The morning after I touched down at Stansted I got a call from Mohammed. I felt like I could sleep for a week after what seemed a pathetic 16 days of volunteering compared to the heroes that have been working in Greece for months. He caught me just as I was about to brush my teeth, and the buzz of my phone vibrating was a welcome jerk back into reality from my wistful staring at the sleepy-eyed, sunburned stranger in the bathroom mirror. I answered with a surprised smile, uplifted to think that someone I’d met just a couple of times in Athens wanted to contact me, a rather small and insignificant human being at the other end of the continent.
I first met Mohammed at Notara 26. He watched as I pointed Durham out on a map of Europe to some half-comprehending Afghans. When we spoke it was clear that his English was excellent in comparison to the majority of the refugees I’d met and as always it was a delight to find someone I could have a deeper conversation with than “where do you come from?” and “how old are you?”. I asked what had become my standard refugee chat-up line: “So, where do you want to go?” But this time, instead of ‘Germany’, ‘Sweden’ or ‘the UK’, Mohammed’s response was a contemplative silence as he sighed, opened and shut his mouth but struggled to provide an immediate answer. I understood, cocked my head to one side and answered for him. “Syria, right?” And his shoulders relaxed when he saw he no longer had to find the right words, or indeed any words, to convey to this naive young English girl the heartache and homesickness he felt, the trauma he has been through, and the inexpressible uncertainty he is now subsumed by.
“Yes. Syria.” He sighed. “You know, there is really nowhere on earth like your own motherland.” And it is clear to me that he’d be back in a flash if the war ended and he could guarantee his family safety and happiness at home.
Although we met in Notara 26, Mohammad doesn’t live there; he, his wife and young daughter are some of the lucky and ever diminishing few asylum applicants who have been approved for the EASO relocation scheme. They are now being housed with a number of other similar cases in a hotel in central Athens, which has been entirely commandeered by refugees waiting to leave Greece. Unlike the thousands in the ports, detention centres and supposedly “open” government-run camps, they have a secure ticket out of Athens, but as of yet no leaving date nor destination. It could be weeks or months until they’re found a place elsewhere in the EU. For now, as for the past month, Mohammed and his family spend their time in Europe’s largest waiting room, which for them comprises the hotel and the occasional trip to Notara or Pireas port, where their daughter can see other children and perhaps engage in the odd art session put on by sporadic volunteers.
Europe’s waiting room: “Welcome to the EU, the border police will be with you shortly, alternatively, please take a seat and the asylum officers will endeavour to meet you within the next few years.”
Mohammed’s daughter Logain (‘Silver’ in Arabic 😀 ) is two, so she, like many other refugee children, was born during the Syrian conflict. This toddler has never known peace. She was born and raised amidst air strikes and gas attacks; she took her first breath as her fellow citizens took their last; she learned to walk whilst others lost their legs to bombs; and her playschool is the sea of coloured tents on Pireas, her playmates fellow children of war living on the goodwill of foreign strangers.
The family fled Damascus suddenly when the military began forcing men to join the army and fight. Mohammed would have been taken too but, he explains to me as if it is something extraordinary: “I don’t want to kill anyone, and I don’t want to be killed.”
Playtime at Pireas
Life and death decisions like that are not really something one thinks too deeply about, writing about the “inability of the United Nations Security Council to take effective action in response to the civil war in Syria”, as I was doing at university just a month before heading to Greece. I’d analyse videos of political speeches and assess dozens of UN resolutions but after a day in the library I could head home, grab some tea and jump into bed, miles away from the drones and tanks that remained mere words on paper.
Not so for Mohammed. Not even now. His mother and two siblings remain in Damascus; they haven’t enough money to leave (Mohammed and his family sold their clothes to gather enough to flee), and although they are still in touch with Mohammed it is hardly any consolation to know they remain in the midst of a brutal civil war and the spreading shadow of ISIS. Even if the rest of the family were safe, Mohammed and his wife Lina are living a life of uncertainty. Though they know they will eventually be moved to the EU, they have no idea when or where to, whether they will be accepted by their new community, what language they may have to learn, what jobs they may or may not find, where Logain might go to school and how she’ll cope growing up in a strange new land, and so many other daunting prospects.
We chat in the living area of Notara, which is overrun with children squealing, running around, climbing on top of each other and every item of furniture within sight; tired parents in chairs chatting or sipping tea; and young men scrolling through smartphone screens displaying pictures of the lands they left behind, and the smiles they haven’t seen in the flesh for weeks or months. Mohammed lights up a cigarette and I tut and mock-scold him. He replies in all sincerity: “It is impossible to give anything up if your mind is not strong. When your mind is weak, you cannot give anything up.”
