Erstellt am: 25. 9. 2015 - 12:39 Uhr
"Even in 1000 years I will remember every step."
von Matthias Däuble
Langer Tag der Flucht
Das Flüchtlingshoch-kommissariat der UNO, UNHCR veranstaltet heute den Langen Tag der Flucht. In vielen Städten und Orten in ganz Österreich gibt es Diskussionen und Lesungen, Ausflüge und Sport, Filme und Workshops zum Thema Flucht
Mohanad, 25 Jahre alt, Zahnmedizinstudent aus Damaskus, flüchtete erst in den Libanon, und dann mit seiner Mutter und Schwester über die Türkei, Griechenland, Mazedonien, Serbien und Ungarn bis nach Österreich. Sein Vater, ein Arzt, ist noch in Damaskus. Seinetwegen möchte Mohanad seinen vollen Namen nicht nennen und sich auch nicht fotografieren lassen. Seit knapp vier Monaten ist er in einem Heim im oberösterreichischen Alkoven untergebracht. Das ist seine Geschichte:
I’m from Syria, the capital Damascus. I’m 24 years old, next month I will be 25 years old. I’ve finished dentistry school and had started a master degree in facial surgery.
I got out of Syria over a year ago and fled to Lebanon. I lived there for nine months. After that I decided I can’t live in Lebanon anymore. This is why I started to think about going to Europe. I didn’t think about Austria then, because we didn’t know a lot about the rules there, whether they will treat Syrian refugees like in Germany. In Germany, we knew there are a lot of regulations which help, for instance, for a man who is married to get his family to Germany as fast as possible. You can get refugee status quickly and also, the opportunity to work and study in Germany is easier than Austria.
APA/EPA/JAMAL NASRALLAH
Matthias Däuble: Why did you leave Syria?
Mohanad: I didn’t feel safe anymore in Damascus. And because I have problems with the government there, I had been interrogated twice by the regime, once when I was in my third year of college, once immediately after graduation from dentistry school. They interrogated me for over 24 hours. Some of my friends told me, it’s not safe anymore for me to stay in Syria.
So you were fleeing from Assad, you weren’t fleeing from the IS.
You should know one thing. The situation in Syria in general is that it is not safe to live there. Either because of the Syrian regime, or the revolutionary militia or even ISIS. They are all grappling for power, hunting after their own victory. To establish their own governments, to establish their own country. And they don’t let anyone who disagrees with them live there. This is the problem in Syria.
It doesn’t matter who you are fleeing from, it’s just not a good place to be, full stop.
Yes.
According to official figures, well over one million Syrians have fled to Lebanon. What was it like there?
The Lebanese are not nice to the Syrian refugees. They keep them living in camps on the border between Syria and Lebanon. Also, the Syrian government has its own ways to control the Lebanese government. So they are not really safe there. And the situation there is horrible. I stayed in several camps on the Syrian-Lebanese border. There is no proper healthcare or any system to distribute food among this huge number of refugees. It’s 100 percent horrible. A lot of children are without school, without anything. And they are an easy target for the people who want to take advantage of them. I heard that Syrian girls are being sold now. They are minors. Like 14 years old, or twelve sometimes. They sell them to the market, if you understand.
Slavery.
Yes. Exactly. And it’s not good. But when you have a family and you can’t provide for them, you feel hopeless. Also, the Lebanese government will take between 200 and 400 dollars for a permit to stay. And even then the Lebanese government will not allow you to work in Lebanon. All you can do is to work on the black market. I had been working there as an Arbeiter, the hard work. I worked 17 hours a day for one dollar per hour. At the end of the day I will take between 17 and 20 dollars. And that makes at the end of the month like 600 dollars. I shared a room with five other young men. I paid 200 for the rent and 200 for my food, and the rest is barely enough to have a cell phone or to have a life. And I was alone there. Imagine what will happen to a family. You can’t support them.
APA/EPA/NABIL MOUNZER
Going back to your life before you left Syria: You were studying to become a dentist, you had a career and a life to look forward to. Also, your English is very good; where did you learn English?
I actually studied English at LTC, which is an American school for English, and the British Council, and the Higher Institute for Language at Damascus University.
