The judge turns to the uniformed officer and asks him to go look for the document. I see him roll his eyes before he leaves the office. The judge calls in another policeman, who puts on my handcuffs again: I must wait in the corridor until my family record book arrives at the courts. As for my father-in-law’s driving license, we’re lucky he still has it—it was in his pocket and not in the bag that was lost in the woods. It’s a plasticized photocard, so it wasn’t damaged at sea and is clear proof of his identity.
Less than an hour later I’m back before the judge. She peruses the family record book in front of me, tells me she acknowledges the family relationship, then says that I must now see the state prosecutor. I spend only a few minutes in the prosecutor’s office, just long enough to run through the exact same information again, then I’m handcuffed and sent out to the corridor once more with the policeman and the interpreter, while the judge and prosecutor discuss my case.
“You could write a book about what’s happened to you,” the policeman says. “It’s crazy!”
“Yes, I could. And you’d be in it!”
* * *
—
When I’m brought before the judge again she tells me my car will be kept in Patras because it was used in the offense. Next, she tells me there is a sum to pay—the interpreter calls it a fine: four to five thousand euros.
“But, your honor, I just don’t have that sort of money! I’m the only breadwinner at home, my wife is a student, and we have a little girl of two…”
“I see, but how much money do you have with you?”
I search my pockets.
“I have three hundred euros on me.”
“Perfect, let’s go with three hundred euros!”
I can’t believe my ears. Did I just haggle with a judge? In a democratic European country? Did I secure a more than 90 percent reduction on a fine?
The judge continues to explain procedural points that are beyond the scope of my Greek, so the interpreter relays that there will be a further hearing about my car in a year’s time.
I emerge from the judge’s office feeling that I just paid a reasonable fine. Yes, they’re keeping my car and that’s worth a lot of money (I bought it new less than two years ago), but I’m getting off lightly! And the judge definitely helped me out over the fine. The most important thing is I can now go home to France. That’s great, I’m out of trouble, and the only thing I’m now worried about is my Syrian family.
The policeman does not handcuff me this time but takes me to the hearing room where other families in the same situation as mine are standing immediate trial. It is Saif, Wafaa, and Samer’s turn to be heard. They’re helped by an interpreter from Morocco whose dialect and accent are very different from the Arabic they speak: They barely understand every other sentence. In the space of a few minutes they are judged and condemned…but no penalty is handed down, no fine or prison sentence, and they are released on the spot.
* * *
—
The four of us are standing outside the courthouse, totally dazed by what’s just happened. We’re not yet completely free to go because the treasury where I have to pay my three-hundred-euro fine is already closed and will not reopen till the morning. I must go there before attempting to leave Greek soil.
But I now have two priorities: telling Zena we’re free and getting Anas and Mayada to join us so we’re all back together.
* * *
—
When I hear Stéphan’s voice on the phone it sounds so different from yesterday that I’m flooded with hope. I listen as he explains that they’re all free, just as he said they would be.
“So your parents were found guilty but there’s no sentence, and I have to pay a fine of three hundred euros.”
“Thank goodness. I’m so relieved…. One thing’s clear, anyway, if the case can be dealt with in twenty-four hours and ends with a three-hundred-euro fine, then it’s not such a big deal!”
How did we not guess that it wasn’t really over?
8.
Coming back, alone
After leaving the courts and being reunited with Anas and Mayada, we spend our last evening in Patras in a mood of slightly precarious happiness: It is genuine but fragile, threatened by the concerns for the future that we each harbor in our hearts. On the morning of August 25, it feels like I have the worst hangover of my life, which is grossly unfair because I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since arriving in Greece. But I’m so crushed, so disconsolate because of what I consider a personal failure, that my head feels as if it might explode at any moment. I thought I could help Saif, Wafaa, and the others, but I did them no good at all. My only victory is that my Syrian family won’t attempt the Patras-Ancona crossing on an inflatable boat…but they will have to tackle the journey through the Balkans alone. So how can I be optimistic about their chances of reaching France without further injury, further scams, and further suffering?
When we say our goodbyes to board two different buses at the bus station in Patras, it tears me apart. My mother-in-law is crying. I try to stay strong, at least for Anas, who is making superhuman efforts to keep up a semblance of a smile.
“Ok, so it won’t be long now, and we’ll all be together again in France!” I say in what’s meant to be a chirpy voice but sounds more like a croak.
Without my car, which is still being held by the Greek justice system, my return journey is quick: Zena has bought me a ticket on a direct flight from Athens to Toulouse. My wife has been with my sister for two days, so she comes to greet me at the airport with Sandra and the two little girls, Julia and Charlotte. In my wife’s and daughter’s arms, everything is erased from my mind for a few moments. Just in case the investigation took a long time, I prepared myself not to see them for months.
“We’re lucky, we escaped the worst,” Zena and I say to each other. Yes, but I wasn’t supposed to come home alone.
