Displacement Stories: an Ethnographic Account of Seven Lives in Transit a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Center for Inte

Displacement Stories: An Ethnographic Account of Seven Lives in Transit

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Center for International Studies of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Delphine M. De Gryse

May 2020

This thesis titled

Displacement Stories: An Ethnographic Account of Seven Lives in Transit

DELPHINE M. DE GRYSE

has been approved for

the Center for International Studies by

Matthew Rosen

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Lawrence Wood

Director, Communication and Development Studies

Lorna Jean Edmonds

Vice Provost for Global Affairs 3

ABSTRACT

DE GRYSE, DELPHINE M., M.A., May 2020, Communication and Development

Studies

Displacement Stories: An Ethnographic Account of Seven Lives in Transit

Director of Thesis: Matthew Rosen

In April 2015, more than one thousand people died while crossing the

Mediterranean to reach Europe. The large numbers of people losing their lives turned this issue into a highly mediatized topic, which received the label “crisis.” These numbers became the center of a political and media debate in which displaced people were predominantly underrepresented and misrepresented. This thesis is an ethnographic account that attempts to paint a more humanistic picture of the so-called “European refugee crisis.” The work is composed of seven intimate ethnographies that bring into relief the powerful life stories of particular people who are generally left out of official and media reports about contemporary migration from the Global South to the Global

North. By focusing on the personal stories of these seven individuals, this thesis sheds light on the social, historical, economic, and political dimensions of the contemporary

“European Refugee Crisis” without losing sight of the people most affected by it. This is both possible and necessary because these intimate stories of the particular illustrate the macro histories of violence, colonialism, and capitalism that have resulted in the unprecedented global flows of people in the twenty-first century. 4

DEDICATION

For all those whose lives have been lost or disrupted through displacement, and

especially for the individuals who shared their story with me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank all my participants, not just the seven people who are the protagonists of this thesis, but everyone I met in the field and who was willing to collaborate. I am grateful for having met so many people who let me into their lives, opened up and shared their stories. Sharing time, ouzo, cookies, oranges, birthday wishes, kebab, laughs, anger, fear, intimidation, salty sea water or dust in the eyes, has been a very privileged experience. I was also lucky to meet people who helped me out with more practical issues, such as finding the right contacts or visiting places I would not have access to on my own.

Secondly, I would like to thank my committee chair Dr. Rosen, who has always believed in me and supported me since day one, when I was a first-year student in his ethnographic methods class and only had a very vague idea about this research. Dr. Rosen has helped me giving this research shape, develop a proposal, get through the IRB protocol and process the large amount of data I came home with. I would also like to thank Dr. Rosen for his patience during our weekly meetings which always took much longer than expected because of my nature to always ask a lot of questions.

I would also like to thank my two other committee members, Dr. Whitson and

Prof. Plow, for sharing their knowledge about the thesis process and for taking the time to read my thesis and offer feedback.

I am also happy to have won the COMREAL grant, organized by Dr. Karen

Greiner, which was a very welcome financial aid for conducting my fieldwork.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ...... 3 Dedication ...... 4 Acknowledgments...... 5 List of Figures ...... 7 Introduction ...... 8 “European Refugee Crisis” ...... 13 Migration and Materiality ...... 18 Intimate Ethnographies of the Particular ...... 23 Methodology ...... 26 Chapter Outline ...... 29 Chapter 1: Ahmed ...... 31 Chapter 2: Jimmy ...... 45 Chapter 3: Murat ...... 60 Chapter 4: Soraya ...... 70 Chapter 5: Riad ...... 82 Chapter 6: Haroon ...... 95 Chapter 7: Pierre ...... 129 Epilogue ...... 140 References ...... 146

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Ahmed and his passport ...... 42 Figure 2: One of the shops in the streets around Hatuniye Parkı in Basmane (Izmir, Turkey) ...... 43 Figure 3: Repairing and selling cellphones and vending SIM cards is a vibrant business in the streets of Basmane (Izmir, Turkey)...... 44 Figure 4: Jimmy’s Bible and the map with Les Voyages de Paul ...... 59 Figure 5: Murat’s guitar ...... 69 Figure 6: "Moria is so dangerous. We could not walk around alone" ...... 81 Figure 7: View of the Saint Therapon church ...... 94 Figure 8: Korakas Lighthouse, where Haroon landed on Lesbos ...... 127 Figure 9: Left from Korakas Lighthouse: the spotting hut where Lighthouse Relief volunteers do the nightshift ...... 128 Figure 10: View on the two towers used as a landmark by Pierre's traffickers ...... 139 Figure 11: The Turkish flag on the ferry, leaving Mytilene behind ...... 141 Figure 12: Plastic bottles sewed into a t-shirt to use it as a floating device ...... 143

INTRODUCTION

The blackness of the dark created an almost visual silence. Only the Turkish coastline was visible, with its small twinkling lights from the orange color palette and the mountainous landscape that stood out against the horizon. The weather gods had been threatening all day and the blanket of night hadn’t calmed them down. Blasts of wind pushed the waves ashore, splashing against the rocks.

People crossing from Turkey to Greece in rough seas is not uncommon. The reason, I later learned, was that traffickers give a discount when the weather is bad. They see it as guaranteed money. With no Turkish Coastguard, Hellenic Coastguard, or

Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) braving the waters to intercept their clients, the trafficked people either make it or drown.

I was riding in the back of a pickup truck on the dusty and bumpy road to Eftalou, which runs directly next to the sea, trying to detect anything irregular. The smell of fire, the sound of voices, or flashes of light. The truck stopped suddenly. A man stood in the beam of the headlights.

The group had just landed. Their dingy was only a few meters away. They all had a mix of fear and relief in their eyes. When they realized we were there to help, the sense of relief was immense. They had all thought they were going to die. Many were crying and one woman with a green hijab fell to the ground when she burst into tears. Almost everyone was on the phone. Although I didn’t understand their language, I could just tell that they were sharing the news with relatives. I was sure that they were describing the waves and the fear they felt. One man tried to communicate with us directly. He pointed 9 the index fingers of both hands to the dark sky and said “Allah, Allah, Allah.” Someone else translated: “I don’t know how we made it, because the sea was so dangerous. It’s only thanks to Allah that we’re alive.” Another man said repeatedly: “We thank you all, we thank you all, thank you so much.”

People were wet and cold, and we distributed the usual emergency blankets and dry food (raisins and cookies). While doing that, I met Hassan and Hussein, four-year-old twin brothers from Syria. They were wearing the same grey Batman pajamas and I imagined they must have been sleeping when the human trafficker told everyone they were going to cross that night. They had a glazed look in their eyes, and I wondered if they were in shock or if they were under the influence of something. Traffickers often give kids sleeping medication to keep them quiet during the dangerous journey. A few minutes later I found out that the twins had a three-month-old brother named Youssef. He was lying in his mom’s arms. She had wrapped him in a men’s winter coat which had absorbed plenty of sea water. I suggested she use an emergency blanket, but she refused.

It was difficult to explain that such a thin foil is better than a soaked coat and I had to find someone to translate.

While waiting for the port police, I learned more about the group’s journey at sea.

They had been in the dinghy for more than two hours. Everyone had been so scared that they had called the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) constantly. “Number 108. But no one answered.”

Together with another volunteer I walked to the dinghy to start collecting the life jackets. As usual, the dinghy was sliced out of fear of being sent back to Turkey in the 10 same boat. The flooring was broken into different pieces, the oars and a grey foot pump washed ashore, and the red plastic gasoline tank was floating in the water. People had lost a florescent yellow and black shoe, a fake brown leather purse, and a packet of Klavunat,

1000 mg (an antibiotic mainly prescribed in Turkey).

Meanwhile, the UNHCR driver, a true expert in human Tetris, had started getting as many people as possible in his nine-seater van. There were thirty-three people: seventeen children (of which three were unaccompanied minors), six women and ten men. The priority order for transportation goes medical cases first, then children, women, and men. There were no medical cases this time, so the children and some women went first. Since there were so many kids in this group, the van reached capacity quickly. But kids take up less space, so the driver could stack them well. Following the protocol can sometimes create needless complications. For example, when the mother of Hassan,

Hussein and Youssef had to enter the van, they had to go with her. The twins started crying, because they wanted to stay with their father. But the UNHCR coordinator forced them into the van. And this woman now had to care on her own for two four-year-olds and a three-month-old baby. While we kept waiting on the port police, I checked the van regularly. After a while I noticed that this large group of people, stuffed in the vehicle with windows and doors closed, could use some fresh air. I signaled this to the driver and asked if he could open a window. He understood my concern and opened the window of the sliding door. One of the twin brothers was playing with a small plastic horse. He gave it to me, and I started whinnying and made the horse gallop on the window opening.

*** 11

The preceding narrative provides an illustration of the theoretical and methodological choices I brought to the writing of this thesis, an ethnographic account that attempts to paint a more humanistic picture of the so-called “European refugee crisis”. The thesis is composed of seven narrative ethnographies of the particular (Abu-

Lughod, 1991). I use the framework of intimate ethnography (Waterston, 2019) to bring into relief the powerful and personal stories that too often are left out of official and media reports about the contemporary movement of people from the Global South to the

Global North.

Prepared with an object-centered method of ethnographic data collection (Miller,

2001; O’Toole & Were, 2008) I went to Izmir (Turkey) and Lesbos (Greece) in summer

2019 to document relationships between displaced people, their belongings, and the wider social worlds they inhabit. The analysis I have done since returning from the field engaged with current developments in the anthropology of ethics and migration studies

(Jackson 2013; Lambek 2010). By making space in the text for the people I met to tell in their own words how they make sense of their lives in transit, the specific objective of the thesis is to provide a larger human context for understanding the structural forces of displacement that cause certain people and not others to choose, embrace, or be forced to move or flee their countries of origin.

The title of this thesis announces the stories of displaced people in transit.

Researchers in the field of migration studies often use abstractions and categorizations when writing about their participants: refugees, displaced people, asylum seekers, irregular migrants, undocumented migrants, unauthorized migrants, voluntary migration, 12 forced migration, transit migration. These are often based on definitions created by authorities or other large entities of power.

I personally do not like to put my participants in a category. I see them as Jimmy,

Ahmed and Soraya.1 I do not believe that their movements can be understood by putting them in a certain category. However, when engaging with migration studies, it is almost impossible not to use one of those categorizations. When needed, I will use the term

“displaced people.” When referring to certain bodies of literature, I will copy the term as it has been used by the author.

It is however interesting to remark that all the displaced people I spoke with, both in Turkey and Greece, called themselves “refugee” and referred to people in the same situation as “the other refugees.”

The people I met in Turkey and Greece were in transit. The concept of transit migration is another category within migration studies. The European Committee on

Migration defines transit migration as “people who enter the territory of a state in order to travel on to another” (2002, p. 11). Papadopoulou-Kourkoula defines it as “the situation between emigration and settlement that is characterized by indefinite migrant stay, legal or illegal, and may or may not develop into further migration depending on a series of structural and individual factors” (2008, p.4). Both in Turkey and Greece, the lives of displaced people in transit are marked by a high level of uncertainty. In Izmir they are constantly waiting for the call of the smuggler, continuously afraid of being caught by the police and unsure the next attempt of crossing the Aegean Sea will be successful. The

1 All the names of my participants are pseudonyms. 13 island of Lesbos is currently an open-air prison, with thousands of people waiting years for their asylum interview in appalling conditions, never sure about what will happen to them. They haven’t arrived yet, are in limbo, neither here nor there, betwixt and between

(Turner, 1967). Their liminal situation affects their lives, their sense of belonging,

(mental) health and access to human rights. The length of stay in transit is unknown and, in some cases, the transit country can become the country of final destination.

This introductory chapter starts with an overview of the main problem under consideration—that is, the “European Refugee Crisis” and its effects on the global social, political, and media landscapes of the twenty-first century. To situate my initial approach to engaging this problem ethnographically, I then provide a concise review of the literature on materiality and migration. I next discuss the theoretical reasons underpinning the specific ethnographic approaches (including intimate ethnography and life history narratives) applied in this study. The introduction concludes with a concise discussion of my specific methodology and a brief overview of the seven chapters that follow.

“European Refugee Crisis”

Migration into and within Europe, integration and multiculturalism have always been a part of the history of the continent (Bade & Eijl, 2011). In contemporary history,

Hansen (2003) describes three steps in migration to Europe after World War II: the arrival of guest workers and colonial migrants, the arrival of their families, and the post-

1980 influx of asylum seekers.