So you are not, if I may say so, from what you’d call a poor family, you’re from a middle class background.
Yes, that’s it, exactly.
Did you have to pay for your flight?
Stationen der Flucht
Der Weg syrischer Flüchtlinge nach Europa
To get out of Syria to Lebanon? You don’t pay immediately, like at the border, but they ask you for certain types of papers that you have to bring. That means that you have to pay certain people to get these papers. In our country, after you finish college, or after you graduate from high school, either you go to university, or you go to the military. Also, after university, either you continue to do a master degree, or you go to the military. You don’t have a lot of time. After I had finished university I had six months either to get out of Syria or to continue my studies. And when you’re planning to get out of Syria, you have to take your passport which costs you 400 dollars in Syria, which is a lot, and you have to have a permission to leave from the department of migration and passports, I don’t know the exact translation for this office.
A lot of young men leave Syria in different ways. In the north, the border between Turkey and Syria is semi-open. You can easily get out of Syria without a passport. Or there are special routes between Syria and Lebanon, there’s always a way to get out of Syria without a passport.
APA/EPA/SEDAT SUNA
It’s the next step that is the hardest. Always. After you reached Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan, the next step is the hardest. Which is: to decide to either be humiliated and taken advantage of in these countries, or to risk your life to find a new future, to find a new life for you and your family.
And the road is not easy. It’s not a walk in the suburbs, it’s hard. You might die on this journey. You have heard of the little kid on the Turkish coast? It’s horrible, but that is what is happening. Every day.
How did you make your way from Lebanon to Europe?
I didn’t return to Syria. After nine months in Lebanon I called my mother and my sister who were in Syria. I told them I can’t stay in Lebanon any longer, I will take the risk to go to Europe. And that they should come with me. Because if they stayed in Damascus or in Syria, there is no future there. And each and every day it gets worse. So they decided to go with me, my little sister and my mother. We fled together from Lebanon to Turkey. After we got into Istanbul we decided to go to Izmir. And from there we arranged the journey that would take us across the sea between Turkey and Greece. We stayed in Izmir for about seven days. We saw a lot of people there, from all nationalities. There weren’t only Syrians. There were people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and also from North Africa. They were also looking for a better future.
The smuggler, the person who will arrange the journey for you between Turkey and Greece, will normally take between 1.000 and 1.300 Dollars. They usually have their own plans, they bribe somebody in the government who will let this boat go safely and maybe arrange things with the coast guard.
We stayed there in our hotel and we paid the amount of money. We paid the smuggler and we waited until he gave the signal that it was time to go.
Before that we talked to him about how many people would be on the boat. We didn’t want to get onto an overcrowded boat. Because my mother and my sister were with me, my mother is an old woman, I didn’t want her to risk her life. The smuggler told me that the boat would be nine metres long and it would have only thirty people on board. That was okay with me.
When we moved, he had his people who made sure that you were not followed by the police, or something like this. And would take you to a safe place, near the coast.
We had to walk for a while to the coast, until we could see the boat. They gave us a lifejacket.
When we got to the boat, there were fortynine people there, not only thirty. When I asked my mother, do you want to go or not, she said yes. We didn’t walk all this distance to stop here. We wanted to continue on our road.
APA/EPA/ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU
We got into the boat and took off from the beach at four or five o’clock in the morning. One man was at the helm, he was from one of the North African countries. He would steer the boat across the sea and then join the other people, he was actually a poor man, also a refugee. He steered the boat because didn’t have the money to pay the smugglers.
You should know that the man at the helm of the refugee boats, if the Greek police catch him, he will go to prison for 25 years. So it is a higher risk for him. Usually, the other people on the boat won’t tell on him.
The journey took us about one and a half hours. We reached the Greek island Kos. We stayed there until midday, after that the Greek authorities took us to a camp for Syrian refugees. The camp there was also horrible. The Greeks are facing a lot of people every day, the camp was only meant for two hundred people. And each day up to 1.000 refugees arrived. And I heard in the news that there are 8.000 people waiting there. So, they are facing a lot, but the situation there is horrible.
