She asks me to call her Mahad. That’s not her name. She’s afraid for her family in Syria. Like so many others I meet, she wants very much to tell her story. Her story is all she has right now.
I am taking photographs when I meet her and her family. She had stopped to take her puffer. “How long is this walk?” she asks in a crisp, slightly accented English.
She wears a hijab and a yellow bomber jacket to ward off the raw September wind whipping around us. She is with her husband and their daughter, as well as her sister and son. They are exhausted, carrying their worldly possessions in a few backpacks.
As we get to know each other over the course of the next hour, Mahad apologetically tells me her real name. But she insists if I was to write her story, I use Mahad.
Mahad had a 24-year-old son in university. He got involved in student politics and made comments about the government. He disappeared. She was asked after a while to identify him at a hospital. She never did find a body but was given a document confirming he was dead.
Sometime before that, her brother-in-law was also killed, leaving behind a widow and child.
Mahad’s husband is Palestinian. That was not an issue in Syria until recently. Now Palestinians are considered dirty and dangerous. The family lived in constant fear.
They left Syria 16 days before I met them. They had been to Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia. They want to reach Sweden. They have a friend there; they have a feeling for it. Of course they would love to come to Canada, but that seems impossible.
***
The train is supposed to arrive at 10, then noon, then one. Each time, police officers line the tracks, wait, get the word and leave. It is a cool September day; standing outside is uncomfortable.
My hosts, Hungarian Interchurch Aid, are also busy working the phones, talking to their contacts from the entry border at Croatia. The train left, the train is delayed. It is a silent ballet, the police, the media and the NGOs stepping on the platform, waiting, and then back to the café or car for warmth.
A little after one, the train arrives, gliding quietly on the tracks of Hegyeshalom, Hungary, near the Austrian border. A reporter, a couple of television crews and a few photographers take their positions between the police.
As the passengers disembark the cold breeze hits them. They look confused. They ask, “Is this Austria?” No, no it’s not. You’re still in Hungary.
An eight-year-old boy with no shoes or jacket gets off and waits for his family. An older man steps down with a wheelchair, then back on the train to get an old woman in black. He places her in the chair as other members of the family gather the children and the bags. There are lots of children, lots of bags.
First the backpack slung over the shoulder, then the toddler on the shoulder, then a stuffed plastic bag or two for each hand. Young men, the ones without children, in inappropriate shoes and wispy thin jackets, run ahead. Followed by couples, holding onto each other, precariously balancing their belongings.
The families with confused and tired children, laden with packs, behind. Cabin after cabin after cabin emptying; a kilometre-long pedestrian train extends through the town to a highway. The police guide them wordlessly towards the half-hour trek of three and a half kilometres to the border.
There are about 2,000 people on this train, mostly from Syria, but also from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. They had managed through Croatia to the Hungarian border, perhaps spent some time in a camp there; they had been frisked and hastily placed on a train. The police at the entry border were curt and rough. The police at the exit border are quiet and occasionally helpful.
I walk with this stream of refugees, taking pictures, engaging in conversations, playing peek-a-boo with a toddler on his daddy’s shoulders. The father turns to me and beams. He speaks no English. His wife and another child keep pace with his long strides.
It occurs to me that none of these people really know where they are going. I know only their next stop, down the road, but beyond that nobody knows where they are headed. They are all running away from something without any sense of what they are running towards. They have vague hopes—better life, opportunity for children—which they have packed amongst their meagre belongings.
***
I am in Hungary accompanying Rev. Karen Horst, Moderator of this year’s General Assembly, on her international trip. It was organized months in advance before this region began to be featured in headlines for the seemingly endless lines of refugees passing through. Travelling with us is Rev. Rick Horst, a former moderator, and Rev. Glynis Williams, associate secretary of International Ministries. Dr. David Pandy-Szekeres, PCC mission staff, is our host and driver.
The purpose of the trip is to experience the mission work being done on behalf of the Presbyterian Church. Variations on these trips happen regularly. But, as the refugee crisis increases, Pandy-Szekeres amends the agenda.
The story changes quickly. During the half day it takes us to fly to Budapest, Hungary closes its borders with Serbia, builds a fence and empties a refugee camp. We have to improvise the agenda; Pandy-Szekeres works his contacts, deeply developed over his decades in Europe.
