A happier-ending story of refugees

The war in Syria has transformed not only the lives of the country’s 23 million Syrian citizens, but also those of the half-million Palestinians living in that country who are risking perilous journeys to reach Europe.

Originally from Haifa, Jamil, 32, his sisters, Lora, 27, and Carla, 21, and mother Leila, 51, were until December 17, 2012, living in a comfortable flat in the Yarmouk suburb of Damascus.

Jamil, who has his BA as well as a certificate in economics, Lora, an architect, and Carla, a university student, could look forward to productive futures in Syria, which gave them the right to work and free education and healthcare, but not citizenship.

Their father, Mustafa, was an estate agent.

When, on December 16, 2012, Jabhat Al Nusra and Free Army fighters took over Yarmouk, Jamil and Lora were at work. Leila and Carla were at home cooking and ignoring the firefight around them.

The next day, they joined the mass exodus. Jamil and Carla found them by chance as they walked for three hours to reach a boutique hotel near Bab Touma in the Old City.

After some time the family moved to a handsome flat near the Italian hospital in the centre of the new city. They paid half the rent for the flat, lent to them by relatives living elsewhere.

After some months, Leila went abroad with her daughters to visit relatives, and Jamil and Mustafa moved to Bab Touma, where they shared a room with one of Jamil’s friends in an upmarket hotel. When money became tight, they moved to a less expensive hotel where Leila and the two girls joined them.

Refugees are often forced to move from place to place, unable to settle.

On September 11, 2014, Leila and her three children put themselves in the hands of smugglers with the aim of leaving Syria and travelling to Germany. They departed from Bab Touma in a minibus driven by a smuggler and made for the border with Turkey, passing through checkpoints manned by government soldiers and armed anti-government fighters who extracted small bribes in cash and cigarettes.

The women put on black cloaks and two heavy veils to go through territory held by Daesh and Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra.

Jamil worried about his jeans, banned by Daesh.  Kidnapping by these groups was a great risk. Lora and Carla are pretty and Jamil is of fighting age. 

They scrambled through a hole in the barbed wire and trenches to cross the Turkish border at Bab Al Salameh after two failed attempts. At the first place, the border was too heavily patrolled by Turkish troops; at the second a Turkish soldier intercepted the family and put the muzzle of his gun against Jamil’s chest and ordered them to turn around.

Once in Turkey, my friends travelled by bus to Ankara and Izmir, where they stayed in a neighbourhood hosting smugglers who arrange risky boat passages to Greece, refugees’ first European destination where they can remain for six months.

The family was ordered to shift to the smaller coastal towns of Bodrum and Didim to board a rubber boat bound for the nearest Greek island called Farmakonisi. The boat sank at some distance from the Turkish shore and the passengers were rescued by the Turkish coast guard, taken to a police station and fingerprinted.

The family searched for lodging late at night, their clothes stiff with dried salt, discouraged, exhausted and convinced that the smugglers were in cahoots with the Turkish police and shore patrol.

A few days later, my friends boarded a second rubber boat with 38 other people, but this boat sank near the shore and the passengers managed to reach land safely, although Leila cannot swim.

This time they slept as best they could on the ground near the launch location of the boats.

When on the third try in a rubber boat with a decent motor they neared Farmakonisi, other passengers slashed the boat with knives so it would sink and they could not be sent back to Turkey.

Those on board were rescued by the Greek shore patrol. They were put up at a stinking army barracks at a military post on the island, fingerprinted, given visas for six months, and sent by ferry to Athens. 

There they remained for 36 days, resting, meeting friends from Damascus and investigating which route would get them safely to Germany.

They chose to go by 18-hour ferry to Venice and proceed by public bus, entering southern Germany on November 9, 2014, without passing through immigration. There was at the time free travel between European Union countries that had signed the Schengen agreement.

After spending a night in Munich, they proceeded in a minivan with Bulgarian licence plates, but were intercepted by a police patrol.

Many smugglers use vehicles with Bulgarian plates. The family was taken to a police station where they were again fingerprinted and the process of obtaining German asylum began.

The family’s first accommodation was a cubicle created by blankets in an exhibition hall where, after examinations by doctors, they remained for 15 days. They were then taken to Nuremberg to share a three bedroom flat with a Ukrainian family of four and a Serb family of four, although each bedroom had only three beds.

Finally around November 23, my friends were taken by bus to their current residence where I visited them. 

However, they must move as soon as possible so newcomers can have the flat.

The rent is paid by the government and each person receives a fixed amount a month for expenses.

Next month Jamil will begin a master’s course at a German university; Lora, the architect, has been offered a job at a firm in Bavaria. Carla is searching for a course she can follow.

All are proud recipients of light blue German refugee passports with which they can travel freely throughout the European Union and apply for visas for journeys elsewhere.

The Syrian refugee documents are accepted almost nowhere. In six years’ time, the family can apply for German citizenship. If and when this is granted, they will cease being stateless Palestinians.