In 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that worldwide there were more displaced people since World War II (UNHCR, 2016). 14

That was reflected in the large increase in migration rates to Europe. According to the

International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than one million people arrived in

Europe in 2015 (IOM, 2016). The Syrian civil war, which started in 2011 and escalated in

2014 and 2015, was one of the major drivers of this augmented migration movement. In addition, instability in various other countries, such as Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia, made people flee their home countries. In 2015, the majority of displaced people travelling to Europe reached the continent by sea (UNHCR, 2016). That year, more than one million people arrived in Europe by boat, of which eight hundred fifty thousand crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece (UNHCR, 2016).

These numbers became the center of political debates and media coverage. In

Fortress Europe, various governments decided to close their land borders. Hungary built a fence on its borders with Serbia and Croatia, Austria placed a barrier on its borders with

Slovenia and Italia, Slovenia placed a fence on its border with Croatia, Bulgaria constructed a barrier along its border with Turkey, and Macedonia placed a fence on its border with Greece. These nationalistic acts went almost hand-in-hand with the rise of right-wing populist politicians and political parties. In general, the political right was more concerned about the refugee crisis, advocating for more exclusionary policies, than the political left (van Prooijen et al., 2018). The right-wing political parties used immigration “as a scapegoat for feelings of insecurity and erosion of the welfare state,” presenting their voters the narrative that the increase in immigration numbers endangered

“the societal position and culture of the native population” (Lucassen, 2018, p. 405). 15

In April 2015, the waves of the Mediterranean Sea claimed a deadly toll.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than thousand people died that month while they were crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe

(Brian & Laczko, 2016). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees declared that Europe went through a “maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions” (2015, p. 2).

The large numbers of people losing their lives, turned this issue into a highly mediatized topic, which received the label “crisis.” The mediated narrative of the so-called refugee crisis can be divided into three different periods, beginning with “careful tolerance,” followed by “ecstatic humanism” and ending with “fear and securitization” (Georgiou &

Zaborowski, 2017). During the first period, the media mainly reported on the mass drownings, bringing a mix of stories about humanitarian efforts and securitization

(Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017). The picture of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in an attempt to reach Greece and washed ashore in Turkey, was a turning point. The picture received an iconic status and went viral, converting Alan into a symbol, hashtag and meme (Mielczarek, 2018). This image changed the way media, politicians and the general public talked about the “crisis”, shifting from the use of the word “migrant” (with the connotation that this person has the choice to leave the country of origin) to using the word “refugee” (implying that this person does not have the choice) (Vis & Goriunova, 2015). However, by “morally delineating the deserving refugee from the undeserving migrant while casting both groups as outsiders”, media and politicians depict these people as a threat to “the wellbeing of an imagined homogenous

Europe” (Holmes & Castañeda, 2016, p. 13). 16

The photo of Alan Kurdi has been credited with provoking everything from the international “Refugees Welcome” movement to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s historic declaration welcoming all Syrian asylum-seekers (de Andres, Nos-Aldas &

Garcia-Matilla 2016). However, these notable “empathic responses” only lasted for a very short term moment (Slovic et al., 2017). The “ecstatic humanitarianism” period, in which the media covered refugee emotions, measurements to help, and positive consequences of the arrivals, ended with the attacks in Paris in November 2015

(Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017). During this “fear and securitization” period, defensive measures and negative geopolitical consequences dominated the media narrative and the refugees became voiceless (Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017).

In the European media discourse on immigration, displaced people are underrepresented in the media and often depicted as criminals (Eberl et al., 2018). Media coverage on migration has the tendency to be negative and conflict centered, and

“frequent exposure to such media messages leads to negative attitudes towards migration, may activate stereotypical cognitions of migrant groups, and even influence vote choice”

(Eberl et al., 2018, p. 207).

In European press coverage, displaced people who arrived to Europe were characterized as outsiders (either vulnerable or dangerous), and they “were given limited opportunities to speak directly of their experiences and suffering” as they were mostly

“spoken about and represented in images as silent actors and victims” (Georgiou &

Zaborowski, 2017, p. 3). The European press was very limiting in describing the displaced people (predominantly describing them as nationals of a certain country), 17 creating narratives in which displaced people are “an anonymous, unskilled group”

(Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017, p. 10). They are framed as “the other” without individual characteristics, and “are implied to be of little use for European countries (as they seem to have no profession), inspiring little empathy (because they are dehumanized and de- individualized) and raising suspicion (because no gender distinction aids the narrative of refugees being ‘mostly young men chancing their luck’” (Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017, p. 10). The opinions of displaced people were rarely represented and their voices remained silent as politicians and representatives of governments were allowed to speak

(Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017). The media talked about the displaced people, why they came to Europe and what consequences this had for the European citizens, without letting the displaced people speak for themselves (Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017).

The media also paid little attention to the context and failed to connect with news on what was happening in the countries of origin of the displaced people (Georgiou &

Zaborowski, 2017). Besides that, in some sectors of the European press the coverage promoted hate speech and hostility towards displaced people (Georgiou & Zaborowski,

2017).

The literature shows that migration in Europe is nothing new, however, in 2015 the number of displaced people worldwide increased dramatically, which influenced the number of new arrivals into Europe. These numbers became the center of a political and media debate. Governments focused on protective measurements and there was an upsurge of right-wing populism. In media coverage, displaced people were mostly underrepresented and misrepresented, depicted as outsiders and framed as “the others” 18 which may influence people’s thoughts and behavior regarding migration. Media spoke a lot about displaced people, while their own voice was seldomly heard. This thesis attempts to counter this dominant method giving more space to the life stories (Bertaux,

1981) of displaced people in transit. Since the possessions we cherish are a way of understanding our values and who we are (Miller, 2001), I turn next to the object- centered approach I used as a point of entry for this study.

Migration and Materiality

When people travel, whether voluntarily or forced, objects travel with them.

Scholars have become increasingly aware of the importance of studying materiality and migration in junction. Ho and Hatfield (2011) urge for studying migration from the perspective of everyday matters. The authors claim that studying the social and material aspects of the everyday life can help inform policy and community programs to better address the needs and experiences of migrants (Ho & Hatfield, 2011). Additionally,

O’Toole and Were (2008) argue that including space and material culture in research data collection and analysis provides the researcher with a rich source of insight to gain a deeper perception of the immaterial and implicit. Sherry (2014) suggests the creation of an archive for historical research on refugee materiality. The author defines refugee materiality as “a process of interactions between individuals and the objects and places they encounter during forced migration that impact the manner in which they move through space” (Sherry, 2014). Sherry (2014) claims that in order to understand refugee populations on their own terms, historians must stop seeing themselves as only users of archives and participate actively in the creation of refugee materiality archives, engaging 19 with refugee groups and letting them engage with their own stories. According to Basu and Coleman (2008) there is a lot of scholarly work about migration and material culture; however, there is not much literature that unites those two study areas. The link between migration and mobility studies and material culture studies is indeed worth researching, because “It is not just about how people make knowledge of the world, but how they physically and socially make the world through the ways they move and mobilize people, objects, information and ideas.” (Büscher & Urry, 2009, p. 112).

The physical objects that people on the move carry with them are of special concern within the broader discourse on migration and materiality. This is because objects give meanings to our lives. Csikszentmihalyi and Halton (1981) state that we must understand the relation between people and things in order to understand what people are. Belk (1988) claims that our possessions are crucial in shaping our identities.

And Gentry, Baker and Kraft (1995) explain that people use possessions to create identity during their youth, to maintain identity during their mainstream years and to preserve identity when they are older. Possessions can also help to understand the past (through reliving past events and emotions) and feel more comfortable about the present (Gentry,

Baker, & Kraft, 1995).

Whether forced or voluntary, migrating leaves a massive impact on people.

Russel claims that “at an individual level, migrants’ experience of displacement raises complex psychological questions about their own existence and self-identity” (1995, p.

7). However, possessions play a central role in immigrants’ identity reconstruction

(Mehta & Belk, 1991). 20

In contrast to other transnational migrants who cross international borders, forcibly displaced people do not always carry much with them. They are disconnected from their familiar material environment and sometimes only have the clothes they were wearing at the moment of leaving their home. When they arrive to a new place, they create new meanings and adopt a new identity, which are added to their cultural world.

Examples can be found in the research by Conlon (2011), about everyday life objects of asylum seeker and refugee women living in Ireland; Arev (2019), about the use of clothes among Eritrean refugee women in Tel Aviv; and Dudley (2011), about the production and consumption of food and textiles in the lives of Karenni refugees from Burma, who are staying in camps on the Thai border.

Studies show that people place the greatest value on everyday objects which evoke memories (Jones & Martin, 2006). The emotional value of some objects is priceless. Winnicott (1953) uses the term “transitional object” to describe a teddy bear, blanket, toy, or another physical object to which young children get attached to.

However, the comfort object is not a concept that is uniquely limited to children, adults may use them to improve their mental well-being and it is also used as a therapeutic instrument. The role of comfort objects in forced migration is described in the work of social anthropologist Parkin. In Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human

Displacement, Parkin (1999) states that movements of people occur with or in relation to the objects they are attached to, highlighting the exceptional circumstances of forced migration, when people often take items for direct and practical use or “to re-establish or re-define personal and collective origins.” (p. 303) Parkin suggests that “transitional 21 objects” carried by people in crisis “inscribe their personhood in flight but offer the possibility of their own de-objectification and re-personalization afterwards” (1999, p.303). Parkin adds that “under the conditions of rapid and sometimes violent flight and dispersal, private mementos may take the place of interpersonal relations as a depository of sentiment and cultural knowledge” (1999, p. 317).

Besides the emotional value of a comfort object, possessions also create meanings around places (Belk, 1992), and objects in domestic environments can reveal useful understandings. In the book Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, anthropologist Daniel Miller (2001) writes that the relationship between people and the material culture of the home generates insights into societies. This has been studied in different contexts, from moving to and living in nursing homes (van Hoof et al., 2016;

Marcoux, 2001); to students who leave their parental home to go to university (Cieraad,

2010); and homeless people (Zimmerman & Welch, 2011).

Dugan’s (2007) personal experiences during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina can be connected to forcibly displaced people who have to flee their homes. The author describes how disaster affected the lives of an entire community on an emotional, financial and material level and concludes that people not only lost their homes, but also their culture and identity, something that grows over time and cannot be simply replaced

(Dugan, 2007). The author draws heavily on psychiatrist Eisenbruch’s concept of cultural bereavement (1991), which can be explained as a reaction of grief to the loss of social structures, cultural values and identity, along with feelings of guilt and a rather unnatural attachment to the past. 22

The contrasting experience of “being at home” and “being away from home” has been studied by Case (1996), who explains the importance of this contrast to the definition of home. When people are away from home, they have a greater appreciation for the daily household routine they take for granted, and they recognize the importance of interaction with friends and neighbors (Case, 1996). One of the main points of Tolia-

Kelly’s study on the role of material cultures as mechanisms for memory is that “A sense of nation, belonging and citizenship are figured through these active materials in the home environment” (2004, p. 327).

This was the essence of the objects-based approach I brought with me to the field.

When faced with the reality of doing ethnographic research in Izmir and Lesbos, however, I quickly recognized the importance of building rapport with participants before diving into questions about the meanings and values they attached to their belongings.

Indeed, rather than being a kind of formality I needed to get through, the building of trusting relationships with my interlocutors turned out to be the key to the project. As I will make clear in the chapters that follow, I gained important insights from talking to people about the specific objects – a passport, a bible, a guitar, money – that mattered most to them. What I found to be even more important, however, were the singular life stories that my interlocutors were prepared to share with me. Only by thinking beyond the objects-based approach, in other words, was I able to craft this thesis in its current form, with an emphasis grounded in intimate ethnographies of the particular.

Intimate Ethnographies of the Particular

With its emphasis on phenomenological and ethnographic field methods, anthropology has made a unique contribution to the field of forced migration studies

(Chatty, 2014). Anthropology has always been able to focus on the importance of the

“view from below” through participant observation as its unique research tool and strategy (Chatty, 2014). “The primacy of the vision of anthropology has been the perspective and voice of the forced migrant, the phenomenological encounter that permits the uprooted, the displaced and the refugee to break out from the category of ‘object of study’ and to bring to life the individual experience of dispossession” (Chatty, 2014, p.

83).

This thesis is the result of fieldwork conducted through various anthropological approaches. Anthropologists use ethnographic writings to represent others. Abu-Lughod recommends writing ethnographies of the particular to “constitute others as less other”

(1991, p. 149). Abu-Lughod (1991) advises anthropologists to be skeptical about generalizations, a commonly used method and writing style in the social sciences.

