister, husband, and family died in Duma in mid September when their building was bombed, falling on top of them and killing twenty-one people. 

Abed was the only father I spoke with who was here with his whole family--his pregnant wife and their four children--at the beginning of the month. But during our most recent conversation, he told me that his wife had gone to London. She has a problem with a foot that was deformed in a childhood accident and needs an operation she could not get here, and they think she may give birth to twins in a few months. Abed is considering selling one of his organs because he needs money. In Syria, he owned a restaurant; he showed me a photo of it on his cell phone, with a huge amount of meat for a gyro on a spit. But in Syria, he says, he could die. His family was in Gota Alsharkea (beside Damascus), where his restaurant was bombed. He told me, with Mahmoud translating, that while he was still in Syria 1 ½ years ago, he was trying to give some people food and money and take them to the hospital, but the Assad government wanted to imprison him for that. He escaped to Egypt, but the government caught his two brothers. One was killed and the other put in prison. He showed me the videos and photos taken on the boat and in Syria. 

Mahmoud, a Palestinian refugee who had been living in Damascus, also ended up in Crete with three of his children (11, 15, and 17 years old) and one nephew (11) whose parents and siblings are in Egypt. His married daughter is in Sweden with her husband and 5 year old son; his wife and adorable baby have managed to reach Germany, where they receive two hundred euros every ten days for living expenses. (I saw their photos.) Mahmoud hasn’t seen them for six months, but he wants to take his other children to Germany, too, because he views it as a country with a good program for refugees, unlike Greece with its 26% unemployment, where he can’t even get the job he wants very much in order to support his family and offer them a good future.  Desperate for a way to do this and lacking legal options, he admitted that he tried to use forged passports to leave Greece with two of the children. But the authorities stopped him at the airport. “If you don’t want me, want to help me, why catch me?” he asks. “I want my future,” he says, and, even more, he wants a future for his children. He was a merchant, but he lost his home, office, everything. 

Unfinished Business: The State Has Still Not Paid for the Refugees’ Hotel Stay

Ioannis (Yannis) Volikakis, owner of the Elena Beach Hotel in Nea Chora, Chania, where the Syrians have been staying for nearly seven months, has done far more than anyone should expect a private individual to do, providing these refugees with rooms, as well as meals for four months--until the government said to stop giving the refugees food, and let them find it where they can. Kyrios (Mr.) Yannis, as the Syrians call him, provided for 140 individuals in the first months, with forty or so  staying there even now. Yet he says he has not been paid a single euro for all the electricity, water, and laundering of linens, plus three meals a day, although he also lost all the money he should have earned at the hotel during the summer tourist season, as well as a great deal of revenue from his café and restaurant there. Kyrios Yannis told me the government tossed the refugees into his hotel and said goodbye, without sending anyone to check on the children or paying any of the expenses he incurred during their stay, in spite of a verbal agreement for such payment and his repeated appeals to the regional and federal governments. Apparently the 10,000 euros the EU contributed for the care of the refugees was given to the exhibition center where they stayed for just their first few days on Crete—but nothing for the hotel owner who says he has lost hundreds of thousands of euros and has now missed three loan payments. What does the government think he is, he wonders, “the bank of Chania”? He said the police tried to evict the refugees at one point, but the Syrians refused to leave, and Yannis told me they were right: where were they to go, without another place to house their children?

Why Are They Stuck? Trouble with Smugglers and Laws

We are looking for [a] COUNTRY! SYRIA IS GONE. We dream to live in safety please. You saved us from the sea, now help us to leave!!

These messages appeared on posters held by some of the Syrian children last spring. Why do they want to leave? The fathers who told me about the death, destruction, and separation their families had endured during Syria’s war are looking for a country that could offer refugees more help finding safe homes, healthy food, and good schools for their children, a country where they could find jobs and rebuild their lives. Publications by the UN HCR and non-governmental organizations offer support for the Syrians’ belief that Greece is not such a country. It is struggling to support its own citizens and the immigrants and refugees already here, given the recession that has increased social and political unrest, racism, and xenophobia in the face of more than 26% unemployment, a health care crisis, a 33% decrease in household incomes since 2010, increased taxes many cannot afford to pay, and 164 billion euros (about 90% of the Greek gross domestic product) in bad debts. So the men I spoke with have not applied for asylum or official refugee status here. (I apply the term “refugees” to them as the word is commonly, rather than officially, understood, since they have fled a war-torn nation.) Mahmoud emphasized that he felt a “need to leave Greece,” because he had seen little governmental support for refugees here. In countries that offer better refugee support programs, he said, “you are a free man”—but in his view they “just stay here like animals.” 

