The Redaction of The Maghreb and Orient Courier publishes the story of Nori, a 21-years-old Syrian refugee, in four parts (in its issues of September, October, November and December)*. Nori told our correspondent the story of a journey towards life. He was a citizen of Homs and after his family had fled the war and his brother had died, nothing kept him in his city. He decided to leave his city behind, and the violence, war and misery that went with it. Here is his story.
* ALL DONATIONS TO THE MAGHREB AND ORIENT COURIER WITH THE MENTION “SYRIAN REFUGEE” WILL ENTIRELY BE TRANSFERED TO NORI, THIS STORY’S PROTAGONIST – THANKS A LOT TO OUR READERS FOR SUPPORTING HIM.
“Go Macedonia!”… We will never forget these two words… because when you walk for 3 hours under the sun, carrying a bag and you listen to two words “go back” or “go Macedonia”… you will certainly not forget them…
We tried until the morning at 5:00 am, when the police finally told us that we could pass on the left side… We had to walk for 4 hours through the forests to reach the third village where the police guided us to the camp… We should wait for 6 hours under the burning sun to get papers… After that we rented a room to have showers, but unfortunately we had been robbed by the owner of the hotel when we went to get our papers and came back to an empty hotel room – at least we didn’t have much to be stolen and kept our money with us constantly… So, we would go to Sabotitsa by train (the last village of Serbia towards Hungary)…
But after that, we said that it’s not lucky for all of us (so many people) to go to one place… So, five of us (I, my friend and three new friends) turned to Belgrade. There, at midnight, we searched for a hotel and finally we found hostels instead of hotels… We settled down to relax and to find a way to Hungary and then to Austria, to finally reach Germany…
We stayed 3 days to know what happened with our friends who tried their luck on the way… We decided to take train from Belgrade to Vienna directly… There was no problem in the train station when we bought tickets to Vienna (42€!). On the next morning at 7:00 am, we were ready for the train… There were four men standing next to the train (I thought they wanted to count how many refugees will board the train)… When the train had started moving, a police man came and talked to us: “Please… Come! you and you and you and you!”
We went with him to speak alone… And he asked us how much money we had. My friend told him everyone could give him 50€… He said: “It is OK!”
He didn’t know English; he used his phone translator to communicate with us (he knew only some words that are connected with money)… He wrote that he would leave the train when we reach the border…. But my friends gave him 250€ (too much money only to go to the border)… But we couldn’t tell him to give us some of the money back…. We said: “Let us try our luck!” When we reached the border, a police man came, but looked very different to the first one… He asked for the passport, but we said we only have papers they gave us on the camp… They didn’t ask for money… So, we had to get off the train and find our way… We asked for the bus station to turn to Kenjeza…
By the way, our friend, the engineer, had found his way from Kenjeza… And got into Germany without leaving his finger prints in Hungary… He helped us and told us where we should go… So in Kenjeza, we got lost to find a garden in which the refugees used to gather… And a police car had stopped us and asked for our papers. We showed all of our papers and they told us to get into the car. But the papers said that we still had 5 hours to leave the country!
They spoke a little bit of English, and told us that we must go to the judge! They wanted some money, as we understood… They made indirect questions for money. But I told him: “Look at the paper! We have 5 hours more.” He asked: “What do you do here at the border?” Then they asked how much money we could give them – they told us that since we were 5 persons, everybody pays 20€. We had no choice, we gave them 100€ because we needed time to find our way to this Kanjeza garden…
Eventually we reached the garden and we saw a lot of people there, every group chose their way. A man told us that he was a good guide for only 100€ each, and he assured that he was a friend of another good guide, Rezan! But we refused… We knew that most of them chose the river road, and my friend (the engineer) sent us the details of the Horgosh road (this road was controlled by bad men)… But we would try to avoid them…
We made a little group (11 people)… There was a family with us, they had two children… We reached a point before Horgosh, 500 meters from this point, to avoid those bad men… We gathered at a place, but there was a man who looked like 40 years old and he spoke only 10 English words. I understood that he wanted 100€ from each one… When I tried to understand which place he wanted to take us, three old drunk men came and they tried to make a deal with us through their drunken language! At the same time, a woman showed her face behind the door moving her lips as she says “No!” with her finger moving left and right. When we saw her, the man who had two children said: “Let’s go back.”