After two days they gave us a paper which said we had to leave Greece within one month and move to the middle of the island, where you could book a ticket for the ship to Athens.
APA/EPA/YANNIS KOLESIDIS
That was three months ago. No, more than three months, because the journey itself took us one month, from Turkey to Austria, and I have been in Austria for three months now.
In the camp I got to know some of the people there, because when you are on this sort of journey, you need somebody to trust. And for me with two women it was very hard, so we started to team up.
One thing you should also know: the people who flee will make most of the way by foot. With women or old people, there is higher risk to be caught by the police. So, most of the people will refuse to be with you.
But I managed to have a group of twelve people that will stay around me all the time. One of the group was a woman, she was from Africa, and she was pregnant in her fourth month.
I had also met Kenan, one of my friends from university with his two brothers there in the camp. So we reunited there. That was a great help.
And, you know, we got to know each other better.
When you arrive in Athens, you have to either be able to afford a hotel or rent a place. For us, the group of twelve, we decided to rent a house to have a place where to think about the next step. Because in Greece you have a lot of choices, but it depends on how much money you have.
There were also a lot of people who will take advantage of you. We stayed in Athens for ten days and contacted a lot of traffickers. Some of them were from Sudan or Iraq, from everywhere actually, even some Greeks.
How do you find them? It’s not as if you could look them up in the yellow pages.
No. But the internet and Facebook makes it very easy. They would advertise and say things like “I got 2000 people into Europe without anything happening to them”. They were proud of their work.
Also, people who had already reached Europe, either Germany or another country, will tell you about their trip and their experiences, so you don’t make the same mistakes.
After ten days, because we didn’t have enough money to pay a smuggler, or to buy plane tickets or to take the ferry to Italy, we decided to walk. So, the next move was to take the train from Athens to Thessaloniki. There we met a man who said he will help to cross the Greek Macedonian border for less money than the other smugglers. He also wanted to get to the other side. He was a trafficker, but was about to quit. It was a risky job for everyone.
Was that with your family, or still with the group?
No, the whole group. I am now speaking for the whole group of twelve. I didn’t decide for the group, though, I took decisions for my family and each one of the others should decide to either quit or continue with the group. We all knew it was for your best to stay with the group.
So this man, the smuggler, was from Sudan. We crossed the border in the middle of the night, one or two in the morning. It was horrible because you couldn’t see anything. When we started walking towards Macedonia, my mother, who has a heart disease, fell down a number of times, and I thought, okay, I am losing her now, I should quit and go back. But she said to me, let’s continue. I don’t know where she took the strength.
APA/EPA/GEORGI LICOVSKI
So. We get into Macedonia. After you crossed the border you have to quickly pass the first three or four villages, because if the Macedonian police catch you in this area, they will send you back to Greece. Back then they did, anyways. So we walked all night until two in the following afternoon. Twelve or more hours in total.
We were exhausted. We couldn’t walk any further, so we stopped. A lot of people walked past us. Other groups, young men, people from Pakistan or Afghanistan, they had also teamed up and went together. But we were too exhausted to continue. I carried all our belongings, forty or fifty kilos, on my back, because my mother and my sister couldn’t carry anything on their back.
It was hard, really hard. Carry it on your back for ten minutes, it’s nothing, but do so for twelve hours and you can’t feel anything anymore.
Also, we had another old man who was from Sudan. He had a problem with his knee. Luckily, Kenan, my friend from university and me, we both had medical training, so we knew first aid and we always had a first aid kit with us that contained everything you might need in an emergency. That was a great help on our journey.
It took ten days to pass through Macedonia. It was horrible. We got lost for four days without food nor drink. We were sure that the Macedonian people would not help us, that’s what others had told us, so we did not try to make contact with anybody. We remained without food and drink for four days and started to hallucinate. It was risky.
In the night of the fourth day, I decided to explore the area we were in to find another way to get out of this situation. Otherwise we would have died, without food and water. I discovered we were on farmland, a huge farm, closed from all sides. The only way out was the way we got in, but that too was now closed. So we were in a horrible situation.