According to Abu-Lughod (1991), generalizations are a language of power, and they enable the construction of anthropological objects that are other, different, and inferior

(Fabian, 2014). Abu-Lughod (1991) also claims that generalizing from experiences with some people in a community blurs the differences between them and leads to homogenization. A lack of internal differentiation facilitates perceiving a group of people

(e.g. “the refugees”) as a bounded identity “who do this or that and believe such-and- such” (Abu-Lughod ,1991, p. 153). To counter this, Abu-Lughod (1991) proposes to 24 focus on the particularity. The author argues that “larger forces” are “only embodied in the actions of individuals living in time and place” (1991, p. 156) and are therefore best captured in ethnographies of the particular. Drawing on ethnography of the particular, this thesis includes detailed stories of people’s everyday life, to shed a light on what is happening in the broader world.

The ethnography of the particular approach is combined with intimate ethnography, which is a thoughtful and rigorous “form of critical inquiry” (Waterston,

2019, p. 8) that can bridge stories and scholarship by “bringing knowledge and understanding into the public conversation on critical issues” (2019, pp. 14-15). Intimate ethnography questions any given narratives and uncovers secret histories of people who have been framed as enemies by those in power, identifying sorrow and suffering in each person’s life, which may disarm this hostility (Waterston, 2019). The focus is on the intimate ethnographic other, “not the self and not a stranger but someone with whom the ethnographer is in close, personal relation” (Waterston, 2019, p.12). By centralizing a person in an anthropological project, the researcher is less likely to homogenize people’s experiences and opinions, and to present more plausible and nuanced characterizations of the portrayed people’s lives (Waterston, 2019). Waterston also stresses the importance of the afterlife of intimate ethnography, which is its reception in meetings with a wider public, and the possibility to change the way people think about painful histories of the

“others” that are often demonized and dehumanized (2019).

Ethnography of the particular and intimate ethnography are often based on the anthropological method of life stories. As Bertaux (1981) pointed out, one of the implicit 25 messages of survey research is that what people individually say is meaningless, and that the researcher has to give meaning to it. Life stories however, “stand by themselves”

(Bertaux, 1981, p. 39). According to Bertaux (1981), because life stories can stand by themselves, the task of the sociologist using this approach should be to understand and describe but not to explain. “A good life story is one in which the interviewee takes over the control of the interview situation and talks freely” (Bertaux, 1981, p. 39).

Adopting a more critical stance, Behar (1990) argues that life histories do not speak for themselves and that their meanings are established in their interpretations.

Although I believe that Behar makes a good point, I have made the decision to trust my readers, since I do not want to constrain them by imposing my own interpretations. I do however recognize that their ideas may differ from my ideas.

Behar (1990) relies on Walter Benjamin’s (1978) distinction between information

(presented as verifiable, interwoven with explanation, disposable because forgettable) and storytelling (repeating stories without explanation, grounded in a community of listeners who are impacted by the stories and therefore inspired to become storytellers themselves). Relying on that distinction, Behar says “to focus on the act of life story representation as reading rather than as informing (1990, p. 228). In Behar’s words “I try to make clear that what I am reading is a story, or set of stories, that have been told to me, so that I, in turn, can tell them again, transforming myself from a listener to a storyteller”

(1990, p. 228). Behar’s description of this concept is fundamental for the seven narratives in this thesis, as I also transformed from a listener when in the field to a storyteller when writing up this document. 26

Methodology

After my Human Subjects IRB protocol was approved on 05/30/2019, I spent 55 days in the field in Turkey and Greece during the summer of 2019. I travelled from Izmir

(Turkey), to Ayvalık (Turkey), to Mytilene (Lesbos), to Skala Sikamineas (Lesbos) and back to Mytilene, Ayvalık and Izmir. In Izmir I met people before they crossed the

Aegean Sea. In Skala Sikamineas I served as a volunteer with Lighthouse Relief, a humanitarian organization which provides emergency response for people arriving on the north shore of Lesbos. Finally, in Mytilene I spent time with people who lived in Moria or one of the other refugee camps or facilities.

I was aware of the challenging research setting and the vulnerability of the population and implemented the golden rule of ethical fieldwork: “do no harm.” I knew that many people had experienced traumatic events before or during their journey and that the living conditions in the camp often have an adverse effect on people’s wellbeing.

I led my research with human dignity and respect for people.

I also realized that as a white, privileged woman I was entering a world that is not mine. I knew this might sound as having a white savior complex. Nowadays, the Greek islands are full of white privileged people who believe they are helping but are actually exploiting vulnerable people. I did not see my research as an act of heroism, and I was aware that I was interfering in people’s lives. I also knew that I may be in an environment of distrust. People are often interviewed by bureaucrats who question their stories and take decisions about their lives. In approaching people, I was always clear about my role as a researcher and obtained their oral consent to participate in this research. 27

Taking all this into account, I also discovered that people wanted to share their story. After establishing a relationship of mutual trust, people really opened up, wanted to get some things of their chest and afterwards thanked me for listening. In most cases, they did not have anyone to talk to. At least not someone they could be completely honest with. People who traveled alone did not want to tell their family and friends the truth about what they experienced during the journey and about their current living conditions.

They did not want their family and friends to be worried and were often ashamed. And during interrogations with law enforcement organizations or interviews with aid organizations and authorities, they could not speak freely and it was definitely not the moment and place to talk about their emotions, feelings and concerns. I found that people really had a need to candidly talk about their lives without concerns of judgement or need for advice.

My main data collection methods were participant observation, interviews and photography. The ethnographic interviews were conversations in a natural setting and had an improvisational nature. I used photography as a tool of engagement and as a way to see a place more richly (Luvaas, 2017).

I selected my participants using convenience sampling and snowball sampling

(for example in the case of Murat and Soraya). Although I had a very open and receptive attitude towards everyone I met and never declined a conversation, I was very careful in selecting my participants. My first question was always: “Is it ethical to engage with this person in long conversations about possible disturbing life events?” I relied on my intuition and gut feeling to take that decision. During the first (mostly coincidental) 28 meeting, I was always very clear about my role as a researcher and checked multiple times whether that was one hundred percent clear to my participants. If I had the slightest feeling that people did not completely understand or had other expectations, I did not continue.

When I met people for the first time, I handed out my business card, with my email address and WhatsApp number on it. If they took the initiative to contact me, I always replied. I never actively asked for people’s contact information, since I did not want to pressure anyone in participating.

I only selected participants in Izmir and around Mytilene. During my time in

Skala Sikamineas I did not wear the researcher hat in my interactions with displaced people. I did use my own observations and included them in this thesis, but I never interviewed people. As a volunteer, my focus was on the emergency response task and not on recruiting participants.

The data I collected consists of 23 hours and 7 minutes of audio recordings

(personal voice notes and interviews), 1.548 pictures shot with my camera, 418 items on my cell phone (screenshots, notes, photos and videos I took myself, photos and videos I received from my participants), and written notes in 5 small notebooks with each 100 pages.

The interviews with six out of seven participants included in this thesis were recorded with my cellphone and later transcribed in Word. Although I recorded the interviews, I always had my notebook open and jotted extensively. This was for two main reason. First, I wanted to have something written down because I did not want to rely 29 entirely on technology (bad recording, deleted audio file, broken phone, lost phone).

Second, I used my jottings to highlight some passages that seemed important or remarkable to me, and I also wrote down any additional observations (people’s body language, physical traits, clothing, gestures, the setting we were in, the atmosphere, the weather, sounds, smells).

The only participant of whom I do not have a recording is Ahmed, which is explained in that chapter. For his story, I relied on jottings in my memo book and the

“descriptive fieldnotes” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011) I wrote immediately after the interview.

I processed my data and wrote the narratives between 07/25/2019 and 03/08/2020.

The symbolic number of seven stories was more of a creative strategy and the uneven number can lead the reader through a journey with a beginning, middle and end.

The decision which narratives to include was made based on the variety in participant’s country of origin and the degree of connection I had with them and how those close contacts resulted in more unique, personal and revealing stories. I also wanted to write about at least one woman despite preponderance of male participants.

Chapter Outline

In what follows, I present the stories of seven displaced people I met in summer

2019 in Turkey and Greece. In Chapter 1, you will hear Ahmed’s voice, an educated lawyer from Palestine, who left his country because of the political situation and the lack of jobs and who ended up living in Izmir under constant suspicion and threats. Chapter 2 brings the story of Jimmy, who faces the consequences of the history of war in his 30 country and seeks refuge in the Word of God. In Chapter 3, Murat from Turkmenistan talks about his nonexistence as a stateless person and shares his hopes and dreams.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the voice of Soraya, a young Afghani who sacrifices herself for her mother and talks about the dangers female displaced people face. In Chapter 5 I present Riad from Syria, who impulsively fled the bombings in his hometown when he was just a kid. Chapter 6 is about Haroon, who is persona non grata in Afghanistan after working with foreign companies and who fights to give his daughters an education. In

Chapter 7 Pierre explains why he left Congo and talks about the capitalist culture.

By focusing on the personal stories of these seven individuals, I hope to shed a light on the social, historical, economic, and political dimensions of the contemporary

“European Refugee Crisis” without losing sight of the people most affected by it. If the thesis succeeds in this regard it is because, as I hope to show, these intimate stories of the particular illustrate the macro histories of violence, colonialism, and capitalism that have resulted in the unprecedented global flows of people in the twenty-first century.

I conclude this thesis with a reflection on my positionality as a researcher from the Global North with a passport, and also provide a follow-up on the lives of my participants.

CHAPTER 1: AHMED

On the afternoon of June 7, my eighth day in the Turkish city of Izmir, a crackling noise from the speakers of a mosque announced that in a few seconds the Ezan (call to prayer) would be resonating through the streets around Hatuniye Parkı, a small square in

Basmane.

The sunlight determined the flow of movements around the square. At a nearby café, it looked as if the visitors were playing a musical chairs game. Trying to escape the scorching sun, they followed the traces of shade produced by the trees on the square, rearranging their chairs as they saw fit. The waiters nevertheless always seemed to find the right person, skillfully balancing the small tulip shaped glass on a saucer without spilling a drop of the Çay (tea) that plays an important role in Turkish social life.

This square and its social environment had some borders invisible to the eye. The

Turkish had their own segment and didn’t mingle with the Afghan or Syrian people.

Same for the dark-skinned people and the homeless (the latter congregated against the walls of the mosque). I was sitting on one of the brown wooden benches, with Konak

Belediyesi, the name of the district painted in white letters across the backrest. These benches were mostly occupied by older Turkish men. In this predominantly male environment, my presence was quite noticeable, and my white skin, blond hair and blue eyes seemed to draw extra attention. Sitting next to someone could have all kind of connotations and my best bet was to sit next to older people. The middle-aged man on my left looked his best, wearing freshly polished black leather moccasins and smoothly ironed out brown long trousers. He sat with his legs crossed and leaned with his elbow on 32 the back of the bench, moving the brown beads of a tasbih through the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

When I heard the words “Hi, what are you doing?”, I looked up from my memo book and saw Ahmed standing in front of me. I had met this twenty-eight-year-old

Palestinian the day before around Hatuniye Parkı. Ahmed told me he wanted to tell his story. “I’ll first put my shoes on,” he said, pointing at the plastic slippers on his feet. He crossed the street and entered a building with a light blue façade, one of the cheap

“hotels” that are widespread in this area. I wondered why he needed to put his shoes on to talk.

When Ahmed returned, wearing grey sneakers, he needed to get something off his chest: “A Syrian trafficker disappeared with my money.” I was overwhelmed. I only knew his name, age and country of origin, and all of a sudden, he shared this information with me. And he just kept talking. “It happened two months ago. The trafficker disappeared with 1,000 euro. When I called him, he didn’t answer his phone and now the number doesn’t even exist. I never saw him again.”

Ahmed lit a cigarette, which gave me a few seconds to make sense of his story. I asked him where he had met the trafficker, a question I immediately regretted when he said “Here, in the restaurant…” as he pointed to a place behind us.

I didn’t turn around to look. When I was eighteen years old, I went to live in

Panama for one year. I stayed in a host family and one of the things my host brother

Maikol taught me is: “Rule Number One In The Ghetto: Don’t Point” And he was right, 33 in certain places and situations, it’s better and safer not to point. For me, Basmane was one of those places.