As Sandra drives us back to our house, Zena and I discuss what will happen next. The way we see it, we need only retrieve the Dacia and my involvement in the whole business will be over. “In the next couple of weeks I’ll call the embassy and try to get some information about the car. Maybe someone can explain what the procedure is and how long we’ll have to wait,” I say.
Our priority, though, is to see Zena’s family safely to France. I have to go back to work once I’m home, and Zena spends a lot of time following their progress on the phone or on social media. She gives them all the long-distance help she can, reserving hotel rooms and searching for contacts and information, but despite all her efforts, she and I are only too aware of how powerless we are.
9.
The challenge of crossing borders
ANAS’S STORY
Samer, my parents, my sister, and I were all together again with Stéphan for only a few hours before we had to say goodbye to this brave man who tried to save us. We did our best to appear confident, but there was nothing but sadness in the looks that passed between us.
After saying goodbye to Stéphan, we knew that we were now facing what we desperately wanted to avoid: crossing through the Balkans, especially Hungary. Social media sites are full of warnings from refugees about the despicable procedures that this country puts migrants through when they ask for asylum—and this behavior secures comfortable European grants for Hungary. Lies from the authorities, torture, arbitrary detention…these are all things we risk by traveling across this country. And if we do go against our better judgment and ask for asylum, we’ll be “dublinned”* and therefore trapped: We would no longer be able to ask for asylum in France.
But there’s no other solution. The policeman who talked to Stéphan clearly said that it was the only way, so we board a succession of buses to travel from Patras to Athens and then on to Thessaloniki. We get through Macedonia easily—their border is effectively open to Syrians, we were told the truth about that—and reach S
erbia.
We spend a few days in the Serbian capital gathering together a group of refugees with whom to cross the border independently of any organized channels. The price for getting from Serbia to Germany with a people smuggler is prohibitive and we simply don’t have the funds. We hear talk of some smugglers offering a much cheaper system that involves hiding in trucks transporting frozen goods. Suicide, in other words. And yet how many young Syrians have already been desperate enough to try that and have lost their lives in the process…
Our group gradually comes together over the course of a series of meetings. There are Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans, all agreeing to travel from Belgrade to Hungary on foot. We set off one morning before dawn and only come within sight of the border as the sun is setting, having walked more than fifty kilometers. There are now two possible routes for us to get into Hungary, and the group isn’t unanimous. A minority want to take a particularly dark path that involves going through a forest and, more worryingly, across a river; they feel they will get through unnoticed in the darkness. The others, including my family, prefer a more brightly lit route through a forest and wheat fields. The river that has to be crossed on the former route is famously dangerous, and the first town that the “dark” path comes to has a reputation as a death trap for Syrians.
When we hear a plane flying low overhead we know it’s all over. It is an official plane and we’re stopped only a few kilometers after crossing the border. We hear later that the other group was also intercepted.
The policemen who stop us are brutal and very authoritarian. They keep saying we must register in Hungary but what exactly does that mean? Is this like in Greece? They take our names and assign each of us a number that they write on a wristband, then they tighten the bands around our wrists, deliberately hurting us as much as they can. They take no special precautions with my mother’s broken arm and she screams in pain. Next, they bundle us onto a bus to take us to a migrant camp. I’ve heard about these places. I’ve even seen images filmed by refugees, but nothing has prepared me for the horror I find here. A policeman throws “provisions” at our feet: a half-liter bottle of water and a can of indeterminate meat three years past its use-by date. And that’s all, for the five of us. In the two days we spend here we are given nothing else, no drinking water, no food, and no basic care. Of course there are no stores in the camp, and we are not allowed to leave. I’m getting used to being hungry, but I’m so thirsty…my throat’s burning, I’m hot…when the police come near the fence we beg them to let us go back to Serbia. They snigger and taunt us cruelly.
“Wait, I’m not sure I get this, do you want to go to Serbia or Syria? You pronounce it so badly with your shitty little mouths!”
When they patrol the camp they strike out at people at random, kicking those who are sitting on the ground. They insult everyone, particularly mothers, because they know that’s what hurts us most. To maintain the feeling that I have some purpose in what’s happening to us, I use my phone to film evidence of the conditions we’re kept in.
After two days we’re led out of the camp in a group of about sixty refugees that is then split between two buses.
“Excuse me, where are we going?”
“Shut it, you Syrian shit!”
It turns out we’re simply going to the police precinct. The bus drops us outside a small-town precinct to the north of Budapest. Our bus is the only one here because, we later learn, the policemen overseeing the passengers on the other bus offered to let them out for a fee…which they all accepted without a moment’s hesitation. Sadly for us, the officers on our bus made no such offer. We’re thrown into a cell, thirty of us packed in together. We’re given no water or food and we’re left to stew there for many long hours. At last an interpreter arrives and starts to explain what’s going on. He is very elderly and the first thing he tells us is that he is Syrian, most likely to reassure us. He says we must each agree to have our fingerprints taken but we mustn’t worry: That doesn’t constitute a request for asylum, it’s simply a way of registering that we’re in Hungary. His deeply lined face shows no trace of emotion as he explains that anyone who refuses will stay in this cell for a very long time. In any event, we will all eventually be sent back to Serbia, but if we then try to tread on Hungarian soil again we’ll go to prison for several years. Naturally, no one believes these lies. Some people in the cell shout out that they refuse to be fingerprinted. The interpreter looks at them intently.