On the fifth day people on motorbikes showed up, riding around us in circles. We stood up to defend our families. We didn’t want to hurt anybody, but we also needed to protect ourselves, our family. The men disappeared and came back two hours later with two bags. In the first was water, in a coke bottle, in the other they had bread and canned fish. Four loafs of bread and six cans of fish. I took it and threw it to the group and asked the men how much they wanted for it. They said fifty Euros. I told them, we are in Macedonia, it won’t cost this much. I will not pay more than five Euros.
But you did expect them to want money, you didn’t think they were just giving it to you?
Yes, that’s the problem.
I paid them ten Euros for the food and drink. And I told them to get out of our sight because I saw the two men making signs to each other checking out our phones and our bags. They were robbers, they wanted to steal our money. And that actually happened in the fifth night. They came in the middle of the night and tried to take our stuff. The same men who helped you during the day returned at night to take your bags and phones.
Thankfully, they were afraid enough of us to let us go. And we finally managed to get out of Macedonia into Serbia. But the road there also wasn’t easy. We had to cross the border on foot again, and the border between Macedonia and Serbia runs across mountains. We were already without energy and faced the mountains. We teamed up with other groups to cross the border. We were about 50 people. Men, women and children, all refugees.
We started early in the morning, at one or two o’clock, we started to climb the mountains, one after the other. They said that the villages in the border region were ruled by the mafia. You should avoid them and cross the border quietly and quickly or you might be killed or robbed. And without money you are dead anyway.
So we got into Serbia and after a while we thought we were safe. We continued walking. Suddenly, there was a dog attacking us, and two men with machine guns, Kalashnikovs. They herded us together and said they wanted 20 Euros per head.
And we said, we will not pay you. Because we were 50. And there was only two of them. So we tried to attack them, but they fired at us, into the ground before our feet, so we said, okay, let’s reconsider. We could easily kick their arses, but if we had to run, the women and children might be captured by these men. Or we might get shot. And, thinking ahead, what about other people who would take the same route after us, we didn’t want to close this route for them. Because, if anything happened to these men, the mafia will block the road and take revenge for these two from other refugees, that was not in our interest.
So we collected the money and the ones who did not have enough money to pay for themselves we would collect again for them. We got the money together and continued our road.
APA/EPA/ANTONIO BAT
We walked for seven or eight hours, until we met another man, who told us that he will get us to the capital with cars. And he would only take 100 Euro for each one of us.
That’s what happens on the refugee road, each form of transport has its own price. We told this man we are a huge group, so we can’t be in the same car, or we’ll be dead.
But he said, it will be safe, I’m your friend, I will give you water, food, anything you want I’ll provide it. So we said okay. Let’s try our luck this time.
He did actually lead us through the villages until we reached a village we didn’t know the name of. At a farm, there was a group of men waiting for us. They didn’t want to take our bags or our money, they were there for security. They collected the fare from each one and afterwards they showed us the car we would take. It was a closed van, small, actually, and it had only two small windows in the roof.
Of course it was dangerous, we might die in there, but we said to each other, there is no other way. So we got into the van. We arranged the group so that the women and children were at the front, and the young men who were capable of standing the whole time at the back. We knew it would get very hot inside the van, so the guys standing up had to be physically capable of doing so. Otherwise it would be a problem for the whole group.
How much room did you have in there per person?
Everyone had only enough room to stand up. That was it. We were like sardines in there.
My mother was the oldest there, and the other ones told her it was okay if she sat down. But everybody else remained on their feet.
They closed the door on us and we waited for about half an hour. There was a small window between us and the driver’s compartment, we could see some of what was going on outside. We didn’t move, so we started to shout, either let us out or let’s get out of here.
The driver got in and you could tell that he was either drunk or on drugs, he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on around him.
He started to drive like a maniac. He was going too fast, at every turn we were thrown about.
We drove for about 45 minutes and I could see the blue lights of a police car. Only for a few seconds, but I knew something was going to happen to us.
We were on a bridge when the driver crashed the van into the central reservation. He bumped right into the concrete barrier in the middle, and we all bumped into each other and were thrown to the front from the impact.
The driver opened the door and threw himself out of the van, it was still moving.
What happened next actually made it into a Greek newspaper, I was told later.
