Day 10 & 11. Yesterday I arrived early at the camp to find 800 refugees waiting to be processed. A blind Syrian man came through with his family. A young woman with them was stopped. There was something wrong with her papers. I saw the fear in her face as they questioned her. I heard her speaking English. I inched closer. Rule #1 in the camp, don’t interfere with the police. If there is a problem, get Kemal. I inched closer still. An interpreter is called. They are going to return her to the other side while they sort out her paper problem. She is panicking, her eyes dart, she looks down at the ground. I inch closer and say quietly to the interpreter, she is with the blind man, please let her pass. He looks at me and then translates to the police. I smile my most winning smile, pointing to the tent where the blind man has gone. The policeman hesitates, then barely nods and waves his hand toward the tent. The woman doesn’t move. Go quickly, I say. And she rushes toward the tent. Casually I stroll away and go into the tent from the other side to find this woman. She is on the phone, speaking in Arabic, crying. She is telling someone about the problem with her paper. When she is finished I tell her, you must keep it simple. Don’t tell them he is your uncle from your mothers side twice removed and married to a cousin from your fathers side. (She told the police this in English.) Tell them, He is my uncle. Don’t look away. Look always into their eyes when you speak, otherwise they will think you are lying. They don’t understand you, so they judge by your eyes. Always look them in the eyes, do not look down.
When I left the tent, another woman, a christian Syrian, said, “Please, do you have a tooth brush and underpants I can have?” Apparently, her bag was taken by the bus company. She explained that when she got off the ferry in Athens, 19 people traveling with her on the ferry, got right on to the bus. They were told they had to put their bags in the hold, which they each did. Then after an hour, one woman had a problem with her baby, so the bus made a stop. When the woman went to the hold for her bag, the group discovered that 5 of the 19 bags were missing. When questioned, the bus driver shrugged. The christian Syrian woman in a panic asked the driver to contact the police, to turn bus around, to call the terminal. But the bus driver shook his head and kept driving. I’ve heard this several times from refugees, but with my language limitations, I could not really understand what they meant when they said, driver kept their bags. But this woman had excellent English and could explain in detail what is happening. Not only are the refugees being bombed, forced into rickety rafts to cross the sea and walk long distances, now what meager belongings they have left are randomly being pilfered by employees of the Athens bus company.
This Syrian woman and I spent a long time talking yesterday. She asked me what country she should go to. My standard answer (which all my colleagues get mad at me for saying) is Portugal. There are no jobs in Portugal, I’m sternly told. Don’t tell them Portugal. But how can there be jobs anywhere now? Why not try your luck in a place that is warm and lovely and the people are friendly? This woman thinks like me — she wants to go to a place that is different, where there are not already too many refugees, she is tired of troubles with Muslims, she says. But she has never heard of Portugal so it is not on the list of possibilities for her. Her husband is Muslim, but not Syrian, so she must make this journey alone. Netherlands, she says, Is where I want to go. Can you tell me how to get there? I sit down by the bathrooms to wait for her and to message a refugee network colleague who lives in Holland. I myself have no concept of the route to take other than the the Greek to Germany corridor. So I ask, how does she get to the Netherlands from here? My friend says she must travel to Germany and say she wants asylum there, otherwise they will turn her away at the boarder. But she doesn’t want to go to Germany, I say. My friend again writes, she must ask for asylum in Germany. We go back and forth like this many times because clearly I am dense and can not understand why Germany and Austria are the only options for asylum. What about people who want to try their luck in Holland or elsewhere? As crazy as this sounds, there is no other option. All the money and planning these governments have done, only funnels people to Austria and Germany, no where else. Once in Germany, they must say they will ask for asylum to stay, and then before that process happens, they must take the risk of leaving the camps and being illegal again to travel by themselves to other countries. Boarder control randomly checks the trains and buses out of Munich and the other registration cities, so often people are stopped and returned to the camps. They must become fugitives again to try to travel onward. I am shocked. And then I laugh. European politicians. You. Get. What. You. Deserve. If you had compassion and foresight to airlift the people who you believe qualified for asylum you would not have this insanity. You would not have people from a dozen other non-war torn countries trudging thru your countryside. There would have been humane treatment of those who need help the most. Of course, as an American, I can’t throw stones. We are dreadful about accepting refugees. History will not be kind to us, either. It never is to fools.