When we moved back, I told them that it was better to go back 500 meters and then follow the way… My friend, the engineer, had sent me some orientation points and photos for the road, but I started at a different point… and then we followed the right way… We were scared because the bad men could come at us with knives and steal everything from us as we heard from others… So, we took some branches from the trees and stared everywhere until we became far from their place; it was about 7 or 8 o’clock pm… We had to enter Hungary at night. So, it was better not to be lazy… We took rest every 300 meters… I was in contact with my friend, the engineer; his second name is Assaf… He was in touch with us until we reached Budapest…
When we were at the middle of the trip, he gave us a mark on the road that we would find some plants, he said be careful, don’t walk on them, keep them nice… and we noticed them… We were between the corn plants on the edge of a road; we hid when we saw a light. We came to a place which had some piles of straw, and on one side, there was a road for cars… while we passed, a police car came on the road and had a big flashlight to search for refugees … as soon as we saw the light, we hid behind the piles of the straw without moving…
Then we waited for a few minutes and moved very fast to continue along the road… Then we faced something like a search point with two very big flashlights towards the road; it was new, and we had to pass between the road and the search point! But it was too hard, they would see us surely… We didn’t know what to do!
We were hidden by about ten small and short trees… we were waiting. Then a police car came on the road and it stopped on the road and turned its light towards us… I told the others not to make any move and to sleep… The car came closer and closer… They were probably going to see us if we made any movement!
The policemen came out of the car and approached our hiding place… The two children with us were sleeping and they woke up when the policemen came near to us! Their parents closed the mouths with their hands… I thought it was over now… They would discover us…
When the policemen were only 10 meters away from us, they stood still and went back to their car! I then told the others that we cannot pass these dangerous 200 meters at night… I wanted to sleep and I slept about 1 hour… I woke up because of the cold weather… It was about 5:30 am… I woke up the men who were sleeping and we moved all together in 30 seconds (I carried a child)… We managed to pass the border and entered a large corn field… We were lost inside… I was with my friend Mohamad…
Now, we had to reach the gas station and the supermarket… It was about 6:40 am; Assaf told us how to reach the station and he said that behind the station there was the sign and we would find his stuff there – we really found his stuff and I wore his shirt because mine was so dirty…
So, we entered the supermarket and drank two cups of coffee and asked the woman there for a taxi… But she answered: “You can ask after 8 o’clock…” We were in touch with the rest of the group… We went back to the place where Assaf had hidden his stuff… I took a nap, and then the rest came… We went again to speak with the woman but we found another people who said that no taxis were available there… So, we went out and we saw two men sitting and drinking coffee… They knew that we wanted a taxi – after speaking to them we accepted them as our drivers to take us to Budapest. But it was for “refugee price”… for 150€ per person…
But, on the way, the driver said that he wanted 200€ for each passenger… We refused to pay and then he stopped the car and said that we could continue by foot from here… So, we accepted: “Please, go on…” And we paid him 700€ in total… After 15 min, he looked at the children and gave their parents 50€ for the children…
As soon as we entered Budapest, I asked the driver if we could rent a room in a hotel, and he said that it was no problem – he let us out in front of one and we tried, but they asked for our passport… Then no taxi stopped for us, so we had to get into a bus that took us to the center of the capital… There, we could take a taxi to the Sheni Hotel.
We took a taxi to the hotel… In the hotel, no police could come in and ask the refugees for finger prints, because the owner was a member of the mafia… Our three friends reached the hotel… Assaf gave us a number for a man who drives people to Germany… We called him, and he told us to be at 8:00 pm around a Turkish restaurant… We ate and drank a lot in Sheni just to waste time, but it was 5:30; so the receptionist told us that we must rent a room for 75€… But we preferred to leave, it was Sunday and few taxis were available outside, so we had to walk, though we risked being stopped by the police to take our fingerprints.
We had only walked for about 10 minutes when a police car stopped next to us. I told my friends not to escape. The policeman asked for our papers. I said that they are in the Sheni Hotel; they wanted to know if we had finger prints in Hungary or not and I told them we had our Hungarian papers in the hotel (they could not visit the hotel)… But they insisted that we come with them, we accepted to go with them, it was better than running away… In the car, they started asking: “How much money?” I said: “50 euros”… They replied: “It’s your freedom… Do you have money to reach Germany?” I asked how much they wanted. They said 200; I said: “Let it be 150, please…” And they simply answered: “Police station!” I understood: “OK! 200$…”
They looked at me as if I had said 200€! But they thought that we only had dollars and not euros… They took the money and asked: “Where do you want to go?”
I invented a story they could not understand… We didn’t want them to know that we would go to the Turkish restaurant: maybe they could come again or send their friends and we couldn’t move tonight… They told us that their friend was coming; he was a taxi driver… They told us that Hungary was bad and Germany was a good country… Then their friend came… They told us to give him 20€ for the ride… They wanted to see the money… After we moved, the driver gave us 10€ back… He was really good man… We took another driver to the Turkish restaurant and there we ate… until it was 9:00pm.
A van came; about 15 people were in the van… We got into the car and paid the money quickly.
After that, I fell asleep until the car was stopped by the police and the driver was arrested…
But we had arrived in Passau, in Germany, just next to Austria…
We didn’t believe that we were in Germany until we asked the police.
There, we could sleep again without any worries, after a long time…