The van came to a stop and started to roll backwards towards the edge of the bridge, because the bridge we were on had an incline. We were afraid of two things: Either we would be hit by another car, or we’d fall off the bridge and nobody would survive, of that I was sure.
One of us managed to break the window to the cab, grab the wheel and turn it so that the rear for the van crashed into the concrete barrier in the middle of the road again. The van was still moving though. Another man managed to force open the rear door, jumped out, got into the cab and pulled the hand brake.
We got out of the van one by one, but it was horrible. When you’re in danger you stop thinking about the others, you only take care of yourself. We were in the van with women and children. It was horrible.
We got everybody out and the police blocked the road. My friend Kenan and I got out the first aid kits, but thankfully there were no major injuries. As I said, one of the women was pregnant, we were worried about her. One other man had a nervous breakdown, he had trouble breathing and couldn’t move.
Ambulances came with interpreters and took three of us away. The others they said would be okay. The man who broke the windows to the drivers cab broke his cheek bone and his face was swollen around his eye. The paramedics said, he would be okay there would be no need for immediate medical attention. He was left with us.
We were taken to the police station and held there for twelve hours.
Were you already in Belgrade?
No. We only drove for three quarters of an hour, we had only passed seven or eight villages. We were not far away from the border. And we were afraid that they would ship us back to Macedonia. Because we heard that if the police catches you close to the border, they will just send you back.
Nobody of our group wanted that.
The police actually took us to the station. They interrogated each and every one of us. We had our picture taken and were given a paper saying that we had to get out of Serbia within three days.
We took these papers and went to the nearest bus station to go to Belgrade.
The ticket was around 50 Euros per head, if I remember correctly. At that time our group had been reduced to around 25 people, not everybody wanted to take the bus. We bought tickets, but when we got onto the bus, the bus driver refused to take us to Belgrade. And the other people, Serbs waiting for the bus, refused to get onto the bus with us. Not with these people, they said.
I started to argue with the driver. We had valid tickets, so the bus company had to take us, I was sure about that. After what we had been through I was desperate and I had reached my limits, I wasn’t going to accept bad treatment because of the colour of my skin.
I told him, these are the tickets, we bought them, we paid for them, you have to take us to Belgrade. I will not give up my seat in this bus.
The driver threatened to call the police, so I said, okay, go ahead. I didn’t do anything wrong, I had the paperwork from the police. He was a sick man, I told him.
The driver got out of the bus. I asked another passenger, a Serb, why he was doing that to us. I wanted to know whether he had the right to refuse us as passengers. The man said that even though we had valid tickets the bus company can decide which form of transport they will provide. They have smaller vans as well, he said, not just coaches, maybe they will organise some of those for your group.
I asked him why they were being like that, the driver and some of the other passengers, we didn’t harm anybody or do anything forbidden. I told him that I know it isn’t easy for the people living here, but we just want to go through this country to find a better place.
Eventually, we, the closer group of twelve people, got out of the big coach to wait for the smaller vans. We wanted to avoid trouble with everybody else.
When the smaller bus arrived, there were about 18 seats and we were ten people. But the driver had already picked up another group of about fifteen people, and the drive to Belgrade would take about five hours.
I told the driver that we didn’t pay 50 Euros per head to not get a seat and he said he will find a solution. We drove for half an hour and met another small bus, where everybody got a seat of his own.
We got into Belgrade between eleven o’clock and midnight. So we started to look for a hostel or some other place where we could wash and change clothes. After the journey through Macedonia, the accident with the van and the night at the police station we were again exhausted. We hadn’t showered for a week at least. We just wanted to clean up, have something to eat, feel human again at least for a few days.
The hostels we found wouldn’t take in anybody without the paper from the police which some of us had lost, and anyways, they didn’t accept new arrivals after ten o’clock, so we would have had to spend another night on the streets. Luckily we met a really great Serbian woman who arranged for a hostel that would take in the whole group of ten. She said that we were welcome there and that she will help us as much as she could.
So that was the first person you met who actually just wanted to help you.
Yes.
She said: I can’t do anything illegal, if the police finds out that there are people staying here without paperwork I’ll get into trouble. She said we had to get out after three days, but until then we could stay.