Given the contrast with the desperate refugees fleeing on foot to overcrowded apartments or tents in camps just over the Syrian or Iraqi border, this may seem hard to believe, and I think that’s why I have been unable to interest the American Embassy, the New York Times, and the Guardian in these families’ stories. Yes, they have a roof over their heads—at the moment. Yes, they are in a fairly safe land with a fairly mild climate. Yes, they are managing to find at least some food for their children, and people are giving them second-hand clothes. But think about it. How would you feel in their shoes? Relieved to escape bombings, murderers, and drowning, yes, but then what? As far as I can tell, the people who manage to get this far from Syria tend to be the ones who were better off financially and better educated, those who enjoyed a lifestyle that must have been comparable in some ways to that of middle class Americans. These parents and I have similar aspirations for our children. These fathers do not want to sit around, unemployed, in a hotel from which they could be ejected at any time, and ask for food at churches and soup kitchens. They want to get jobs to support their families, live in their own homes, educate their children in a country where they can envision a good future for them. (I have not learned what the mothers want, since none of them speak Greek or English, and I do not speak Arabic or know anyone here who does.)

Ideally, the United Nations and the wealthy countries of the world should provide far more resources to bring peace and overcome the humanitarian crises in the war-torn, poverty-stricken, and famine and disease-ridden nations so many human beings are fleeing in search of safer lives—and some are doing that now, most notably in the fight against Ebola. Obviously, the root causes of migration need to be addressed in order to eliminate people’s need to leave their countries, but that is an enormous undertaking. On a more limited level, I want to focus on two problems now. 

One is smugglers, their methods, and the reasons they are used. The costly Evros and Melilla fences in Greece and Spain do not stop migrants as intended, but rather make attempts to escape the problems in Africa and the Middle East more dangerous, especially when ruthless smugglers provide unsafe boats, urge migrants to puncture inflatable boats before reaching shore to inspire rescue efforts, or even murder their clients by sinking boats, as in the case of five hundred men, women, and children who were killed in mid September, including one of Mahmoud’s friends, along with his wife and two daughters. (Of the ten survivors, six, including a seventeen-month old child who was doing astonishingly well a month ago, were brought to hospitals in Crete for care.) Mahmoud has heard of hundreds of migrants who were “swallowed by the sea,” and in fact thousands draw out coast guard, military, and commercial boats for expensive rescue attempts which fail too often. 

The refugees I spoke with emphasized the dangerous nature of the sea voyage from Egypt to Italy. Usually, Mahmoud suggested, there are fifty, sixty, or one hundred people on one of those small boats, not four or five hundred, which is far too dangerous, as in his case and the case of the recent murderous tragedy. Some of the Syrians and Palestinians here say they paid smugglers $3,000 to $3,500 per adult, with some children free, and others half price. Yet, to my surprise, none of them complained about the smugglers; they complained more about the Greek government and the Assad government, about having too little good food, too little help, and being unable to go where they feel they need to go. I wonder if this is because the smuggling and the boat trip are in the past now, while they’re focusing on their present problems. Or maybe it’s that the smugglers at least got them somewhere far from Syria, while the Greek government is getting them nowhere. In any case, the smugglers did not get them where they had agreed to take them, and a number of the would-be refugees remain in a stateless limbo.

The other problem I want to discuss here arises from the Dublin Regulation, which generally requires those who seek asylum in Europe to do so in the first European country they enter, like it or not—except in certain cases of family reunification--and thus concentrates refugees on the struggling outer perimeter of the EU, putting immense pressure on Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Greece and limiting the legal choices of the asylum seekers. That’s why the Syrians and Palestinians have been stuck in Greece: now that they are here, the law requires them to apply for asylum here if they want asylum in Europe. Many have heard that Greece is having a hard time taking care of its own, and that human rights organizations have sharply criticized the prevalence of racist violence here, as well as the conditions in some of its migrant detention centers. So many migrants try to bypass Greece, even if it’s closer to their starting point, to reach Italy. Those “aided” by smugglers thus increase their risk of drowning by lengthening their trips in unseaworthy boats in order to avoid getting stuck in a country with little to offer refugees. If they do get stuck here, they don’t always agree to apply for asylum, since doing so would end their chances of obtaining asylum in other European countries they still hope to reach, although they are not allowed to enter them legally.

Solutions for the Syrians and Other Refugees?