Besides that, I was already a bit suspicious, because I had noted that while Ahmed was talking to me, a man had come sit next to us. For some reason, I didn’t like his presence. It felt threatening. He seemed to have the menacing look of a movie villain. He was wearing a white shirt, had his black hair slicked-back with a royal amount of gel and was freshly shaven with only a very small patch of beard under the lower lip. I saw how he was talking to another man, who then translated to Ahmed. I had no idea what they were saying. The creepy looking guy lit a cigarette and pierced me with his dark brown eyes while taking a very deep drag from his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs, and letting it escape painfully slow through his lips. I stared back. Without blinking. I knew that he was trying to intimidate me. He did provoke a certain feeling of fear inside me. I felt a knot in my stomach, but I didn’t want to show it. I refused to let him scare and intimidate me and I just kept staring back. The staring contest didn’t really have a winner.

The man who translated interrupted us when he started talking to the sinister looking man. There was something fishy about this whole situation and I was scared that Ahmed was being threatened. I told him we could stop the interview or go somewhere else. He replied: “No, no, no, it’s okay.” And then mumbled through his teeth: “Can’t talk now, wait five minutes.”

We were just sitting there, without saying anything. I was worried about Ahmed’s safety. I didn’t want to put him in danger. In the evening, he would have to go back to his hotel, and I didn’t know who these people were. I used the same words, this time making 34 them sound less like a question and more like a demand: “We can stop talking here or talk in another place.” He agreed and we walked away from Hatuniye Parkı, through the narrow cobblestone streets that surround the square.

It was impossible not to notice what was going on there. The flashy orange lifejackets contrasted with the dark black inflated inner tube tires. Some lifejackets were clearly used, others looked brand-new (although I would later learn that a lot are fakes, stuffed with newspaper). The lifejackets were displayed on the streets, or hanging outside a shop, next to plastic slippers and waterproof pouches for cellphones, passports or important documents (fig. 2). Another vibrant business was repairing and selling cellphones and vending SIM cards (fig. 3).

Besides these small shops, the area had a large number of cheap “hotels”. Fındık

Pansıyon, advertised with a banner hôtel a bon prix, aiming for the French-speaking audience. I’ve heard numerous stories about the bad living conditions in these places. The average price per night is around twenty-five Turkish Lira, to sleep in a room with twenty people in unsanitary conditions where bedbugs and scabies are common.

While walking, I asked Ahmed who the scary looking guy was.

“Mafia or police.”

“You don’t know whether it’s the one or the other?”

“In Basmane there is no difference between mafia and police.”

“What did he want from you?”

“He asked if you wanted to cross me. I told him that’s not the case and that you are a journalist.” 35

I made sure Ahmed understood I am not a journalist. He said he did, but that he didn’t know what to say.

When we arrived at a main road, I asked Ahmed if we could sit somewhere to talk. He said that he was taking me to some place and continued talking about the neighborhood.

“In Basmane, you see a normal life, but it’s not. Beneath the surface there is so much going on that is not normal. Basmane is a dangerous place with drugs, thieves and mafia. The police are in cahoots with them. I had two cellphones when I arrived in Izmir.

Now I have only one because a Turk robbed me. This is not life. People don’t communicate here. And the Turkish people don’t like other nationalities.” Ahmed started pointing again, at people this time. “These people are from Syria and the ones over there are from Turkey. I am an Arab person, and they don’t like that here.”

“Why did you leave home and come here?”

“There is no work in my country because of the political situation. The war officially ended in 2014, but despite that, Hamas sometimes launches rockets into Israel.

There are still fights and unrests between both sides. Those attacks are decided by politicians, executed by the army, and that the citizens are the victim. In 2017, my house was completely destroyed after an attack. F-16 planes dropped bombs and the entire neighborhood was razed to the ground, there was nothing left.”

“How did you survive?”

“The Israeli army told us to leave.” 36

We kept walking the busy main roads of Basmane, with its hectic traffic, the sound of honking cars, and screeching tires. The heat and the exhaust made it difficult to breathe and Ahmed walked really fast. I now understood why he wanted to put on his shoes. I had already opened my small notebook because I thought we were never going to sit down and just keep walking. I wanted to make some jottings because I was afraid I would forget parts of Ahmed’s story. Not an easy task, since drivers in Izmir don’t respect pedestrians and pedestrians don’t respect the traffic lights and often run a red light. I tried to multitask: listening and talking, avoiding bumping into people and being hit by a car, while taking notes. Five words per page, because it’s difficult to write while walking.

We entered the Kültürpark, a large public park with a small lake, a fairground and a lot of trees and benches. I noticed Ahmed was looking for a place in the shade, but he seemed picky in choosing and walked in an unpredictable way. The only pattern I noticed was that he didn’t want to sit next to other people. When we passed four empty benches in a square formation, he gestured for us to take a seat.

“I travelled from Gaza to Cairo by bus and there I took the plane to Istanbul. My dream was to go to another country, work there and have a wife and kids. I am a lawyer. I did the TOEFL test and wanted to go to the United States. But my dream is gone now.

Because this trafficker stole my money. I’m going to return to my country. My family will send me some money to travel back. Once I get there, I’ll stay in my home and just do anything to kill my day. I see a dark future.” 37

Ahmed traveled in a legal way and showed me his passport and tourist visa for

Turkey inside it. He then abruptly said: “They’re here!” I had no idea what he was talking about and asked what he meant. Ahmed didn’t speak, he just pointed.

“We’re being followed?”

“Yes,” he whispered, “eyes open.”

Our suspected follower was standing in a corner of the park, behind some trees, close to the kids playing in the sandbox, talking on his cell phone. He didn’t belong there.

He wasn’t one of the parents accompanying their kids. He wasn’t there to stroll and rest on a bench. He was just standing there, in a weird place, without doing anything except looking around and talking on the phone.

I believed Ahmed and asked him since when this man has been following us.

“Since we passed Western Union. People from Turkey, Syria and Kurdistan, they work with the mafia. I think he’s from Kurdistan or Syria.” In my mind I saw that street corner and the Western Union building with the showy yellow color. It was one of the first places we passed after leaving the narrow streets and entering the main street, which meant this guy has been following the entire time.

Now I understood why we took such a huge detour to the Kültürpark, why we crossed that busy street next to Western Union, why we waited at red lights to cross streets we didn’t need to cross and why we zigzagged through the park, on the jogging trail and through the grass. All those things would be completely unnecessary unless you wanted to see if you are being followed. If someone else did all the pointless things we did, to end up at exactly the same location, that person must have been following us. I 38 didn’t even know Ahmed was taking me to the Kültürpark and never questioned his route. But now his behavior made sense. Strangely enough, Ahmed wasn’t bothered that we were being followed. He didn’t care about the man standing there. He almost seemed relieved to be right.

I asked Ahmed to tell me about his life. “I’m from Nuseirat [a Palestinian refugee camp]. I have five sisters and eight brothers. My dad died four years ago. He was seventy years old and had problems with his kidneys. As a widow, my mom receives 1,300 shekels at the end of each month. It’s around 400 dollars. When I was seven years old, I started to go to the UNRWA school [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for

Palestine Refugees in the Near East]. That’s where I learned English. I entered university to study law in 2009, when I was nineteen years old.”

I asked Ahmed what the most important moment in his life was. Without hesitating, he answered: “When my friend was killed by an Israeli soldier.” This answer took me by surprise, and I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Ahmed, a skinny guy with the bones of his sharp face clearly standing out. He had black short hair, hazel eyes, a beard and small moustache. I looked at his chapped lips and listened to the words they formed: “I still see the moment when he got the bullet in his head. It doesn’t leave my mind. And he didn’t do anything wrong.”

This was a lot of information at once. I wanted to ask him some questions but didn’t know if that was a good idea. I didn’t want to retraumatize him. But on the other hand, I felt he wanted to share his story, so I decided to ask how it happened. 39

“He threw a stone at an Israeli soldier. I don’t agree with that and I wouldn’t have done it. We were just walking to school and he was going in front of me. I saw how he picked up a stone from the street and threw it at the Israeli soldier. The stone didn’t even hit the soldier, but he came up to my friend. The soldier started hitting him in the face and stomach. My friend tried to fight back and that’s why he got shot. I think the soldier was a Russian Jew. He lived in Israel, but I guessed he was from Russia because he was tall, had a beard, and a tattoo. If he were here, I would still recognize him today.”

“He threw my friend on the ground and put his foot in his stomach.” Ahmed jumped from the bench to show how it happened. In the middle of the Kültürpark,

Ahmed bent over the imaginary body of his friend who was laying on the ground and about to die. Ahmed pretended to be the soldier and reached his hand towards the invisible hand of his friend. “He took the hand, pointed the gun and shot a bullet between his eyes. There was blood everywhere and I cried. They also attacked me because they thought I wanted to fight with them. The ambulance came and took my friend to the hospital, where he died.”

“What was the name of your friend?”

“Samy. We were neighbors and grew up together. I’ve known him since I was three years old. I hoped to do everything together with him. Go to university, play football and tennis.”

“Are you still in touch with Samy’s family?” 40

“Yes, we’re still neighbors. When I’m in Gaza, I visit his parents every morning. I always tell stories about him. About when we went to the market or did other things together. And his picture is in my house and in their house”.

We sat next to each other in a long silence. I was trying to process the story and wondered if I made the right choice to continue talking about this. I wanted to know if

Ahmed was okay and I asked him if it wasn’t too difficult to talk about all this. He said:

“Yeah, I want to cry”, and looked away from me, turning his face to the right. I saw he swallowed a lump of sadness in his throat, before turning his face to me again. I looked into his hazel eyes and noticed they had welled up a little bit. Ahmed rose his right hand in the air to give me a high five, as if to show that he was okay. I gave him a high five back and tried to smile, with more difficulty than him.

“My hope is that there will be peace in Gaza. I hope that there is peace between

Israel and Palestine. But I don’t know if that will ever happen. Even the United States, a country so big and powerful, can’t do anything against Israel. But I really don’t like war, bullets and rockets and want to live in peace.

I asked Ahmed about his most valuable object. “My mobile and my passport.” He showed his large Samsung with a golden edge around the cracked screen and said, “With this I can tell my family if I need anything. And I also use it to share pictures with my friends on Facebook and Instagram. But my passport is more important, because I need it 41 to go home (fig. 1). And they will send me to prison if I don’t have it. I’ve already spent three days in Yabancı when the police stopped me and saw that my visa was expired.” 2

“I’m a lawyer. I have never been inside a prison. When I entered that building, I felt so lonely. And I was afraid that I would have to stay long. Because most people are inside for about two weeks, sometimes even months! I was lucky they only locked me up for three days. My family told the Palestinian consulate and I was released. We were five people in a cell with three beds. Three were from Syria, there was a black man, I think from Congo, and me. The guards in Yabancı are terrible. When you arrive, they take all your belongings, except for the clothes you are wearing. You do have to remove your shoelaces. When you check out from prison, they should return everything. But they stole my beautiful lighter. And my friend never got his cellphone back. When I asked about it, they said they didn’t know about a lighter. They just steal expensive things to sell them.

And they beat people. They didn’t do it to me because I have a passport. But I have seen people beaten up. The place is overcrowded, the food is bad, and the guards mistreat us.”

“You have to promise me something. Talk about the inhumane conditions in

Yabancı and the deal between Turkey and Europe. The United Nations must do something about all of this. And what is happening in Basmane. People are sleeping on the streets because they lost their money to human traffickers. And it’s a responsibility of the United Nations. You have to let people know what is going on here. I told you these

2 Yabancı is Turkish for “stranger” and it’s the name people give to the closed detention centers where refugees are sometimes locked up. They also refer to it as “prison”. During my fieldwork in both Turkey and Greece, stories about Yabancı always came up. 42 things because for me it’s not dangerous anymore. I’m not crossing the sea, I’m going home.”

I told Ahmed I could not make that promise. I explained that the only thing I could do is write about it in my thesis.

Figure 1: Ahmed and his passport 43

Figure 2: One of the shops in the streets around Hatuniye Parkı in Basmane (Izmir, Turkey)

Figure 3: Repairing and selling cellphones and vending SIM cards is a vibrant business in the streets of Basmane (Izmir, Turkey)

CHAPTER 2: JIMMY

“Fight! Fight! Fight! And dance with the devil!”

When we walked past the Kültürpark’s amusement park, the pumping beats of the

Belgian electronic dance group D-Devils catapulted me back to my student days. I had to restrain myself from singing along with the song, because 32-year-old Jimmy from

Burundi is deeply religious, and I didn’t want to offend him.

“We sometimes come here to release the stress. It’s seven Turkish Lira for one

attraction,” said Jimmy.

“Which ride is your favorite?” I asked.

“The cars you need to drive.”

“The bumper cars? Where you have to hit the others?”

“No, no, no, you just have to drive.”

