Get to know the newcomers, activists and volunteers we met in Athens, Berlin and London and their unique experiences of refuge, welcome and the digital city.
Rana*
Exarcheia, Athens, November 2018
I can’t imagine my future. I will wait for the papers then see. There is a problem because I got my initial visa through my husband, as a family, so they rejected my permit because he wasn’t at the appointment. I’ve been told not to appeal until close to the expiry date. I’m really scared, I can’t go back to Lebanon. If I go back, I will be killed.
There are so many problems in Greece, but Syrians have also struggled to settle in other places. The owner of a restaurant I go to got settlement in Austria, but he thought life there was too isolated. He couldn’t stand it. So he came back to Athens and opened his business. Sometimes I feel I’d like to stay here, that this city suits me. But there are so many people here who know my husband. That also scares me.
I wanted to offer you something, and I thought bananas were the easiest thing to eat while we walk. I get all my vegetables and fruits from that grocer right there. I prefer it when the father is in the shop because the daughters are not as patient with me when I’m struggling to communicate. The father is an older man and very gentle. He’s always smiling.
These guards are not allowed to smile. They need to stand still and be serious. But I swear to you, I made one smile once, he couldn’t help it!
I was once walking with my friend Sima, and we came across music and dancing. We looked at each other and we both started jumping and dancing. We had such a good time. It was Greek music, I think. We couldn’t understand a word. Whether the song is French or Greek or English, I just listen to the beat and I feel it alive inside me. I love dancing, it gives me energy.
Our dance group was meant to perform at the Technopolis festival yesterday, we’ve been training for weeks. But when we got there, the instructor who trained us got upset because the stage wasn’t set up the way she wanted. She refused to let us perform! [laughs] I didn’t mind that the stage wasn’t perfect, I just wanted to dance! Anyway, I got to dance the night before. We had a party at the shelter, and they held a dancing competition. Each of us danced for a few minutes and then we all voted, and I won! I got a pair of white framed sunglasses as an award.
I love having a frappé while vaping with, what I call, my ‘mini shisha’. This place is my favourite, Sima introduced me to it actually. She was the first person to bring me here, to teach me how to order a frappé. In other places a frappe will cost you 2 or 3 euros, but here it’s 50 euro cents, and it’s very good! The queues can be very, very long because everybody comes here, refugees especially.
I don’t have many friends, not since Sima left. This loneliness is the worst thing I think. At the shelter, they once gave us free tickets to an exhibit at this museum. I didn’t understand it but I walked all around and took lots of photos. But then I sat outside with my mini shisha, watching people go by, and feeling lonely.
Sima was at the shelter before I arrived and we became very close, very quickly. She’s in Germany now, she got resettlement there. I miss her all the time. How do you deal with the loss of a friend? I can’t just be sad about it. I won’t survive if I dwell on it. So I sing this Egyptian song to remind myself:
We meet people, and we say goodbye,
This is the cycle of life
(loss, connection)
I first discovered bicycles in a village in Lebanon. There are lemon trees everywhere, it’s so beautiful, to look at and to smell. And I used to spend hours on the bicycle, I wouldn’t share it with anyone. My daughter would be inside the house crying, and everyone would come to tell me I was a bad mother. But I was a child, too. I was 14, sent to Lebanon and forced to marry a man 10 years older than me. I blame my parents for taking my childhood away from me. When I call them now, I’m always singing or dancing or joking. My mother says, ‘aren’t you ever going to grow up?’ And I say, no! I wasn’t a child for long enough, so I’m always going to be a child.
One day he threw me against the fridge, got a knife out, and gave me two scars. I decided it was enough. I went to the courts, and asked for a divorce and custody of my children. He found out and two days later, I got a call from him saying he was in Turkey with the children, about to cross the sea to Greece. For weeks I didn’t hear from him. I called and called, but there was no connection. I would wake up shouting from visions of my boy drowning. Eventually I heard they had made it to Greece, so I gathered some money and decided to go get my children.
He had heard that I was following him, people talk, and I think he panicked, because in Europe I would have rights, it’s not like being in a camp in Lebanon. He called me and apologised, and paid for the smugglers to get me to Greece, and then applied for family reunification so I could join them in Ritsona camp. I don’t know why, but I believed him. But a few weeks later, he started beating me up again.
(hostility)
I showed an official at the camp all the bruises and she told me, ‘there is no way you are going back to him. We will put you in an emergency shelter tonight, and then tomorrow, you get your children and we’ll put you in a flat.’ When I didn’t come back from the appointment with the agency, he knew, and the next morning he was already gone from the camp with the children. In less than 24 hours he was out of the country, back to Lebanon. Back to a place I really don’t want them to be. Have you heard of Ein al-Hilweh* camp? There is shooting all the time, and so much gang violence. It’s not a safe place.
(hostility)
*Ein al-Hilweh is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
We are all meant to take turns to cook at the women’s shelter. But the manager was trying to enforce the rota and people weren’t doing it, so I told her, ‘Please let me do it! I love cooking, and it will give me something to do. I’m so bored.’ Eventually she agreed, and now I cook everyday. Today, a resident came in and wanted to take some spinach. They get upset at me because I don’t give them things when they ask, but for me, these are communal things. And when I’m trusted with feeding everyone, it’s a responsibility. The residents now always call me ‘mamnu’ which means ‘forbidden’ in Arabic.
(solidarity)