The cost of the Dublin Regulation and the fences is too high in euros and, especially, lives. It is unrealistic to expect that the Melilla and Evros fences will be pulled down after millions of euros were spent building them, but it should be easier to dismantle a misguided agreement. I concur with human rights organizations such as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and Pro Asyl that the European Union should abolish or “fundamentally reform” the Dublin Regulation. If asylum seekers were allowed to choose the country where they wished to submit their application and legally go there directly, there would be a less overwhelming number of people needing housing, food, clothing, education, and processing of asylum requests in the perimeter countries that are currently struggling, and in many cases failing, to provide humane treatment and prompt processing. While there is now some provision for family reunions, asylum seekers should also be allowed to head to countries where they have cultural or linguistic ties or reasonable expectations of employment or financial support, thus facilitating their integration into new communities. 

The New York Times Editorial Board recently suggested setting up application centers for asylum seekers in Egypt and Libya. I would add Turkey, both because of the tens of thousands of people fleeing to that country from Syria recently, and since it is another starting point for migration to Europe. Application centers could be useful if prosperous nations would offer asylum to more of the refugees who are fleeing life-threatening situations in their homelands, and settle them in communities where they could find jobs. Some criticize this idea because of the problems migrants already face in these countries, but I urge the UNHCR, perhaps with the help of a respected international NGO—but not the troubled national governments of Egypt and Libya--to consider trying to administer such a program at an international level. If more desperate people are offered hope of a better life by legal means, fewer are likely to turn to smugglers. The thousands of dollars per person that desperate migrants are paying smugglers could be put to better use to buy tickets for safe, legal transportation, saving lives and decreasing the need for expensive rescue missions. I ask the most prosperous countries of the world to help more of these struggling parents and children resettle in nations that can offer them the safety, health, education, and jobs they seek, and I ask the international community to try to work out a way for the refugees to resettle without turning to smugglers. 

Michael Kimmelman’s July article about the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, which turned into “an informal city: a sudden, do-it-yourself metropolis of roughly 85,000,” raises another possibility, especially given the enormous numbers of refugees now fleeing Syria, Iraq, and other nations. Perhaps more permanent refugee “camps” that become cities could present a viable option for those without the means to travel. I realize that this is not an ideal solution, given serious problems with violence, abuse of women, and criminality in such city-camps. But if these new cities could be transformed into largely self-sustaining, productive, safe, healthy entities that could contribute to the larger economy rather than being a drain on it, this idea could be promising. 

When a country fails to take care of all its residents, it is understandable if citizens fail to see how their nation could offer refuge to more impoverished people. The tragedy of unemployed, impoverished Greeks committing suicide in order to avoid burdening their families or dying because they can no longer afford adequate medical care is just as horrible as the tragedy of Syrians and Iraqis being killed in wars or migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. But with thousands and thousands of human beings dying in Syria, in Iraq, and in the Mediterranean Sea—as well as in Central America, Africa, and elsewhere--think about how you’d feel if your children or grandchildren were in danger of being killed by gangs, extremists, or war. Wouldn’t you want to take them to a place where they could be safe? Mahmoud, Adeeb, and their friend Mohammed did, and Samir told me they recently set off for northern Greece, planning to take their daughters and nephew on foot from there to Germany, where Mahmoud’s wife and baby are now.

Far from most of my family and old friends due to my own chosen migration, although in comfortable circumstances among people I love, I believe refugees also long for those who share their past and their memories. Having lost my father and my mother to heart attacks, I expect that the refugees feel a similar strong, deep pain, regret, and emptiness after the loss of loved ones to war. As one of Nea TV’s videos about the Syrians in Chania asks in a message like those that pop up on the computer, “Are you sure you want to delete all feelings?” If not, advocate more assistance for refugees. There are more of them than there have been since World War II, with no sign that their problems will be solved any time soon. I urge empathy, or at least sympathy, for all human beings in need. 

Many thanks once again to the Syrian and Palestinian refugees as well as Ioannis Volikakis for discussing their situations with me. 

For more about the Syrian and Palestinian refugees, see my last two blog entries and two videos produced by a local television station. Note, June 2015: another update is coming soon.

Immigrants in Greece, Part 3: Anti-Racist Grassroots Groups Helping Migrants; Trapped Syrians, and an Algerian’s View (August blog entry)

Syrians, September, and School in Crete, and the Contradictions of Athens in the Summer (September blog entry)

The Life of a Syrian Refugee, a video produced by Nea TV in June 2014

Προσφυγόπουλα από τη Συρία (Refugee children from Syria), a Nea TV show on the Θερινή ’Ωρα (Summer Time) program, in Greek and English. (The commentator speaks Greek to the audience, but she speaks English with the Syrians, as the Syrian doctor and his daughter do.)