I had no idea what attraction he was talking about, because I had only seen the ones you can see from afar, without entering. The Tsunami, a blue construction covered in yellow lamps, consisted of a high pole with two large arms with capsules on each side, which revolve around their axis. The Ferris wheel with its white cars also stuck out, as did the pirate ship and The Evolution, with its spinning wheel on a rotating arm that makes you dizzy just by looking at it. Jimmy and I ignored the red cabochon lights that mark the entrance to Lunapark and left the noisy music and loud screams of excitement and fear behind us. We sat down on a bench, far enough from the tumult, close enough to hear the background music. 46

Jimmy has four sisters and one brother and is the second youngest. “My youngest sister has been living in Berlin since 2000. She married a man from Burundi whom she met in Germany. That’s where I wanted to go as well. I didn’t want to come to Turkey, only to Germany. I took the plane from Bujumbura to Istanbul, where I had a connecting flight. At Istanbul airport they didn’t let me take my flight to Germany because I had a problem with my visa. I’ve been in Turkey for one year now. Eight months in Istanbul and four months in Izmir. I had Turkish residency when I arrived in the country. In

Istanbul I worked legally in a cargo agency, sending goods to Africa. When I wanted to renew my residence, they refused. That’s when I decided to go to Izmir. I heard from other people they cross from here to Europe. But shortly after arriving in Izmir, I changed my mind. I found out that people have to try many times before they reach Greece. And they are being treated so bad. I’ve called to people who had made the crossing, one or two weeks after they arrived. They cried. Because of the bad circumstances in the camp.

Now I want to go back to my country, to do the paperwork, so I can still go to Germany.

But that won’t be easy, because there is still war in my country. I am Tutsi. We face the consequences of things we don’t know about. When we are born, they tell us: ‘you’re a

Hutu, or you’re a Tutsi,’ but we don’t know where that comes from. Next year, there are elections in my country. We don’t want that president, but he wants to stay. But eventually, your country is your country.”

Before traveling to Turkey, Jimmy had been part of a ministry for three years and traveled to different countries to preach. “I’ve lived in Tanzania, Mozambique, Kenya, 47

Uganda, DRC, Malawi and South Africa. Everywhere I was legal. I never thought that in my life I would find myself in this situation.”

Jimmy seemed to care about his appearance and liked accessories. He had a short brush cut and circle beard, and on his nose mirrored reflective blue colored sunglasses, with a gold colored thin frame. He wore red Nike Air sneakers, a pair of ripped jeans with (fake) black leather patches under the holes and a tie-dye sleeveless shirt with all the colors of the rainbow. He had a golden thin bracelet around his right wrist, and an analog watch with three dials on his right wrist, the bracelet with shiny silver shackles and a narrower strip of black shackles in the middle.

When I explained to him that my research is about what people carry, he answered: “What people carry is the word of God. For us Africans, we grew up in the system of praying. You can’t survive if you don’t have help from God. That’s why we fight to have a place, why we pay to pray.”

Jimmy was referring to the prayer services he organizes. He said the initiative was founded by himself and two Congolese men, of which one has just arrived on the island of Chios. “We plan ahead for the entire week who is going to preach. Sometimes people from other countries are invited to preach and if they are good they can come back.”

The services are held from Monday to Saturday from nine to 10 in the evening and Sunday from five to seven in the afternoon. “It’s mostly for people from Congo and

Cameroon, all the French speaking people.”

Jimmy talked about the people who stay in Basmane before making the crossing:

“They come with some budget, but it slowly diminishes. We try to help. Some people 48 don’t have money to pay the hotel. Some lost things in the water or were in Yabancı. And they want to be comforted, so they need the word of God to continue this journey. Here, people’s situations change every day. If you don’t pray, you will become crazy.”

When I asked Jimmy about his most valuable object, he didn’t have to think.

“The Bible. I got it in 2006.” (fig. 4)

“Why is it so important?”

“Because I know the value of that book. I’ve lost many things on the road, but I

haven’t lost the Bible. I can give you what’s inside, but I can’t give you the

book.”

Jimmy touched his watch on his wrist and showed it to me.

“I bought this watch because I like it. But if someone says he likes it [Jimmy took

the watch off], I will give it to him, and I can buy a new one.”

“How did you get this Bible?”

“My great uncle gave it to me in Rwanda. His name is Cyuma and he is a priest.

He is living in the U.S. now. He saw something special in me. He said: “You will go far and you will be preaching the gospel.” Even when I was only ten years old, the Bible was my favorite book. And my mom, she was a strong prayer. That seed, I have it from her.”

Jimmy’s mother is from Rwanda and his father is from Burundi. Both died in

1994. His dad worked in the medical industry and for that job they moved from Burundi to Rwanda. His parents died there, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. “It was too painful.” In the silence following this statement I became conscious of the soundtrack drifting over from the amusement park. Hearing Madonna sing about the tropical island 49 breeze on her Isla Bonita amplified the discomfort I felt until Jimmy started talking again: “When they died, we moved back to Burundi. Me and my youngest sister, we were still so young. We didn’t even know. And after two weeks we started asking about our parents. Only the oldest ones knew what had happened.”

I asked what “home” means to him. “Home is the place I can feel comfortable.

It’s where I’m free to do what I want. Home is where my family can live in security.”

We had to get ready to return to Hatuniye Parkı, because Jimmy had to preach and we first had to make a short stop at his hotel to take a look at his Bible. However, Jimmy had a surprise up his sleeve. He wanted to show me the ride with the cars he liked so much. When we entered the amusement park, I saw that I had guessed right: bumper cars.

He invited me to join him, to feel how it helps them to release stress. I know the ethnographer’s code is to always say “yes,” but I initially refused. I have never liked this ride. It’s too violent for me, and even as a kid, my long legs left me cramped in those small cars, always completely covered up in bruises. But Jimmy insisted. So I gave in, if only for the sake of participant observation and to experience for myself this mode of stress relief. The ride was horrible and when I got out of the bumper car, my right ankle and foot were covered in black oil and I could already see the bruise forming on my left knee.

While we were walking to Jimmy his hotel, I asked him what he was going to preach about. “Today it’s Pentecost and I will ask people why they follow Jesus. They follow Jesus because they are in trouble. But when everything is fine, people tend to follow Jesus less.” 50

I waited in the lobby of Otel Nur Güneydoğu Palas while Jimmy went to get his

Bible. It took him forever to come back and the owner didn’t seem very pleased with my presence. When Jimmy finally came down the stairs, I noticed that he had changed clothes. He had switched the flashy tie-dye shirt for a red polo shirt. He gave me his

Bible, which has a brown leather cover, the cracks in it showing the wear and tear, with a zipper. I opened the zipper to see the Bible from the inside, and the first thing I saw was a map of the Mediterranean Sea, illustrating Les Voyages de Paul (Paul’s travels). Turning over the leaves, I saw how Jimmy had highlighted certain verses and between some pages stuck white pieces of paper with notes on them.

From his hotel we walked the street to Hatuniye Parkı and entered Paşa Konağı

Oteli, a hotel that is adjacent to the square. We walked past the reception, to some kind of space that may have been used as a lobby before. My eyes had to adjust to the place, which was quite dark and had a strong paint smell. When we entered the room, Jimmy got into a discussion with who I think may be the owner of the place. The man was sitting behind a small wooden table with blue tablecloth, hands crossed over his fat belly. In his fifties, grey hair, beard and mustache, wearing white shorts and a striped t-shirt. With his clear eyes he gave me an angry look. Jimmy didn’t want to tell what the discussion was about, and I thought that the man wasn’t very happy with my presence, because he kept looking at me. (I later learned that there was a general practice whereby hotel owners formed partnership with traffickers.)

The grey cold stone floor with spiral motifs was partially covered by a long red carpet. There were four dusty kaki fabric couches with floral motif and wooden armrests. 51

To the left of the room there was another entrance to the hotel which wasn’t being used because the door was blocked by a couch. Some mattresses and bed frames stood against the wall. Above the door there were two bird cages with parakeets that didn’t sing. I sat down on one of the couches, with the dark brown wooden stairs in front of me. On the second floor, the stairs were being used to hang clothes to dry.

“La Bible est claire,” one of the preachers said as he started the service. There were two preachers, one translator who translated from Lingala to French and vice versa, and fifteen people. A small girl was filming me with her cell phone. As the door next to me opened, I had a glimpse of a bedroom. The floor was covered with at least eight mattresses. Meanwhile people started singing “hallelujah” and clapping their hands, followed by saying prayers. People fell to their knees with their hands in the air, or held their head with one hand, while snapping the fingers of their other hand. More people started to enter the room, and an improvised bench was made by putting a long shelf between two low side tables. People also sat down on the steps of the stairs. The temperature was rising, the praying became louder and everyone went for it. I don’t know if it was the heat or the hypnotizing verses I didn’t understand, but I started to move along with the prayers.

The prayers were followed by songs that made a powerful impression on me. I’m not religious and I don’t believe in God. But what they were singing seemed to come from deep inside them, very sincere and pure, full of emotions and real feelings, a mix of hope and despair. I could feel it. I could feel they believed in something higher and that they put their lives in the hands of this higher power, hoping and believing that this 52 spiritual entity would help them. It touched me how strong it was. I couldn’t understand what they were singing, but I could feel it. People also looked really happy. They had their eyes closed, hands in the air, and seemed relaxed. I was thinking that for one moment, they were away from all the misery, escaping from the reality of the tough life on the streets of Basmane, human traffickers, rough water, Turkish Coastguard, Yabancı, and all the other obstacles they face.

In the next song I could understand some words: “Jesui il est vivant et tout puissant.” It made me think that for a lot of people here, their belief in God is the only thing they have. Because they believe, it gives them strength. And without that, they would probably not be able to make this perilous journey. I also thought how this is a chance game. It’s like gambling. Some arrive to Greece on the first attempt. Others have to try ten times. Others never make it. People don’t have any grip on the situation and have to depend on so many factors they can’t control, from the unpredictable weather conditions to the mood of the traffickers and authorities, and the state of the dingy and its motor.

By now the stairs were packed with people. The preacher said, “Aujourd’hui c’est

Dimanche, on va témoigner pour la gloire de Dieu.” This was followed by applause.

People were invited for témoignages personnels (individual testimonies). All the témoignages were in French and the translator converted them to Lingala. The first one who testified was the preacher’s translator. His story was about how they were being stopped by the Turkish Coastguard at sea and that he spent only two days in a center for minors, because “Dieu m’a libéré.” 53

After that, a woman came forward. I noticed that the face under the short black hair looked paralyzed on one side. She said she wanted to thank God. “I haven’t slept. I have cried and I have prayed. I am sick.” While she was saying this, I looked at her face again, and wondered what she might have. While she was talking, she was rubbing her hands together in a very nervous way. She also rubbed her eyes, was emotional and once in a while wiped a tear away. She said she had gone to the pharmacy for medication.

“Now I feel good. That’s why I want to sing. Because thanks to God and the medication I am better.” She started singing with quavering voice, a little insecure, but after the first lines, she became confident and sang with power, raising her left hand in the air, fist clenched. Like some kind of victory, as if she had won something. She had her eyes closed and swayed from left to right. Everyone joined her and they were all singing along. Meanwhile the stairs had gotten so full that I couldn’t see the wood anymore.

Another woman came forward to say thank you “for what God did for us on

Wednesday.” She explained how they were going to cross [the Mediterranean]. Everyone was wearing their life jackets. However, fifteen minutes after leaving, the motor of the dinghy stopped working. They tried to start it again, but the engine was overheated.

“Then we were in the middle of the sea and there wasn’t any solution for us.” When they had left, the sea was calm, but the waves had become bigger. All of a sudden they heard and felt rocks. “On s'est retrouvés sur une île.” They had landed on a small island, where there were some fishermen who took a look at the motor and fixed it. They left the island, but after a few minutes, a piece broke off the motor and fell into the water. There was nothing they could do. The current pushed them back to the island and they stayed there 54 all night. “We were nineteen, including my five kids and husband.” The day after they hurried to cross again, without motor this time, but got into trouble “et nous avons appelé la police.” However, the police didn’t come, so they called a second time and then “la police est venu a notre secours.” When the police saw the motor, they said: “How could you have taken such risk?” The police told them that the motor wasn’t good and threw it into the water. Luckily, they didn’t have to go to Yabancı, “pour laquelle je remercie

Dieu.”

This was followed by the testimonial of a guy who explained that Wednesday after prayer service, he got a call from his trafficker, saying that they were going to leave.

“I first went to the priest and Thursday at eight in the morning we left.”. After thirty-five minutes in the water, they were stopped by Turkish Coastguard. It was a group of twenty- eight people, of which twenty-seven were released immediately. He was number twenty- eight, the only one who was locked up in Yabancı, but the day after they let him go.