We drive for nearly three hours to the empty refugee camp at Röszke, south of the border city of Szeged. Nearby at the border crossing are a couple dozen international media. A British journalist is walking around asking if anybody could give him a ride to Budapest. He is stranded without a crew or a taxi. A Croatian journalist jokes, “Welcome to nowhere.”
Less than a kilometre away, across from a heavily guarded border crossing, we are told, are several thousand refugees on the Serbian side. The Croatian journalist says his contacts on the Serbian side are telling him the refugees are confused and frustrated.
Just a day earlier this border crossing was open. They don’t know what to do. There is a rumour the thousands might push through the border block regardless of military threats. Several international TV crews have set cameras pointing at the border, waiting for something to happen.
Pandy-Szekeres has a friend on the Serbian side.
In Magyyarkanizsa, a Serbian border district with a largely ethnic Hungarian population, we meet with local municipal leaders. They are overwhelmed, they tell us. Thousands pass through their villages every day. The locals are out to support them, provide them water, food, clothing, what they can. But they do not have the infrastructure to maintain the care. The municipalities have been congratulated by federal and European Union authorities without significant financial support.
One of the greatest concerns, of course, is sanitation. The refugees need washrooms but there aren’t enough to support the numbers. And it is a matter of numbers; there are thousands each day.
As the sun begins to set, we are escorted by these municipal authorities to a refugee camp. It is dark now. We park and walk by a tuck shop. There are abandoned clothes and garbage in a gully. As we enter the camp, there is a Wi-Fi station with some computers. A few dozen metres into the camp are rows of large open tents lined with cots, filled with people and lit with the glow of smartphones.
I spot Glynis Williams talking to a young woman. Soon the woman’s family joins us. They want to tell their story. Between Williams and me our Arabic is non-existent. But that family of seven has just enough English for us to hold a slow conversation.
They left Turkey 15 days earlier; they have travelled through Bala, Greece, then Samoa, Athens, Macedonia, Belgrade and are now at the Serbian camp. They are headed to Sweden where there is a friend.
The father, Hussein al Monsour, 47, has shrapnel down his left side. He was a baker by trade, though in his broken English he says, “bread technician.” When you only have a few handfuls of words to express yourself, you go with the ones that make you look best and are nearest to your intention.
“Syria good country. Syria dead. Syria all gone,” al Monsour tells us. He speaks of the bombs and the hopelessness.
When I tell him I am from Canada he proudly brings forth his eldest daughter Wotran, 19, saying she speaks French. In our brief attempt at an exchange it is clear to me Wotran has only a few more French words than I have Arabic.
It is desperate hopefulness, a pooling of resources, collecting their strengths. A little English, a little French, a little technical knowledge, a little skill set, a lot of hope, a great deal of hope for a future beyond a dead country.
A beautiful family of seven—dad, Hussein, and mom, Wadha Issa, children, Wotran, Guru, 17, Bian, 15, Ahmed, 12, and Majid, 10. All smiles.
The smiles surprise me. It is only later, only after meeting many more, after meeting Mahad and her family, that I understand what that is. It is hope. Perhaps wishfulness. They are together, on a journey.
As we talk, two more buses filled with people arrive. And shortly after that, another three. An endless stream of families like the al Monsours; technicians and craftspeople, professionals, the big mass of the Syrian middle class, bombed and beaten from their lives, on the road to a new home.
The next morning there are stories that the refugees broke through the border crossing into Hungary. There are water cannons and tear gas. The people are collected and sent by train to the Austrian border.
I wonder what happened to the al Monsours; but they are now lost in the overwhelming waves of the desperate. I pray they find a home someplace, but I know it won’t be for years yet.
***
There are an estimated seven million displaced Syrians within Syria—refugees in their own country. (Various reports range from 6.5 million to nearly 8 million.) Another 2.1 million Syrians have been registered by the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Nearly two million Syrians have been registered in Turkey. And another 24,000 in North Africa.
Syria’s population in 2011 was 23 million. Given the total of the numbers above, half of the country’s population is on the run.
Half of them are under the age of 18. About three per cent over the age of 60. About a fifth under the age of four.
Between April and August this year there were 428,735 asylum applications by Syrians in Europe. (By comparison, there were 138,016 last year.) Over 50,000 refugees entered Hungary in August alone; there were less than 3,000 two years earlier.