While we were talking, our heads close together because I was showing her the messages from my Holland colleague, because she, too, could not believe the news, Kemal came over and asked, why are you sitting there, next to the bathroom? This woman and I had been sitting for more than an hour and it never occurred to me to question where we sat. Everywhere in this camp is the same. No comfortable place to sit for the refugees. Only wooden slate benches in loud, noisy, smelly tents or the rocks on the ground. What difference does it make where we sit in the dirt?
Later in the night, a very pregnant woman asks me where she can sit while waiting for the train. She is more than 9 months pregnant and the smell of the gas heaters in the tent was making her sick. I said it is most comfortable in UNICEF building, but your husband can’t go. She said she was there but the bright lights and noise and smell of the children was hard for her. I surveyed the camp trying to think of a good option for this woman. We lost a baby yesterday in the next camp — a child who had been with us just a few hours earlier, who perhaps I had even held while the mother tried on shoes. Thinking of this, I wanted this mother-to-be to have a good place to rest. But there are no good places to rest in this camp. The best I could do was a bench next to the UNHCR tent, still in the middle of things, but slightly removed.
You become just a tiny bit hardened working in a refugee camp, particularly when working with the Afghans. Yes, I will say it. Feel free to chastise me in the comments below, but the Afghans are culturally difficult and will have a much harder time assimilating in Europe. If I am going to be bruised from being poked all night by fingers, if I’m going to have shoes torn from my hands, or the same person come to me 5 times with 5 dreadful pairs of shoes, it is because a large Afghan group has arrived at the camp. We all know it, but no one says publicly because it isn’t politically correct. When I find an Afghan who speaks English (usually with a perfect American accent) I ask them to be my interpreter while I tell them about the new customs they will have to learn. Stand in line, Germans love lines, you must learn to function in lines. Socks are an integral part of shoe wear. Yesterday I took my boot off at least two dozen times to show my 2 pairs of socks on top of my tights. Now I won’t give shoes to Afghans until they put on the socks I give them. Otherwise, they slip the socks into their pockets and try on boots sock-less, getting the wrong size, and then later blisters and sore feet. These shoes must be measured with socks on, I say, all night. Happily, they put on the socks once they see my own feet and i tell them this is how you wear shoes in the winter in Germany.
Of course, I am ashamed at my own attitude. A young Afghan girl of about 6 or 7 came to me barefoot. I didn’t believe she has no shoes because my colleagues on the Greek side surely would have seen her and given her shoes of some kind, even if they didn’t fit. So I refuse to give her shoes. All night she comes to stand before me, begging silently with her eyes. I shake my head. But no matter how many times I say No, I can’t get rid of her. She is such a lovely, silent child, that finally I take her hand and say, Mama. We walk to one of the tents silently together. I sense her shame, tucked deep inside her and far away from me. She is walking barefoot on the sharp rocks as I march her toward the tent. We find her family and I ask again and again, where are her shoes? There are many shoes strewn on the ground. I pick up a pair and they are grabbed from me. No, my son’s, the mother says, pointing to a little boy at her feet. The girl child stands to the side, still silently staring at me, and largely ignored by her family. They give me a woman’s wedgy shoe — high in the heal and 4 sizes too big for the child. I don’t believe this is the child’s shoe so I keep looking. But all the other shoes are matched to bodies. Only one dreadful women’s shoe is left. I ask for the other shoe and am told that the child lost the other one on the walk from Greece. I look at the child. She is expressionless. I take her hand, then pick her up when we reach the rocks. She is too big to be picked up but i carry her on my hip anyway. We walk together back to my shoe palace. I get her two pairs of socks. I pull out several pairs of shoes in different colors for her to choose from. I shelter her from the others, creating a blockade with my body as she silently tries on one shoe after the other. I ask my interpreter, which shoe does she like best? The child doesn’t answer. She looks at me. I ask again, which do you want? Cautiously, she points to one shoe with her foot. I put the shoes on her. I tie the laces tight. I want to give her all the shoes, i want to carry her on my back to Germany. I smile at her. And then turn away to continue my job.