That’s why he wanted to thank God.

The preacher said “Inclinons-nous la tête and ask God to talk to you this evening.”. That’s when Jimmy appeared. He was announced as a special guest. Everyone rose up and the other preacher, sitting next to me, gave me a small poke to tell me that I also had to rise. I was already trying to get up from that couch, but apparently it wasn’t fast enough. Jimmy made his appearance like a real showman, stirring up the crowd, shouting “Hallelujah” and people responding with “amen.” He divided the word hallelujah in different syllables, stressing them separately “hal-le-lu-jah.” He held his

Bible in his left hand and with his right hand he gestured or took a step and bent his knee 55 to stress another syllable. He was playing with the crowd like a real entertainer. He repeated this a few times, louder and louder, and the response also became more vociferous. When everyone was totally pumped up and excited, he said: “C'est un jour special.” A lot of people were recording during this prayer service, even with flash. I tried to count the people, and saw that there were more than fifty, not including the kids.

Jimmy said: “vous pouvez s’asseoir” and people sat down. He spoke in French, which was translated into Lingala. “Qu’est-ce que tu es venue faire ici?” He asked the audience questions, but they mumbled and seemed afraid to answer. He picked someone out and said “frère” (brother) to a man who was sitting on the stairs. On the higher part of the stairs, towards the second floor where the clothes are drying, kids had their heads between the bars of the stair railing, looking down.

A girl wearing black long pants, a white t-shirt and yellow jacket kneeled in the middle of the red carpet. Jimmy said: “ma sœur, tu répètes après moi.” She had her eyes closed, short black hair with threads in them, and was holding the hands of the other preacher, the one with the green shirt who was sitting next to me. Jimmy put his right hand on her right shoulder, and everyone was praying. Then we all had to kneel down.

Everyone. Including me, with my painful bruised knee. Including the people who were sitting on the stairs. I don’t know how they did it, so many people packed on the stairs, but they all turned around and kneeled on the stairs and it was almost a miracle that no one fell. We had to kneel for a very long time. I felt my legs getting numb when Jimmy came to whisper to me: “now we pray to the Holy Spirit.” It was the day of Pentecost. 56

Then the other preacher said: “Nous sommes une grande famille,” and we started shaking each other’s hands.

The preacher declared “L’église c’est l'endroit des bonnes nouvelles.” The words that the church is the place of good news were followed by applause. Then we had to stand up and pray again. “The Sunday prayer is important,” the preacher said, “because it prepares us for the week.” “Dieu est venu pour nous libérer, pour nous consoler” (God came here to set us free and comfort us). “Il faut prier comme jamais avant. C’est le dernier Dimanche a en Turquie”. (Pray like never before. It is the last Sunday in Turkey.)

There was more applause, singing, dancing and cheering, with everyone very much in their own world, shaking their bodies and walking around. The service reached its boiling point, everyone was sweating, and some wiped it off with a paper tissue.

This was followed by prière à deux, where two people had to pray together. At first, I was just holding hands with the guy who was sitting to my left and the girl to my right. We were three. But the preacher with the green shirt walked up to the girl and assigned me to pray with the guy. We were standing in front of each other, holding hands, and had to pray for each other. This was difficult for me, because I don’t believe and I never pray. My praying partner had his eyes closed and was praying very seriously.

He sometimes squeezed my hand, as if to reinforce his words, and moved our hands upwards and downwards. I looked down, staring at his blue FC Barcelona slippers. On his right foot I read FCB and on his left foot it said Messi 10 with the yellow and red color of the Barcelona flag in the background. I was wondering what he would be saying in his prayers for me. He didn’t know me, but it was probably obvious that I didn’t have 57 the intention to cross the sea. I did however wish him all the best. So I started mumbling in my own language, which no one would understand, and wished for him to cross safely.

People kept entering the place and everyone started to pray together for the people in Yabancı, and that God may free them. The preacher took the word again: “C’est une semaine de changement, de revolution. Le ciel va ouvrir et ensemble on va partir” (It’s a week of change, revolution. Heaven will open and we will leave together). He wanted to end the service with two announcements. The first one was about the praying service the next day. Everybody had to be there at 4.50 pm, because at 5.00 pm they would start praying and it would be a marathon. “C'est la prière de la dernière chance” (It’s the prayer of the last chance). “If you miss it,” he went on, “I won’t be here next time for another prayer because I will have left. We will leave together.” The second announcement started with: “There are a lot of people who film here.” The preacher explained how those videos spread and sometimes people at home see a family member who had said that he was in Paris, and then it’s revealed that this person is not in Paris, but still in Turkey. “Ça fait la honte” (It’s a shame). The preacher asked if people film, to not post it on Facebook. He said that lying is bad, but that it is their right. He explained that one person will record it and that everyone can ask for the recording. It can also be spread in the WhatsApp group they have, because for them it’s also important “le souvenir.”

After these announcements, someone brought out a small trashcan and placed it in the middle of the red carpet, right in front of my feet. It was the kind of trashcan people use in their bathroom, with a swing lid. Its light green color had frivolous patterns of 58 roses, hearts and stripes in pink, green and white. The preacher said we could give our

“offerandes.” People came forward and put money in the bin. I remembered Jimmy telling me they sometimes try to help people who don’t have a place to sleep or have lost things in the water. I also remembered that I had four coins of one Turkish Lira in the left pocket of my pants. I stood up and wanted to take it out, but I couldn’t. It was so hot, I was sweating, the pants were stuck to my legs and the pocket was too deep. I was searching in the pockets of my pants and I started sweating even more, because I got nervous. Then I noticed that everyone was looking at me, because they wanted to pass the trashcan to the people sitting on the stairs, and I was the only person who was still standing up when everyone was already seated again. I gave my memo book, pen and cap to the person next to me and used my free hand to straighten my pocket. When I felt the coins in my hand, I held them firmly, gave a hard pull and the entire inside of my pocket came out, hanging there like a dirty handkerchief. People were laughing with my clumsiness, but in a good way. When I was finally able to donate the coins, they picked up the basket and passed it on to the people on the stairs. I saw that some people even put notes in it.

“Whether it’s in Greece or Turkey,” the preacher concluded, “I close the doors of all prisons. Que Dieu les bénisse (God Bless you).”

Figure 4: Jimmy’s Bible and the map with Les Voyages de Paul

CHAPTER 3: MURAT

I met Murat for the first time on a hot Monday afternoon on the streets of

Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. I had just arrived after living for one month in the small fishing village Skala Sikamineas, and it was quite a culture shock. I was used to seeing only a handful of cars per day. During the one-and-a-half-hour bus ride from the tiny village on the North Eastern shore of the island to the capital, I hadn’t seen a single traffic light. The sounds of goat bells and the waves of the sea were now replaced by traffic noise. Mytilene isn’t even that busy, but compared to Skala Sikamineas, every place is. I was also mesmerized by the green neon light crosses marking the pharmacies, and its abundance in the capital. A luxury compared to Skala Sikamineas, where there is no pharmacy or doctor, something I learned on my first day there, when I stepped on a sea urchin and had twelve spines in my foot.

I couldn’t check into my room for the first hours and decided to explore the capital. I walked the waterfront and visited the castle, passed by Sappho Square (with the statue of Sappho, the famous poet who wrote about love between two women which effected our current use of the word lesbian which is also the gentilic for the inhabitants of the island), and the Saint Therapon church with its beautiful dome that dominates the city. I strolled countless times up and down the old market area and Ermou street, a collection of shops and tavernas where the locals enjoy their Ouzo. Around 1 o’clock, when the temperature started to peak, most of those places closed (until around 4:00 pm).

I didn’t surrender to that heat and kept walking the now almost abandoned street. When I saw a young street musician with blonde dreadlocks testing his guitar and small amplifier 61 speaker for an invisible crowd, I realized there was another crazy person trying to resist the temperature and I decided to sit down in the shade behind him. There was only one other person in that audience: Murat. He was interested in the guitar and looking for other musicians to play with. The guitarist didn’t seem very eager and Murat approached me a little later. He said he had seen me walking up and down the streets and we started a conversation. I was a bit reluctant at first, because I am mostly suspicious when people approach me directly, but that fear turned out to be incorrect. Murat was a very trustworthy and helpful person who was the key to some other encounters.

A few days later we met in Parko Agias Irinis, a somewhat neglected public park where twenty-year-old Murat could speak freely. “I’m from Turkmenistan. Actually, my mother is from Turkmenistan and my father from Pakistan, but I grew up in Turkey.”

Murat’s story turned out to be very complicated and there were some things about his past he did not want to talk about, which I respected. Between the lines of his story, I read that he has never lived in Turkmenistan. But that is just an assumption.

“When I was a kid, I lived in Pakistan with my family. But now they are… I lost my parents in a car accident. It happened when I was eight. I had a day off school, and we went to buy shoes. They both died and I was heavily injured, [pointing at his back] I still have scars. I spent many months, maybe even a year in the hospital.”

“Were there other family members who could take care of you?”

“I don’t want to tell. A lot of things happened in Pakistan, but I will say just a little bit.”

“Sure, no problem. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” 62

“Maybe I have family… But maybe I have something, maybe it’s money, maybe it’s… Because I was kidnapped in Pakistan when I was young. Maybe I have uncles who were behind that. I lived for a very long time in a completely closed and dark bedroom.

There was very little air, [pointing at his chest while inhaling] I still have health problems because of that and need to see a doctor at the hospital and take medication. Eventually I was able to get out, but that’s a long story.”

“When I was ten years old, a friend of my father took me to Turkey, because it was too dangerous for me in Pakistan. The first years in Turkey I stayed in Erzurum [a deportation center]. I went to Istanbul and started working when I was twelve. I got a job in a shoe factory through my father’s friend. One of the factory workers looked after me.

He was an usta [which translates as master of craftsman]. I worked there for five years.

The first three years the usta taught me everything and the next two years I was usta myself, with thirteen people working under me. The usta did not only teach me things at work. He was also like my brother and his mother treated me like a son. That’s why I stayed so long in Turkey.”

But Murat wasn’t living legally in Turkey. The job was not official, and he could not go to the hospital, something he really needed because of his health issues. “My boss told me he was going to arrange my papers. I let him know that I didn’t want money; I just needed the papers. But five years later, he still said I had to wait. I couldn’t do it anymore, because five years is a long time. He sometimes said he couldn’t pay me because there was no money that month. Or he only paid me half of the money and explained that he would pay the other half next month, but that never happened.” 63

Murat described how difficult his case was. “I don’t have a nationality. I don’t have an ID-card. Not from Turkmenistan, not from Pakistan, not from Turkey. One night,

I talked about my situation with a friend from Senegal. He was also illegally in Turkey. I told him I didn’t have a Turkish ID, that I couldn’t go to the hospital, that I couldn’t do anything. He said: ‘Let’s go to Greece, maybe Paris.’ I asked him: ‘How? It’s impossible!’ I told him the sea is so dangerous, but he said that we needed to buy life jackets and food.”

What Murat described here in real life, coincides with Hannah Arendt’s writings about statelessness in the book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt describes the stateless person as an outlaw, someone who falls outside of the framework of general law

(1967, p. 283). A stateless person living in a country without right to residence, work, social security and health care, is in some way constantly “violating” the law (Arendt,

1967). Being stateless leads to a loss of all rights and Arendt argues for “the rights to have rights” (1967, p. 296).

Murat’s friend connected him to the trafficker, but in the end, he decided not to cross. “I left alone. I paid six hundred euros to a trafficker in Istanbul. Transport over land and sea were included in that price. In Istanbul we got into a small van. It was completely closed, and extremely hot inside. We were about thirty people and I had one bottle of water with me. I didn’t know when we were going to arrive. I thought that maybe we were going to stop somewhere and be able to buy water. So I let people drink from my bottle. But we never stopped on the way. We left in the afternoon and when the trafficker opened the door of the van it was dark, it was already night. When we left, he 64 had told us to turn off our phones. After arriving, when I switched it back on, it was 2 in the morning. We were at a place close to the sea, near Çanakkale. There were fifty adults, twelve children and only one boat! We said we couldn’t go in one boat, that we were too many people. And he didn’t have life jackets. So we stayed in the jungle for three nights.”

This word, the jungle, always returned in the participant’s stories.3 The Olive

Grove, an informal extension of Moria camp is referred to as the jungle. On the Turkish side, the jungle is a remote place in nature close to the sea where traffickers gather the people for days, sometimes even weeks, before putting them on a dinghy. It was often clear when people had stayed a long time in the jungle, judging by insect bites, sunburn, dehydration and hunger. With this information in mind, I asked Murat if the trafficker gave them food and water.