The first evening, after we all had a shower, we fell asleep as soon as we hit the mattress.
Over the next three days we discussed the road ahead through Hungary.
By that time, did you know where you wanted to go?
For me and my family it was always Germany. Not just because of the rules there, but because both my mother and my father studied in Germany and they had fond memories of the country. I had also been there, in 2009. So I knew what it was like.
Also, I read about scientific research in Germany and I have friends in Germany, doctors, with their own practises. You should know that I tried to get to Germany legally while I was in Lebanon. I contacted the embassy, but there was no hope.
After three days we had to leave the hostel, and we managed to come with a plan on how to continue. It would mean walking again. If you want to cross the Serbian-Hungarian border, there’s a route called the river road, and some other ways. We knew this from the internet. You had to start walking in the early morning, between three and four AM, because you don’t want the Hungarian police to catch you. Sometimes, we heard, they have dogs with them to catch the refugees. You don’t need that.
I was thinking of my mother and my sister. I’m a strong man, I can run, but what about those two. They can’t, and I can’t leave them behind. They are part of me.
Our plan was like this: We would take a taxi out of Belgrade, and then another one to close to the border. We found a description for the way across the border on the Internet. It said that once you got to the other side you had to wait till early the next morning, change your clothes and clean up because now you are in Europe.
That’s what we did.
We spent the night in the woods waiting. It was really cold. I thought that my heart would stop from the cold. You can’t imagine the cold we felt. (Es war Ende April, Anm.)
Whatever clothing we had, we wrapped around the children and the women: I hugged my mother, we were all huddling up to pass on body heat.
You were just wearing T-Shirts…
Yes.
The next morning we had two options. The first was to take a cab to Vienna.
From Hungary?
Yes, from Hungary. Because the cabdrivers know the procedure.
So you were not considering going to Budapest and staying in Hungary.
No. That was not an option because of how Hungary was dealing with refugees. We heard it was horrible, so we decided that none of us will stay here.
So, option one was to find a cab, option two, to find another smuggler with a minivan. But not like in Serbia. There was no closed freight room, just a curtain between the driver and the people in the back, so it wasn’t that dangerous. It you paid the smugglers more, they would also arrange normal cars for you, even a Mercedes or BMW. It was all a question of money.
Did you still have money left at that point?
Yes. When I turned myself in to the police in Austria, I still had 600 Euros for my mother, my sister and myself.
How much did you spend until then?
About 2.500 per head. There are people who pay far more to have a safer journey. And others can only afford around 1.000 for the whole trip, their journey will be really hard. Harder than anything you will have heard about.
My family and I and the smaller core group of twelve, we opted for the minivan. So we got into the minivan and we drove from about eight in the morning to two in the afternoon, when the driver told us, you are now in Vienna. Get ready, you’ll have to get out within seconds, I will open the door and you get out as quickly as you can.
He stopped in small garden, opened the door, we got out and started running. There wasn’t just us, there were about 20 people inside. Everybody started to run.
Some had already made plans to make their way from Vienna to the next country and made their next step. Me and my family, we hadn’t planned further than Vienna.
When you say Vienna, do you mean in the city?
Yeah, the suburbs, not the centre. But we weren’t far from it.
We had the name of a hotel that would accept us as refugees without any papers. But I didn’t really have the time to check it out. Because the first thing I needed to do is to get a SIM card, to get know where the nearest train or bus station is at, all these things, and to provide for the important things for my family, like water, energy drinks, food, things we need for the journey. I sent my mother to find out about the train station and I went out to buy a SIM card.
We decided we’d meet again at the place that the smuggler dropped us off. Only the people that I trusted, the core group.
We got the most important things within 15 minutes and met again.
When started walking towards the centre, two by two, or at the most three people together, with about 20 steps in between the groups. So you can see the group in front of you, but not hear them. A safe distance, let’s say.
You didn’t really trust the Austrians either, did you?
No, not really. We didn’t know a lot about the Austrians. Do they like us, do they respect us, will they judge us on our looks, you can see I am darker than you. Will they take this into account. I had studied, I am not uneducated or anything, will they respect us or not. We didn’t know.
