Charissa Isidro
borderline-europe
Berlin, Germany
She tapped me on the shoulder, and as I turned around, she looked at me with her kind eyes, a ripe banana sitting in her hands. She offered it to me, and I said, “Nein, danke.” But she insisted.
This woman, who a mere 10 minutes prior had been sobbing as she told my translator the tragedy of her brother, who passed away during the violence in Syria. My heart broke for her, she who barely had time to mourn for her lost family members as she undertook this difficult journey into Germany. Even if I could not understand her words, I had no need to translate her grief.
We found this woman outside the ICC (Internationales Congress Centrum). She had been sleeping on the streets of Berlin with her husband and four children, alongside a few other families and dozens more young single men. Tents and makeshift shelters made of sheets lined the steps leading to the ICC, with luggage bags piled a top each other. They did this in protest of the living conditions at Tempelhof, where they were scheduled to be moved by officials at the LaGeSo.
Written on a piece of cardboard was “Wir wollen Deutsch lernen und gute schlafen, und gute Essen. Dankeschön Deutschland” (We want to learn German, and good sleep and good food. Thank you Germany). To anyone, these would seem like reasonable requests. To human rights advocates, these would seem like the bare minimum, the very basic needs that should be guaranteed to refugees. But bureaucracy in Germany has made it even difficult to honor the bare minimum.
One of the participants wrote on our survey (loosely translated): I protested against sleeping in Tempelhof for my dignity, and now I am sleeping in the streets like I have none.
A week before this particular protest, my translator and I came across two young men who had been homeless for almost two weeks. One told us his story, saying that his whole family had been killed in a bomb that destroyed their home. He was homeless in Damascus for months, and now in Berlin? He did not leave Syria to be homeless again in Germany.
It’s interesting that a friend of mine from Germany expressed disdain for these refugees, saying they shouldn’t sleep in the streets and they shouldn’t complain about the living conditions. Yet isn’t the right to protest one of the very pillars of democracy and freedom and liberal government? There’s a narrative out there that claims refugees are too different to integrate into our Western societies, one that simultaneously shames refugees when they exercise the very rights we claim to hold dear. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, right to free speech, right to protest, right to education, right to decent work and living. What do these words actually mean to us, if not just to be used as an instrument to keep people othered and excluded?
For most, life in Germany is not as they imagined. Some are being reunited with family already residing in Germany. But many are here alone, hopeless, barely hanging on. Many are desperate to work, to put their children in school, to learn German and to return to living life peacefully. Many are desperate, idle, and dreaming of the day they see their loved ones again. Many are planning their journey back to Syria, disillusioned by European bureaucracy.
Others are finding ways to find meaningfulness in life again. Others are speaking out against the Assad regime. Others are critical of the countries in power who sit and watch as Syria is torn apart, ravaged by bombs and guns and hateful ideologies. Others are volunteering their time and labor, joining neighborhood initiatives and organizations. Others are doing what they can to change the many concepts and opinions of European regarding refugees.
Recently I met two refugee tour guides who volunteer widely with an organization called Giving Something Back to Berlin. The goal of their tour is to educate people on the situation in Syria, and the parallels between the War in Syria and the history of Berlin. They spoke English well, and German so confidently you’d think they were born here. One was from Damascus and the other from Aleppo. It struck me how proud they were to be from Syria, how sophisticated they were in talking about their country’s situation, and how well they had adapted to life in Berlin. Both now live in apartments in Berlin and have many German friends and connections. They are the “good” kind of refugee. They are “integrated.”
But they are also people who believe in a future for their nation. They are people who (guess what!) had probably never dreamed of living in Germany, prior to this horrible war. None of them actually want to be here. None of them chose this way. And that’s been the commonality in this whole thing. In the good situations and the bad situations, it’s this anger at the world for disrupting life and forcing these tragic decisions on them, for leaving people with no choice but to flee from their families, their homes, their careers, their educations, their futures, their lives.