The reigning theory seems to be that it started in Turkey. It might have been spring; it might have been Turkey’s renewed focus on fighting the Kurds, which was instigated by an attack from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It might just have been that people were fed up and tired. The situation in Syria is not getting better, Turkish refugee camps while praised by UNHCR for being well run are also over run. People get tired of waiting and tired of being penned.
That was the first wave of refugees; some trying the water crossing to Greece, others a land route, also through Greece. Those were the earliest stories of over-laden boats.
The tragedies on water, along with reports of unscrupulous smugglers, forced a change of direction to land routes.
The refugees I met during the last two weeks of September came by land, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia. Some told stories of smugglers; most travelled on their own wits following crowds.
A misunderstood statement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that her nation could handle a million refugees was heard as “would.” Word spread that Germany was open to asylum seekers.
This gave birth to another wave, which further confused and complicated public opinions.
Suddenly it wasn’t just Syrians, but also Pakistanis, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis and others from failed or continuously depressed states. I met many of them in Hungary.
Reza, a 24-year-old man from Afghanistan, has been living in Iran. There is no work, and no opportunity for education. He has a secondary school diploma. He taught himself English and even taught it in Iran for a while. He decided to leave his sister and parents in Iran and strike out to find his future.
Abdul Rahman, 39, is from Lahore, with children and a seamstress wife. There is no work in Pakistan for him. He’d been a retail salesman for nearly three decades. He certainly had the easy charm of a salesman. He left his family behind, with meagre savings, hoping to settle in Italy where he thinks he has a chance of getting his papers.
Still, the overwhelming numbers are from Syria. I took a quick photo of a group of eight 20-somethings. They had hot chai in hand and were a little over a hundred metres from the Austrian border. They didn’t know each other in Syria; they had met on the journey. They formed a travelling group. When I tried to engage them in conversation, they all laughed. “You know the story. You know our story. Syria is hell. The bombs. There is nothing there for us.” They turned and headed for the next country.
They hadn’t come from the Turkish camps. But something compelled them to finally leave. Perhaps it was Merkel’s statement; perhaps it was the overwhelming response after The Photograph of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy, dead face down on a Turkish beach.
The Kurdi family (the family name differs in some accounts) were from Kobani, on the Syrian-Turkish border. Caught in various skirmishes the family moved around, escaping ISIL and other forces. They were in Turkey for three years, then went home, only to have ISIL return with bombs. With distant hope of immigration to Canada via an aunt in Vancouver, the family tried to get out of Syria and Turkey. They managed on their third attempt.
A dinghy with twice the recommended numbers capsized quickly. It was meant to be a 30-minute water route to Greece; it ended tragically in five. Alan along with his brother and mother died. And suddenly a large story that had been playing on the news for months had a human face.
Rev. Glynis Williams founded Action Réfugiés Montréal 21 years ago. She wrote about Iraqi refugees in Syria for the Record in 2008, winning a prestigious award for her work. She told me she has not seen such a compassionate response to refugees and asylum seekers in four decades since Canadian hearts opened to those from Southeast Asia. Advocates like her have been talking about refugee issues for a very long time, but it was that photograph of Alan Kurdi that turned the hearts of many Canadians.
***
Hegyeshalom is no stranger to refugees. Many Hungarians passed through the same border in 1956, into Austria and beyond.
On the day I met Mahad and her family there, over 5,000 people passed by from three trainloads. They stopped briefly on the Hungarian side, after the walk, where they were met by NGOs providing food, water, shoes and clothes.
One of them was Hungarian Interchurch Aid, an ecumenical relief and development agency with programming across the country for refugees, including daycares at camps. I was blessed to have them as my hosts, not only for their charming company but also for the unique access a Christian relief agency has, by the status of their hard work, in many parts of the world.
This particular border is essentially inactive, since Hungary is a Schengen country, an inter-European Union grouping, along with Austria, with borders that are open to each other. Still this was once an active border, with an attached building. Dozens of volunteers busily prepare sandwiches all day for the refugees.
Once a trainload arrives, the station is controlled mayhem for an hour or so. Hungry, poorly dressed, stressed and anxious, people go through the various tables, taking food and trying on shoes and jackets.