“He gave us something the first night. Bread with cheese and tomato inside. I had some food in my bag, because I remembered years ago, when I traveled through Iran to reach Turkey, I didn’t have anything, no money, no food. Three days long we waited for another boat to cross. We just waited and waited. An then I saw a boat coming. It was the same boat! We didn’t want to get in, but the trafficker said: ‘If you don’t go, I will call the police and you will be taken to a camp.’ He told us that if we wanted to go alone, we had to give him 600 euros more and then he would bring us to a Greek island in a special

3 Probably the most famous jungle in this context is the Calais Jungle, which drew worldwide media attention. According to anthropologist Michel Agier (2016, 2018), the term jungle can be traced back to the 1970’s when it was used to refer to an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan. Jungle is derived from the Pashto word dMuratgal, which means forest or wood. 65 boat. But I didn’t have that money! I already spent my salary. Eventually we all decided to get in. When we were in the middle of the sea, we had trouble with the engine. It stopped working. We tried to start it again and again, but nothing happened. Everyone was scared, including me, because I can’t swim. After half an hour or an hour, we were able to start the motor again.”

The group arrived to Petra, in the North of Lesbos. “When we arrived, we called the police, because we knew that we had to go to the camp for registration. When the police arrived, they gave us some water and food.”

Murat arrived in Lesbos in June 2018, meaning he had been on the island for almost a year when I met him. He had lived almost the entire time in Moria, which is known as “The worst refugee camp on earth” (BBC News, 2018). Moria is a Reception and Identification Centre (RIC), also called “hotspot” designed to “swiftly identify, register and fingerprint incoming migrants” (European Commission, 2015, p.6). Or in the words of anthropologist Michel Agier (2011) a “sorting center” (p. 47) to manage the undesirables. The former military base officially has capacity for 3.100 people, towards the end of my stay on the island (July 2019) it housed more than 6.600 people and right now (end of February 2020) more than 19.400 people (Greek General Secretary for

Information & Communication).

“Moria is not good. Everyone says the same. There is a lot of fighting. You have to wait in line for everything, for example to get food, start the registration and get the right papers. Some people don’t wait in the line, which ignites a fight. There are also many fights at night. It’s too full, there are too many people coming from Turkey. And 66 everyone has been through bad things and they are all angry. I am also angry about the entire situation.”

“Did you fight as well?”

“I didn’t. Because I am alone. I don’t have family; I don’t have friends and there are no people from my country.”

In Moria Murat lived with twelve to thirteen people in an IsoBox, a container, that was designed for seven or eight. Three months ago, he moved to a house. “Because I had problems. I was sick and I had to stay in the hospital for one week. After that I talked to a lawyer, he spoke with someone from UNHCR and they placed me in a house. I live with people from Congo, Somalia, Ghana and Iraq who also have health problems. There are two bedrooms and one living room. In the living room there are four beds. Two people sleep in the smallest bedroom and in the other room there are three.”

Murat received one hundred fifty euros per month and said that was not enough, because he has to cook himself. In Moria, people only receive ninety euros per month, but they get food in the camp. However, the waiting lines are long, there is not always enough, and most people have told me that the food in the camp is very bad and that they don’t eat it.

When I asked Murat about his most valuable object, he told me about his guitar

(fig. 5). He brought it with him from Turkey to Lesbos. “I had it with me on the boat.

When we left, some people said: ‘What are you doing? Leave the guitar here. You can by a new one.’ I told them: ‘No, it’s like a family member, I can’t leave it.’ I even carved my name in it. My guitar was full of water when we arrived here. It was a bit damaged and 67 difficult to play. My only friend here, from Bangladesh, had a brand-new guitar and we swapped so I could keep playing. My guitar is in my friend’s house now, the only person

I trust. I miss my old guitar, but I needed one I can play. I know the old guitar is safe with my friend.”

“How did you get the guitar?”

“I bought it two or three years ago in Istanbul. I had a little bit of money and I looked for guitars on the internet. I used an app called Letgo, where people sell used stuff. The seller sent me the place where we were going to meet. I met him on the street and paid him two hundred fifty Turkish Lira. It was not a new guitar, but I wanted to start with that, because it was my first time. I learned to play the guitar on my own. I started watching YouTube videos. I didn’t have much time because I worked 12 to 14 hours per day. But when I had a day off, I practiced. Because I couldn’t take classes. I still watch

YouTube videos, because most people here speak Farsi, so it’s difficult to find someone who can teach you here.”

“What does home mean to you?”

“Sometimes I think about my father. Because when you have a father, you have everything. Then you have a home. But now… Nothing.”

There was a long silence and then Murat said: “Now I just want education.”

“What would you like to study?”

“Communication. I want to learn to speak better with people. Maybe I would like to be a translator and help people. Because I speak two languages. But I also want to 68 study English and speak better Greek. The problem is that I can’t go to school, because

I’m 20 and it’s only for minors. There are only two schools here and both are full.

“What about university?”

“I don’t have the right papers. I want to go to school, but I don’t understand the system. I want to work, but I can’t because I don’t have the insurance papers. I have applied many times to get those papers. It always takes very long and I never get them, people keep telling me to come back later. I just want to have a better life. And I don’t want help from other people.”

Murat put his two hands together like a person asking for money and said “I don’t want to be like that. That people have to give it to me. I want to work for it myself.” 69

Figure 5: Murat’s guitar

CHAPTER 4: SORAYA

Before going into the field, I wrote a research proposal in which I expressed my aim to have an equal balance between male and female participants, with extra effort to feature female participants since “migration research and policy has largely focused on male migrants or has lacked a gender perspective” (Upegui-Hernández, 2012, p. 228).

After a while in the field, it became almost a real quest. I noticed that in general, there were less displaced women than men. Besides that, they were less visible. In my conversations with men, I often asked them where the women were. They always gave me the same explanation. In opposition to the men, who often travel alone, a lot of displaced women are on the island with their family. In that case, they usually are the ones who take care of the kids and other family members and stay with them in the camp.

Indeed, when I saw women walking on the streets, they were mostly accompanied by family. That made it so much harder to establish a connection. The girls I met spontaneously, turned out to be minors. Although I had great conversations with them and I enjoyed their company very much, I could not use them as a participant. I talked in person to people from different NGO’s and aid organizations who focus on women, but their main concern was protecting the women, which I totally understood. That’s why I asked some of my participants if they could introduce me to women they know. Murat told me about Soraya, his friend from Afghanistan, who worked at the kitchen of Home

For All, at Skala Sikountos, a minuscule village that is a ten-minute drive from Moria camp. 71

Home For All is a Greek NGO, started by local fisherman Nikos and his wife

Katerina. They were one of the first responders when displaced people started arriving on

Lesbos. One day in 2014, when there were no aid organizations or camps on the island and the media hadn’t come up with the term of refugee crisis yet, Nikos was selling his freshly caught fish and saw people approaching him, thinking they were customers. The reality was that these people had just crossed the sea. Nikos and Katerina gave them clothes and made food, which they haven’t stopped doing since that day. Home For All houses different initiatives, but the most important one is the social kitchen, mainly run by displaced people and volunteers. They prepare food to distribute at Moria camp and to serve at the restaurant, where inhabitants of the camp can escape their situation for a while and enjoy a homecooked meal in dignity. In that kitchen I met twenty-three-year- old Soraya. She took me outside, and we sat next to the water, looking over the small harbor with its fishing boats and their reflections on the peaceful water.

Soraya arrived seven months ago. She lived six months in Moria and one month in a house in Kato Tritos, a village 2 kilometers from Home For All. “I’m here with my mom. When I started working here, she was alone in Moria. I always came back late in the evening and she was very worried. She constantly walked around, asking our neighbors ‘Where is Soraya, where is Soraya?’ and waited for me in front of the camp gate. One month ago, Nikos gave us a beautiful home.”

Soraya is the youngest of four siblings; she has two brothers and one sister. “My oldest brother has been living in Australia for more than ten years. He lived alone for such a long time, separated from his wife and son who were in Afghanistan. Only after 72 seven years they could go there and now they have been living together for three years.

Me and my other brother have tried to go there as well, but Australia doesn’t accept us.

That brother has been living several years in a refugee camp in Jakarta, Indonesia.”

“Why did he go to Indonesia?”

“Because everyone from our village, our neighbors, my cousins and uncles, said that if you go to Indonesia, you will stay in a camp for two or three years and then go to the United States or some European country and have a good life. But he has been in that camp for six or seven years and has a difficult life. He cannot go back to Afghanistan. He worked there as a police officer, had a lot of problems, and did not have the permission to leave the country. But he left his job and his country and now he can’t go back there.”

“In Afghanistan, I lived alone with my mother. My sister went to live in Iran when I was 7 or 8 years old. My mother and I stopped there on our way to Europe. Our journey started in Kabul, where we took a bus to Herat, which is close to Iran. A taxi brought us from Herat to Mashad in Iran. That drive took seven hours. When we arrived, my sister came to pick us up and we went to her house. Me and my mom, my sister, her husband and their three sons, we lived together for one month, before all going to

Turkey.”

“How did you go to Turkey?”

“We talked to someone and we paid him money. A lot of money,” Soraya said, followed by her spontaneous and catching laugh. 73

The journey to Turkey was under hard conditions and some of Soraya’s family members have health problems. Her mother has diabetes and her sister’s fifteen-year-old son has physical disabilities and can’t walk, speak and eat.

“They first drove us to some kind of house, but without doors and it was really cold. They brought us there so the police wouldn’t see us, otherwise they would send us back to Iran or Afghanistan. Because we didn’t go with a passport from Iran to Turkey.

We stayed in that house for three days, with sixty or seventy refugees from Pakistan and only two families: my family and another one. They just brought us some bread and water. Then we had to walk for one week, over the mountains. It was winter and so cold.

We didn’t have warm clothes and blankets and we were all sick. When we finally arrived in Turkey, we stayed in a house in Istabul for two months. There we had to pay again for the boat to Greece.”

“How much did you have to pay both times?”

“For the trip from Iran to Turkey I don’t know, because it was in Iranian money and I don’t know the value of it. But for the boat we had to pay nine hundred dollars per person. During the night they drove us in a van from Istanbul to the coast. We arrived at a place that was like a garden with a small home in it. It was so dark that we couldn’t see anything. At midnight we left by boat. It was a very small one! And we were fifty-five people, including children. It was so dangerous.”

Soraya showed me how she sat in the dinghy. She crossed her arms, bringing her right hand to her left shoulder and vice versa, clamping the imaginary bag she had with her. She started laughing, showing the gap between her front teeth, when she pointed 74 with her index finger (light green painted nails) to her lap (fake jeans) and said someone was sitting on her lap, in the same position like hers, while another person sat on her feet.

The small boat was launched into the water via a slipway.

“The single boys pushed it into the water and then they sat around us on the frame. Only they could see the water. The traffickers had told us to go towards a light, because that is Greece, but I could not see it. We arrived after three and a half hours and could not believe it at first. We all said that it was Turkey and not Greece, because there were no police and we hadn’t been followed. We called the Greek police, they came and told us we were in Greece and only then we believed it. We were all so tired and hungry and they gave us some bread and water. Then they put us on a bus, where we all fell asleep. When the police woke us up, we had arrived in Moria.”

“What is the most valuable object you carried with you during that journey?”

“Nothing. We didn’t bring anything. Just one bag with some clothes in it. Pants and jackets, especially for my mother. How could we bring anything? We had to walk so much through the mountains. And there was no space in the boat. But we also just wanted to come here and start a new life, a good life. That’s why we didn’t bring other things.”

“What happened when you arrived in Moria?”

“It was two days before Christmas and therefor no one could not help us. They said we had to wait three or four days and that they didn’t have a place for us. But it was so cold!

And we were all sick. Me and my mother, my sister, her four-year-old son and the oldest one who already has health problems. All the new arrivals stayed in a large tent which had only a roof. People put blankets on the sides, trying to keep the cold outside. We 75 didn’t have anything! That was so difficult. We were a lot of people and it was in front of the bathroom with a bad smell. Another woman from Afghanistan had seen how sick my mother was and said ‘Come to my home, I know it’s small, but you are all so sick, so please come in.’ She was so kind and took us to her tent.”

Soraya told me that when EuroRelief (a contested evangelical NGO which provides aid in Moria) started working again, they were assigned to an IsoBox container.

“We stayed there with two other families, one from Afghanistan and an Arab family.

That was such a good family. But after two months they went to Athens. An Afghani family came in their place. But the man drank a lot of alcohol and had problems with his wife. He came home drunk every night. There was only a blanket as a wall between us.