I cannot imagine how many thoughts race around his head daily…and nightly. Thoughts know no boundaries; they are an insomniac species, never resting even when the moon rises and the stars start to glimmer through the dusky sky. They lurk perpetually and glow brighter in the silence of the night, when the distractions of the day have retired; when the boredom-breaking rituals of washing, dressing, eating, travelling and talking have all been spent; when no more excuses remain to avoid their incessant calls. To have just twenty minutes of unbroken sleep is a blessing, Mohammed tells me.
An Athenian dusk
But Mohammed’s mind is most certainly not weak. He has managed to keep his small family together and they are happy enough, given the extreme circumstances. And he is a caring father. When I talk to him about his daughter and her future in Europe, I ask if he has any particular hopes for her, what she might study or grow up to be. His answer is the best: “Whatever makes her happy, whatever she chooses, I will support her.”
A picture of innocence
We exchange contact details and he explains his online profile picture: a pair of canaries. “I breed them”, he tells me. “It was a hobby… that turned into a job.” When I ask why he loves them so much he says they are beautiful singers, but also that they are “so innocent.” It is a word I’ve never thought to ascribe to a bird, and I wonder what he means. Aren’t all birds, all animals for that matter, ‘innocent’ in the sense that they don’t show any intentional malevolence? Perhaps yes, but perhaps that doesn’t make this any less noteworthy to Mohammed. In fact, innocence might be the most significant trait in his canaries precisely because it is what differentiates them from so many of the humans he has recently encountered.
After our brief call the morning after my return, I think back to his ruby-slippered declaration that there is no place like home. I’m a traveller, and rarely feel homesick for England’s drizzle and chill, but I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone plucked me from my house and informed me that I had to flee not just my home but the entire country, possibly never to return and definitely not for the foreseeable future. I suppose part of the reason I don’t miss England too much when I’m galavanting across the globe is that I know it will always be there whenever I decide to pop back. England is to me like the family you always visit at Christmas: the crazy aunt, the grumpy grandpa, the really annoying cousin. You moan about them to others and often can’t wait for the visit to end, but you never for a second imagine that one day they might not be there. No matter how tiresome those Christmas traditions of charades, school report comparisons, and yet more bath salts and pyjamas, there is a secretly comforting assumption that they’ll always be there. The crackers and bad jokes and dogs leaping all over your new holiday dress are locked safely away in the realms of perpetuity. You might escape them for 364 days of the year but, like the hand-made Christmas decorations from primary school, they’ll always be waiting in that box in the attic, ready to be brought out at a moment’s notice, to embarrass, yes, but also to bring cheer and the comfort of home.
So when I schedule long-haul flights to places far more exotic and exciting than Northampton, it may be to try and escape my own “motherland” (even calling it that brings an involuntary flinch!), but the reason I’m able to relish these new destinations is because I know that, even if I don’t feel any nostalgia for this green and pleasant land when I race to Heathrow as fast as possible, the fact is that if I did (and occasionally, I must admit, I do), I could always hop back on a return journey. The possibility to return is an open and simple one for me, with my valid passport and (just about) enough savings to pay for a ticket. For others it is not so easy. Even with travel documents and cash, the option to return has closed for thousands whose homes are now in the eye of a blizzard of war and terrorism.
It is this that I imagine (though I’ve no way to be certain) is what hits Mohammed hardest. It isn’t leaving Syria that is difficult (who wouldn’t opt for a nice stint in a top Mediterranean tourist destination?); it is the uncertainty and improbability ever returning. His traditions are not waiting patiently for him in the attic. His decorations have been burned and his Christmas socks buried. And for the first time in a long time, as I leave him to his wife, his daughter and his thoughts, I’m starting to look forward to a family Christmas.
Many thanks to Mohammed Deeb for sharing his personal story with me. I wish him, Lina and Logain much luck and happiness on their future lives in Europe and, hopefully, a peaceful Syria. 🙂
number of other similar cases in a hotel in central Athens, which has been entirely commandeered by refugees waiting to leave Greece. Unlike the thousands in the ports, detention centres and supposedly “open” government-run camps, they have a secure ticket out of Athens, but as of yet no leaving date nor destination. It could be weeks or months until they’re found a place elsewhere in the EU. For now, as for the past month, Mohammed and his family spend their time in Europe’s largest waiting room, which for them comprises the hotel and the occasional trip to Notara or Pireas port, where their daughter can see other children and perhaps engage in the odd art session put on by sporadic volunteers.
Woes of a Second-Level Wuddhist 