“Well, you’ll stay in here, then.”
Others take out lighters, saying they’ll burn their fingers so their prints can’t be taken.
“If you want to get out of this cage,” the interpreter repeats over and over again, “you have to agree to be fingerprinted.”
I, meanwhile, am feeling worse by the minute. I have a high fever and need to lie down because I’m too weak to stand. I beg to be let out and then throw up violently into a bucket outside the cell before being shoved back inside.
Policemen come into the cell with the equipment for taking our fingerprints. Yes, it’s going to be done right here, in this cage where we’re crammed in like cattle in a truck heading for the abattoir. My parents look at each other. We don’t have a choice, anyway. I hold out my hand but I’m shaking with fever so the print is blurred. The policemen yells right in my face and throws me to the floor.
“Try harder, sonny, this needs to be done right,” the interpreter says, still just as impassive.
Other policemen stand in a group outside the cell, only meters from us. They stare and one of them laughs sneeringly as he gives us a one-finger salute.
After twenty-four hours in this cage, we’re finally released at dawn. We’re told we must return to the migrant camp and that we can make our own way there by catching a bus that leaves from outside the police precinct.
Mayada is the only one of us whose cell phone has any battery left. She calls Zena, tells her we’ve failed, we’ve been dublinned, we’re stuck in Hungary and have to go back to the camp…Zena tells Manal, and my two sisters search social media frantically for anyone who can get us out of Hungary. Of course, there’s no way we’re getting on that bus back to the camp—we make a run for it on foot. I’m so weak I have to lean on Samer the whole way, but luckily, after a few kilometers we come to a small town where there are taxis, and that’s how we reach Budapest.
For the next five days we’re stuck in the Hungarian capital until we can find a solution, a way out. I’m still very sick but cling to the thought that in France they will treat me, cure me, take care of me. Everything is expensive in this big beautiful tourist attraction of a city, and we spend our days in the streets or in parks, often in driving rain. Zena handles hotel bookings for us; the cheapest she can find of course, but we’re aware how lucky we are not to be sleeping on the streets every night, as other Syrians do. Our research is difficult because we want to find a people smuggler we can really trust, one who will stay the course. There are very few in Hungary and, it goes without saying, the good ones are in high demand.
Then one day everything changes: The government officially announces, “All refugees are free to leave our country.” We rush to the train station and buy tickets for Austria…and end up being rounded up with dozens of others who, like us, believed the government announcement. We’re taken to the police precinct and my father tries hopelessly to explain that we were acting honestly.
“We’re leaving the country, sir. Look, we have our train tickets.”
A policeman snatches the tickets from him and takes us to an office where there’s an interpreter. A man of average height, a little chubby, nicely dressed, almost elegant in fact, and with a likable, trustworthy face. The policeman speaks a few sentences of Hungarian to him and the interpreter explains that he has been given responsibility for explaining the procedure that lies in store for us. We’re very surprised to see the policeman now leave the room.
“Liste
n,” the interpreter continues, “I’m meant to be telling you that you’re going back to the camp but I refuse to do that. I’m going to open this door for you and you can get out. But just don’t get caught again.”
We look at one another in amazement but don’t have time to think—he’s already opened the door out onto the street and is waving us out urgently.
“Come on, hurry! Get out, quickly!”
Is this man a hero, saving us out of sheer humanity? Or was the whole thing just a masquerade designed to confiscate our six-hundred-euro train tickets so they could sell them? I still wonder to this day. One thing is certain: In our whole long journey, Stéphan was the only person who helped us perfectly selflessly.
Laughing with surprise, we run to get away from the precinct and stop to catch our breaths after a few hundred meters. Incredible! We’re free! But our euphoria is short-lived: Nothing’s really changed. It’s back to the hotel, back to looking for people smugglers. A couple of days later I finally establish firm contact with a man who seems to be for real. I tell my father about him and, after a few more WhatsApp exchanges, I’m ready to give the good news to the whole family.
“We’re good, we have someone who’ll get us out tonight!” I say. “He’ll meet us this evening in a Turkish restaurant. I have the address.”
Then I call Zena to let her know we’ll be leaving Hungary tonight.
Our rendezvous at the restaurant is quick and businesslike: We find the smuggler, he confirms the price he gave me before, my father pays him, and he takes us to a spot outside the restaurant where a car and driver are waiting to take us right away. We have a nasty surprise: The car is a disgustingly dirty wreck and the driver snoozing at the wheel reeks of alcohol.
I Just Wanted to Save My Family Page 6