At that time it occurred to me for the first time that we could also stay in Vienna, or Austria.
So I was walking at the end of the group. I speak some German and understand enough. As I was walking at the end of the group I was thinking of all the people who went to Germany. I am one of them, I saw them all, they were all going to Germany. I was thinking about our next move and maybe Germany wasn’t such a good place to go after all, because Germany will have to find a way to cope with all these people.
Two brothers of Kenan, my friend from university, were walking in front of me. Kenan was leading the group together with my mother. I was watching his two brothers from the rear. One of them was a second year student of computer engineering and the other one was 12 years old.
We had become family, we weren’t just friends. My mother was his mother. And his brothers were mine. I would do everything I could to keep them safe.
We were walking along in Vienna and I remember I was just lighting a cigarette when a police car stopped next to the two brothers in front of me.
Again I had the choice: Should I surrender with them, because I didn’t want to leave them alone, or should I just walk on and hopefully the police won’t notice, and tell Kenan that he should go back and take care of his brothers.
It wasn’t a choice really, I would never have left them alone, not even for five minutes.
I told Ahmed, the older, phrases like “wie heißen Sie” and “wie geht’s”, normal stuff, because we didn’t want to be caught in Austria either. I taught him the basics I knew in Deutsch.
When Ahmed was stopped by the police, he couldn’t think of any of those phrases. I caught up and I told the policewoman in German Hello, can I help you, these two are from Syria, they’re illegals, me two, actually, so you might take us in altogether. The policewoman told me that we shouldn’t move, they were calling for another car. My friend had noticed and came back from the front of the group and left my mother and sister to walk on. I told him, it’s okay, I am with them. So there was four of us now with the police.
When the police van arrived we decided not to say anything more. Not in English, not in German, we pretended not to understand anything.
They asked us, do you speak English, how long have you been here, who brought you here, where did he drop you off and we pretended not to understand. That was because it was really hard for the group to get this far. And we didn’t want the rest to be caught by the police.
And I was thinking my mother and my sister will make their way to Germany now. I will be okay here in Austria. It’s a beautiful country and it’s safe. There’s hope here.
After half an hour, while we were still in the police van, they had caught my mother, my sister and one of the others. Now there were seven of us with the Austrian police.
The other three managed to continue.
While we were sitting in the car, the officer sneezed. And me, my mother, my friend who also spoke German, we all said Gesundheit. And the policewoman was very surprised. Two minutes ago we didn’t understand a word, and now we could all speak German.
So we started talking to her, told her about the group of twenty and where the smuggler dropped us off in Vienna, but not until we were sure that the rest had gotten away.
I told her that Kenan and I were dentists, all the young men were students, also my sister. She’s 22.
We told the police officer our story. She was very nice to us and said everything will be okay. We did ask her, I remember that, whether they will keep us in Austria or if we’ll be able to continue to Germany. She said she didn’t know but it might be possible and that nothing is impossible in Austria.
When we got to the police station there was another officer who was angry. He didn’t believe that some of us could actually speak German. I can’t recall what he said in particular, but the general picture was that he said we only came here to take the Austrians’ money, tax money and social security. "I don’t think that we need you in our country", he said. So I got angry too, I shouted back at him and he kept shouting at me trying to scare me. But after what we’ve been through and after all the people we’ve had to deal with, he wasn’t really that dangerous. I told him I need somebody to speak to about my rights. To know who will interrogate us, interview us, all these things I was shouting. And I think because I was shouting a lot at the officer they made the interviewer arrive quicker. They didn’t seem to want the hassle.
In the end I was talking to a higher ranking officer. He sat down with me, he listened to my story and explained the situation in Austria and that we were now forced to stay here and couldn’t go on to Germany. I could either go back to Hungary or stay in Austria.
He was very nice and said, okay, you’ve studied dentistry, there might be an opportunity for you to continue your studies here, we have good universities here, much better than in Germany. That’s what he said. He was nice (laughs).
I thought about it and asked my mother and my sister: Are you willing to go back to Hungary. Because in Hungary they might send us back to Serbia. Or we could stay here.