Once the refugees have gone through, the volunteers get busy with brooms and garbage bags, picking up discarded items, food waste and other refuse. They return to the building and make more sandwiches, stack more water and fruit. It’s a long day for a volunteer.
There has been debate in the Western media whether to call these people refugees or migrants. There is truth in either title; but the debate masks the greater truth: None of these people feel they have a future in their birth country. They have abandoned everything—family, culture, history, property, nationalism—to take a chance. Just a chance. Is the English teacher who lost her son and her brother-in-law in imminent danger of her own life? That is impossible to speculate. But one feels she has lost something dear to her soul. Only then could she leave her history behind her.
There have been reports these refugees have been using smartphones and are directed by Facebook pages and websites. Firstly, the whole world uses smartphones and free, accessible Wi-Fi. Secondly, there is no confirmation there is any organized centralized website or forum that is directing people. There are myriad Facebook pages and websites, the majority of them personal, a handful of them by advocacy groups.
What all this suggests, and perhaps that is what is challenging many in the West, is that in the best of circumstances these people would be middle class. They certainly are sophisticated and smart. If not all formally educated, they are intelligent and have access to ready news and information.
These are not peasant refugees and perhaps that is why they are being painted in some Western media as opportunistic. That may not be inaccurate, but it should also not be used as a critique.
The first Christian response is to make certain they are clothed and fed. That is the Good Samaritan response. The subsequent response is more complicated. Germany has committed six billion euros to house, feed and educate a million people. Not every Western country is ready or desiring of that commitment. And while the debate continues as to where these people will end up, one thing is certain: there are many more of them in Syria, across parts of Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq, plus the ones still interned in Turkey, and they want their future.
Rev. Aaron Stevens, senior minister at St. Columba Scottish Church, Budapest, acknowledges that many people have been very helpful and caring over the past summer.
“Hungarians saw these refugees at the train station and wondered what was going on. They asked them questions. They saw the registration documents in Hungarian. That was just ordinary people making human connections.
“On Friday morning, what I like to call The Friday because it was the largest grouping before the refugees were moved along and the borders were closed, it was very, very quiet at the Keleti train station. That is not normally a quiet place. But, the refugees were sleeping and the people going to work kept very quiet to let them rest.
“It is always a matter of human connections. Wherever there are these connections there are opportunities for people to get to know each other and overcome their fears. But, what the government is doing, with closing the borders, and the fence, is reduce the opportunities for any future human connections.”
Stevens is an American. He has lived in Hungary for 22 years, first as an English teacher, and the past 10 as senior minister at the English-speaking Presbyterian church.
His congregation at St. Columba converted their sanctuary space into an overnight hostel for refugees. Stevens is convinced this refugee advocacy has increased the number of people coming to worship and participating in the church. “I think people are impressed by a congregation being the church in the world. And I am happy to tell all ministers about this.”
Pastor Istvan Zalatnay’s congregation is comprised of Romanians of Hungarian descent who themselves were refugees in the 1990s. They have committed a tenth of their budget to “mitigating the suffering of people in increasingly difficult situations; helping the local communities carrying most of the burdens.” In a press release they asked for help from, “‘Right-wing people’ who are generous when they feel it makes sense; and, ‘Left-wing people’ who want to offer their help along realistic conditions.”
Zalatnay’s tongue-in-cheek release cuts through the ideological cant. Like most Hungarians he too is conflicted about his country’s ability to absorb Middle-Eastern refugees. He has not worked that out for himself because he is engaged in the primary response. Be the Good Samaritan—feed them, clothe them, comfort them.
About 10 days after I met Mahad, after I had returned home, I called her brother. He told me his two sisters, his brother-in-law, niece and nephew were fine. They had arrived at a refugee camp in Switzerland three days earlier. They still have a few countries to cross before Sweden, but for now they receive three meals a day and are able to rest. He did not know if they would continue immediately to their final destination or remain in the camp longer. (The weather is turning colder, of course.) For now he is happy they are in a safe place.
He communicates with them regularly via Viber and WhatsApp, two Wi-Fi-based, Skype-like, phone applications. They have no phone number, but they don’t need one. They’re in the middle of nowhere, between their past and their future, connected by a thin sliver of technology.
The last I saw of Mahad, the family was walking towards Austria. She turned around to wave goodbye. I asked her, “What is your favourite song?”
“I like that Titanic song,” she said. “My Heart Will Go On.”
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