Glyfada, 22th of January 2021
O is a Syrian 21 year old guy I met in Athens. He lost his money (5k€) to the smugglers mafia — these make a living out of people who, like O, come to Europe with all the money collected from their families back home hoping for a decent life.
I met O online first and then on the phone. I got tagged by a friend on one of his posts last summer: he was looking for a place to sleep in Athens. 2 days after calling every NGO in Greece providing some sort of shelter to homeless refugees without any success, Omar managed to find himself a roof.
On the phone I met an extremely polite, respectful and resourceful young man. I wanted to meet him in person but it only worked out a few days ago.
We all met him in Glyfada, on a Sunday afternoon, A, M and S. We laughed, we sang, we regrouped on the sofa with him like a pack of wolves. We welcomed him in the gang. We played Tawleh and Catan. But before all that, he needed to talk. So we listened.
At 21, O is a young man of 1m77, with a sweet smiling face and a young beard. Gentle and sweet like I had imagined him. His voice as he tells us the story goes sensitive, young and deep, his eyes escape ours.
It hasn’t been easy.
O comes from a modest family in Syria. His dreams growing up were simple: go to university, have a decent job, marry his girlfriend, live next to his family, see his children grow around his parents. But war happened.
A few years ago, he left Syria. It had started becoming totally impossible for the young adult to imagine any future there: the war and terror ongoing, people queuing for bread, you name it. He also had arrived to the age where he is forced to go for the military service (while the war is raging), and he’s not the type to be ok with killing someone, and certainly not in this war, alongside the Syrian regime army. His parents sold their apartment, gave him the money, enough to get him to Europe, they say — 5000€ — cried a lot and wished him a safe journey, not knowing when they will see him again… At 18 years old, he embarked on his journey for a possibility of a better life. A future.
After a year of traveling through Turkey and the terrible sea crossing to the Lesbos island, he arrives to Athens, supposedly just a step in his journey. Long story short, the smugglers mafia took his money but never got him out of Athens.
He becomes overnight penniless in a city he doesn’t know. He doesn’t speak English nor Greek. Only Arabic.
Since then, a year ago:
- He attempted to cross the borders without smugglers nor money — in harsh winter times (~5 degrees below 0).
- He got caught and sent to jail.
- He lived in the streets. Homeless living in the streets: other guys had already shared what it does to someone, to have to sleep in the streets.
2 notes here on the jail & the police:
- I saw a prison cell in one of the police stations of Athens and my body is still shivering at the simple picture of what my eyes saw: a person hanging a hand out of the prison bars, looking at us free people with eyes mmm… how can I describe them — there must be a word for that. Or not. Eyes we unconsciously look away from. I felt emptiness. It seems prisons are a real ugly thing. Not like in the movies. Or like in the movies but not entertaining. Not ok.
- I saw the Greek police beat an old man with such harshness, although he had his legal papers — they wouldn’t stop. They do this. They stop people even if they have papers. They take them away from Athens — handcuffed in the police truck — and then they just release them in the middle of nowhere. Anything to just humiliate people and make them even more tired… I have witnessed so much of these things in Lebanon and I felt powerless… I had left the country to be in Europe again so that I can breath freedom and respect and human rights and Athens shows me this?! I thought I was in Europe. Did we lose a few centuries? These past 2 years have been crazy with police violence towards the refugees. I am still thinking of the impact on this guy, O, the gentle, respectful young O, his kindness and humble pride, the guy who I am sure cannot hurt a mosquito, and found himself in prison, with this kind of Police violence and humiliation tactics. Funny how we treat each others we humans.
O sighs… he looks at us and says:
“Hamdellah” with a smile, “ I was able to stand up. I found little jobs here and there that kept me living a basic dignifying life - quite impressive for someone with no paper nor languages: a place in a shared room, even if we have no glass on the windows, food, clothes, internet for my phone, cigarettes and the minimal hygiene stuff”.
This guy is a fighter.
He can ask to become a legal refugee here in Greece, he says, and wait years to get it. But don’t I see in front of me all of the other friends who have been here for ages without any outlook for life, he asks?
Indeed, when I look around me in the community I see:
- Homelessness: the street brings all sorts of problems. It goes downhill.
- Unemployment/extremely precarious employment.
- Police violence & random humiliation/arrests.
- Papers that take years to arrive and lawyers who never return calls.
Since the corona, Greece has taken an additional hit, whereas it was still fragile and recovering from the collapse. This is why the young refugees want to seek papers in one of the countries with economic opportunities like Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands…
Back to O, he is reaching new lows emotionally. The urge for him to start generating money & standing on his feet is getting bigger. The guilt he feels at losing the family money is enormous. That he had his chance but lost it.
He looks at me and smiles to hide his pain. This guilt is chasing him, he feels he lost it his chance. He is not seeing the way out. He lost his 5000 and that’s it… Even his physical health and energy has started becoming weak due to the poor living conditions.
“I know I can handle anything by now, and I am willing to, but where is the door out of this dip? I cannot see it… Where do I start?”
I asked if he was willing to write about his journey, his young but full-on life journey. He said oh yes! He actually was thinking about it: “I feel a big need to get it out!”
Sharing his story, unique yet tracing a very common path for young Syrians I met here in Athens, would help spread the word about what is going on here with these guys. I keep telling myself: people don’t know, otherwise they would have done something.
O continues:
“All I want now is for people to know what is happening to us here. Away from everybody’s eyes. On a personal level, I just want to put money on the table to just eat some food and secure a home, maybe get a professional training in hair styling and hopefully a degree. I don’t want much, I just want to be able to help my family live better after we lost everything. My mom is very ill and we are hitting a new low economically”.
Glyfada, 11th of December 2021
We tried working out something with O, to help him write his story and monetize it — getting back his 5000. But his emotional suffering prevented him from doing anything really. The cold weather, the instability, the lack of a home. We connected today after a new heart-wrenching Facebook post where he was expressing his ache. He was on the road again, in Serbia this time. I promised to publish this small part of the story, like a letter in a bottle. Just so that it stays there, documented somewhere, on his behalf and the thousands of young men wondering on this planet, crossing borders to borders, in search for a better life.