We didn’t have to think about it very long.
So you officially sought asylum in Austria?
Yes.
I told you they've caught seven of us. My friend Kenan and his brothers were taken to a facility for minors, not really a prison, I don’t know the exact description. Another friend was also taken to one of these homes. Only my mother, my sister and I were taken to an actual prison.
I was alone, didn’t know anything about my mother and sister and all I had were my packet of cigarettes and my thoughts.
You weren’t locked in, were you?
Yes.
Properly locked in?
I was in an actual prison, didn’t know anything about the others and what was going to happen.
It was midnight or so when I was brought to prison, and I hadn’t eaten anything for days. I needed food, and I rang a bell near the door. And I told the man who came I need food, I haven’t eaten. He said, okay, but don’t ring this bell anymore.
In general, some officers were nice to us, but others not so much.
I saw my mother the next day during the interview in the same building. She told me she also was in a prison for women. She and my sister were in one cell. Thankfully, they were alone.
The investigator asked us about the reasons for leaving Syria and asked us about every step we took. A bit like this interview (laughs).
This surely isn’t the first time you’re telling your story, but back then? Was it the first time you told your story?
Yes.
Did you manage? Could you actually recall very detail after your ordeal?
Yes. Even in a thousand years I will remember every step.
I was interviewed on my own. While thinking about the answers I also thought about what my answer might mean for my mother and my sister. For instance, if I admit to have paid smugglers, will we have to go to prison? Nobody told me that it isn’t your problem when dealing with a smuggler. We didn’t know about our rights.
The person who was translating for me was also Syrian.
In Syria I had trouble with both the regime and the rebels. So I didn’t trust him a lot when he said first thing it’s okay, I’m with the revolutionary forces. I told him either you translate each and every word I say, or I will speak with the investigator by myself in English. I don’t need you actually, and I can also understand some Deutsch.
The thing is, if you’ve fled, you will not be one hundred percent honest. With you now here I told you more details than the interviewer in Vienna. I told them the whole story but not in as much detail. Because I was still afraid.
After the first night in Vienna they moved us to Thalham (Erstaufnahmestelle OÖ, anm.). Some were brought to Traiskirchen, others to Thalham.
From the first minute in Austria there has been one question on my mind: What will happen in the future?
What’s your status now?
They've said to us, you are in the system, but it will take about six months to deal with your case, and after that the procedure will take between six months and one and a half year. You will have to wait, was the answer.
They actually told you, you would have to wait up to two years for a decision on your status?
They didn’t give an exact date, one of them said it can take this long, I guess they wanted to say that it’s a longer process because there are dealing with huge numbers.
Here in Alkoven there are a lot of nice people. There are three or four teachers, they are teaching us German almost every day. When we arrived in Austria the only thing we possessed were the clothes we were wearing. We had to leave everything behind. The people here brought us shoes, new clothes, they provided us with everything they could. Some of them are really great, they are trying to change the image of refugees in the Austrians’ mind. That a refugee will not have any education, that he will always bring trouble. Some people are really trying to improve that picture. Two times a week we can go to a Sprachcafe to meet new people. To tell our story, to explain where we had come from, to give them a correct perspective.
Some are trying to give us something to do, because we haven’t got anything to do all day. Some of us here are athletes, two actually played in the Syrian National Football Team, and now they’re training with the team in Alkoven. And there’s a professional boxer who is training in Linz now, with the help of the people in this village.
Do you feel welcome here?
Yes, absolutely.
Compared to other places we are in paradise. Little things, like TV in each room. Some people would never dare to dream about that. I have friends in other places, north of Linz, Traiskirchen, Gallspach (Bezirk Grieskirchen, Anm) and in Tyrol and I’m in touch with them and they weren’t so lucky. In their homes there are constant fights.
If you tell somebody he has to wait and can’t do anything that might be okay for a few months, but after that he won’t be himself anymore.
And I’m sorry to say this, but in my view the Austrian government is idle. Either they’re pretending that there isn’t a refugee problem and if there is, it will solve itself, the people will go elsewhere. Or they’re waiting for a decision by the European Union who is to take how many refugees. But they’re not doing a lot.