At the end of the fall of 2015, I was on the Turkish-Bulgarian border along with 5 other young Syrians, whom I had met in the alleys and cafes of Istanbul while all of us were searching for smugglers to take us to Europe. We became companions on our journey, but we weren’t sure we had much in common apart from that. I was a Kurd from the town of Derik; they were four young Arabs – two from the city of Daraa, two from Damascus – and one young Assyrian (Syriac), who was fluent in the Arabic and Kurdish languages and came from the town of Tirbaspi, nearby the city of Qamishli.
We began our journey by walking on a bumpy dirt road in Istanbul, surrounded by very high trees. Suddenly a Turkish taxi driver stopped alongside us and said Haidee! I understood that what he said was Yalla, which is Arabic for let’s go. We crammed ourselves into the taxi, prepared for the long trip. It took several hours to reach a forested area near the Turkish border with Bulgaria. While we were still piled up in the taxi, the driver was throwing all of our luggage out of the trunk, onto the side of the dirt road. He was swift and indifferent, as he had been in his driving, throwing our shabby bags roughly onto the road without caring about the memories and pains they contained in them. This way, he pointed with his hand in one direction, and quickly got back into his taxi.
I looked around. For the first time, the surrounding trees gave me a sense of eeriness and I heard my own fearful breathing. I felt that we were not the only ones in this forest and I could almost make out human noises coming from it. At first, I thought I was imagining the sounds because of the fatigue and exhaustion from the long trip, with the radio and wind from the front windows annoying us the entire way.
After sitting down to rest for less than half an hour, we each picked up our bag and began walking with wide strides, as if we were racing. Maybe the others, like me, just wanted to escape the eeriness of trees. After about two hours of continuous walking, the bumpy dirt road began to slope upwards and soon we were climbing. It seemed as if we were close to the end of the forest. Suddenly, the road ended on the top of a hill, overlooking a wide and long expanse of flat land.
There’s people here!!!
And there too!
Here and there, our hands were pointing right, left, in fact all around. Thousands of migrants were scattered along the land, walking in convoys and groups. We raced down towards them, as if we hadn’t just been walking for hours.
The next two days, we met many other migrants and we continued to walked, taking many breaks along the way. If we were walking, we walked past hundreds of people, and when we stopped, we were passed by hundreds of them.
At one point we heard the bitter sound of a woman wailing. My daughter is hungry! Oh God, my daughter is hungry! We ran towards to the source of wailing – it was not very far from us – thinking somebody was assaulting her. We were already preparing ourselves to defend her, having seen many cases of attacks and clashes along our way.
When we reached the woman, she was surrounded by a group of women, some men, and exhausted children. The woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties with a thin, pale face, was sitting on the cold ground and wailing bitterly. Oh God my daughter is hungry! What is she doing without me now?! Sobbing, she was putting her hands to her breasts through the slit of her black winter coat. The scene was that of a funeral. Though hysterical, she was completely without strength.
One man from the crowd came closer and greeted us with his careworn head and explained the situation. Guys, we met this woman three days ago through a good acquaintance. Her husband was kidnapped six months ago and nobody knows anything about his fate. Three months ago, her whole family was killed when their house was shelled. She survived because she was living in her family-in-law’s house. Then, three weeks ago, she gave birth on the Turkish-Syrian border. Her family-in-law forcibly took the daughter from her, threw her out of the house and threatened to kill her if she would ever come back. Each time her breasts fill up with milk, she starts moaning from the pain and crying about her baby. This frenzy repeats itself almost every hour.
We went back silently.
I sat down under a large oak tree, took my bag off, put my face between my hands and wept. I was crying for my own mother. When I raised my head, I saw all my friends crying. I didn’t want to ask them why they were weeping, but I was sure each one of them was crying about their own deceased.