We were so afraid of him. Because we had never seen anyone who drink alcohol and can’t control himself. We had so many difficulties, until EuroRelief decided to put all the families with a man in a separate section in the camp and they put a wall there. But it was still dangerous. Six months long we couldn’t relax for just one minute.”

Soraya’s sister and her family were transferred to Athens after one month on

Lesbos, because of the complicated health case of the oldest son. That’s why Soraya and her mother spent most of the time alone in Moria. “My mother suffered from a lot of stress. The doctors advised her to go outside the IsoBox and walk. But how could we do that? It was winter and very cold For how long could we stay outside? And the other family in our IsoBox had problems during the night. How could we go outside at night?

It’s too dangerous!”

“Is Moria more dangerous for women?” 76

“Yes, so dangerous. We could not walk around alone [fig. 6]. The only place we could go alone was the restroom, because it was very close. But we couldn’t go alone to the shower. Never! We went with our neighbors. Two or three other women or girls.

When we were finished, each one called the other one from their shower stall: ‘Are you finished? Are you finished?’ Only when everyone was ready, we came out of our shower cabin and went back together.”

Do you want to stay in Greece or would you like to go to another country?

Soraya did not hesitate. “I want to stay here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I just like it. I have a job and a home here.”

“What does home mean to you?”

“When you have a home, you have a good feeling. You are not afraid of anything.

We can cook, we can go to sleep. In Moria, our neighbors fought with each other every day and it was noisy. We have a quiet life now and that’s so good for us. We are happy and feel relaxed in our home.”

“Are you going to apply for asylum here?”

“Yes, we have our interview in one and a half months. If we get a blue or black stamp we can travel anywhere in Greece. Now we can’t leave the island. But I would only want to go to another country for vacation and then come back here. I like Greece.”

I was astonished. Soraya was probably the only person who said she liked Greece and one of the few who told me they wanted to stay there. Most people wanted to go to 77

Germany, Sweden, France, or the Netherlands. Or they asked me what the best country was. I never really knew how to answer that question.

“Why did you want to come to Europe?”

“Because in Afghanistan we were alone. We didn’t have anything there. My mom is old, and I couldn’t find a job. We came here to have a good life, because my mom has already had a lot of problems in her life. I try to give her everything she needs and want to make her happy. I told everyone that we are here for my mom and they all laughed at me.”

“Why did they laugh?”

“I don’t know. They did. They said: ‘Why are you here for your mom? She is old and should be in Afghanistan.’ But I told them that I want to do something for her.”

“Is it because you are the youngest one and the only one who still can?”

“Yes, maybe. My brothers and sister have their own lives. And in Afghanistan I was also alone with my mom. That’s why I’m trying really hard.”

“Have you always thought like this, since you were little?”

“Yes.”

It touched me that this twenty-three-year-old woman was there to give her mother a good life. She wasn’t there for herself. On the contrary, she sacrificed herself and subjected herself to ridicule.

“I think it’s really beautiful what you’ve done. And I think your mom knows, right?”

“Yes, she knows.” 78

“How old is she?”

“She is fifty-eight, but she has been alone for twenty-three years. My father died when she was three months pregnant with me. She has had such a touch life and that is why I want to make her feel good. We can find everything, but we can’t find a mom and dad.”

Soraya’s answer surprised me. During our conversation, she had referred to her mom’s difficult life. However, I didn’t want to press Soraya to tell me more about it. The interaction with my participants was always based on a respectful relationship of trust.

Their (psychological) wellbeing was essential and I followed the ethical standards of ethnography. Since I wasn’t asking about it, I thought it was unexpected how it all came out after a simple question about her mother’s age.

“My father died from a gunshot wound in a fight between people from his village against another village. I’ve never known him. I have only seen one picture of him, because in that time, we didn’t have photos. We had a black and white picture of him at home. It’s with my sister in Athens now.”

“Do you think you are like your father?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Does your mom never talk about him?”

“Only my aunt’s, my dad his sisters. When I was small. They told me that my eyebrows and eyes are just like my father’s and they liked me because of that. They said he was so kind and such a good person. And I have never known him.” 79

Below her black hijab, Soraya had thick black eyebrows and dark brown eyes. I looked into those eyes and asked her what her hopes for the future are. “I would like to work in the kitchen of a restaurant because I like cooking. And I want to learn more

English and Greek. Because I want to be a good translator for the refugees. They need a lot of female translators. Women can’t always share their stories with a male translator.

They don’t feel comfortable talking to a man.”

After hanging out with Soraya for a long time, Murat joined us.

“How are you?” she asked him.

“I’m not fine,” he said. “Because someone told me that there is a new Greek government. And that it’s not good for the refugees. I heard they only want refugees to stay in Moria. They will lock the gates, and no one will be able to go outside.”

There had indeed just been elections and the coming days I would be hearing a lot more of those rumors that spread between the refugees and made everyone nervous.

Soraya had to go to the kitchen, because the first van from Moria would arrive soon. It arrived at 6:20 pm and brought about ten people. Some of them had clearly already been at Home For All and started putting white paper table cloths on the wooden tables and brought out plates and cutlery, plastic water bottles with sparkling droplets on it and cardboard cups. On the long table right next to the water, flanked by blue chairs, I saw various yellow reed breadbaskets and orange bowls with salad. I noticed that a lot of people had dressed up to come here. Some of them looked really elegant, as if they were going to a fancy restaurant. They were taking selfies and recorded videos. 80

When I saw people passing the saltshaker, I noticed that I was witnessing a very homely scene. It was so peaceful, people were enjoying their meal in a humane way, in all dignity, far away from the camp where they have to stand in line for hours to get food, while fights break out, to then eat it in their tent or IsoBox. If you wouldn’t know better, you would have thought that the people around the table were a family, sharing food and smiles, nourishing the stomach and soul. This was completely another world. You would almost forget what was happening just a few kilometers away. Two different worlds, separated by only a ten-minute drive of less than eight kilometers. When Murat took out the guitar and a volunteer joined him with a sitar, while the sun was going down, giving everything an orange glow, it became even more cozy. I wrote down in my memobook:

“After all the misery of the past weeks, this is the most humane thing I’ve seen so far.”

Figure 6: "Moria is so dangerous. We could not walk around alone"

CHAPTER 5: RIAD

The only living souls around were a few pigeons, picking at what for the human eye is invisible stuff on the ground. They scampered off, opening their wings towards the blue sky, when twenty-year-old Riad and I disturbed them while walking towards a bench in the shade in front of the impressive Saint Therapon church (fig. 7). Riad is from

Aleppo in Syria and he arrived on Lesbos one and a half years ago. However, he started his journey much earlier. “I went to Turkey three or four years ago, when I was very young. I was only sixteen years old when I went to visit my brother, who was living in

Istanbul. In Syria, I went to a place where people gather who want to reach Turkey. I knew someone there. I told him I wanted to leave, and he helped me. It took me three days. I first stayed two days in some kind of tent and the third day I ran over the mountains to Turkey.”

“It was a very big group that wanted to cross to Turkey. Maybe hundred people.

But we couldn’t pass this mountain. There were a lot of police and they could hear us. I tried three times. I didn’t let the police catch me. I just ran back. After the third time, I said to myself ‘I don’t want to try again, I want to go back home.’ But there was a man who told me I could go with just five or six other young guys. He said that we could run, that the police wouldn’t hear us and wouldn’t be able to catch us. I thought ‘Okay I will try one last time’. And that time I arrived. But the last place we had to cross, if the police saw you passing that mountain, they would fire at you. A friend of mine who I met in the tent, together with his two small daughters and wife, he was shot in the leg. But I just kept running. My friend survived, but I don’t know anything more about him.” 83

“After crossing the border, we had to walk six or seven hours to arrive to the street, where a car was waiting for us. They wait for people who have crossed and ask hundred or two hundred dollars to take you to the city center.”4

“What city was it?”

“A place close to Syria. I wanted to go to Bursa [a two-hour drive from Istanbul] because I knew my brother was there that day. I went to a small restaurant where I saw a man from Syria.”

“How did you know he was from Syria?”

“There are a lot of people from Syria in that place. I just went to the name of the restaurant. It was in Arabic: Abu Abdo. That’s also the name of the owner. I told him I had just arrived and that I wanted to make a phone call. Because the battery of my phone had died. And my brother didn’t know I was coming to Turkey.”

“He didn’t know???” I almost shouted and just looked at Riad with my mouth wide open.

“No,” he said laughing.

“How come he didn’t know?”

“How come…” Riad hesitated. “I didn’t tell my family that I was going to

Turkey.”

“Really?”

Riad chuckled shyly “Yeah.”

4 I did not see a clear trend in the currency that was used to pay the human traffickers. It was often in dollars, but sometimes also in euros (Murat) or Iranian Rial (Soraya). Depending on the part of the journey, Riad has both paid in dollars and euros. 84

“You just left?”

“Yes.”

“And no one knew?”

“No one.”

“Really? Why did you do that?”

“I don’t like to say goodbye. I didn’t want to do that to my mother. A few days before I left, I had told my mother I wanted to go to Turkey. She had hesitated and said

‘Okay… Maybe we can find a nice way to send you over the mountains.’ But actually, there is no better way.”

“So you didn’t say goodbye to anyone?”

“No. I left without anything.”

“Wasn’t that hard?”

“A bit… Maybe I was a bit stupid. Yeah, I was sixteen. I left with only the clothes

I was wearing. And hundred dollars in my pocket.”

How did your family react when they found out?”

“They didn’t say anything, because they know it’s a difficult journey. When I told them that I was in Turkey, they said ‘Okay, if you are all right, there is no problem’.”

Knowing how Riad left his house, I tried to reconstruct the story again to understand how he was able to undertake that journey.

“It was 11 in the morning and I just went to that place where people go when they want to cross. Normally you have to pay three hundred dollars to cross the mountain.

Because there are people who say: ‘This part of the mountain is ours. We can let you go 85 or not’. That’s why you have to pay them. Sometimes they send one or two guys with you to show the way. I didn’t have the money. I only had hundred dollars and I wanted to save it, because maybe I would need it in Turkey. But I knew one of those guys. He let me go without paying, because I told him he could go to my house and ask for the money.”

“I used my hundred dollars to pay the car that took me to the city center. When I arrived there, I had literally nothing. The Syrian restaurant owner helped me out. He took me to his house for three or four hours and said: ‘We have to find a way to get you out of here. Or you can stay here for a few days.’ But I told him I didn’t want that. The problem was that I needed hundred dollars to pay the Turkish police. I had to take the bus to

Istanbul. But on the road, there are police and they can ask for your papers. If you don’t have them, they can send you back to Syria. That is why you give the bus driver hundred dollars if you have no papers. If the police stop the bus, the driver gives him the money.

The restaurant owner gave me the money I needed. I paid him back, I sent it to him when

I was in Istanbul.”

Riad told me about his family. “I am the youngest of six children. We are all guys. One brother lives in Germany and another one in Turkey. I stayed with him for one month in Istanbul, and then he went back to Syria.”

“Why did he return?”

“He was forty years old and didn’t want to work with Turkish people. They hate him, you know… He wanted to have his own job. He had some money and started a 86 small shop, where you can buy electronics. But it didn’t work, so he wanted to go back again. And he has three kids in Syria.”

“Would you ever like to go back to Syria?”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Not even when the war ends?”

“No. I didn’t like life there. When I started knowing life, the war started. I have never seen the old places in Syria. I have never seen if they were beautiful or not. I just opened my eyes, and there was war. Before I went to Turkey, we had three or four very difficult months, with a lot of bombings. That’s why I decided to go. I didn’t want to stay inside the house anymore. It’s so boring. I couldn’t even go to the market. If you go out, there are explosions. One day, when I was about fifteen years old, I went to my father’s shop. It was a holiday, but I went there to play on the laptop. I was there alone when a plane dropped bombs on the shop. I lay down and everything was broken. They had to take me out of there. I was only a bit hurt, because of the walls. After that I said to myself that I didn’t want to live there anymore.”

“What does home mean to you?”

“I haven’t felt at home since I have left Syria.”

“In Syria you felt at home?”

“Yes, of course. You live in your house, you know. A dangerous place is still home. A lot of people don’t want to leave. They prefer to die there. My family doesn’t want to leave. I know people who went to Germany. They didn’t feel good there and went back to Syria. My uncle did it.” 87

I thought about what Riad shared with me. About the people risking their lives crossing the mountainous border between Syria and Turkey and the nautical border between Turkey and Europe. After that perilous journey, they face inhumane conditions in camps and a painfully long asylum process. I thought it was interesting how some people, who’s main goal during years of suffering was to get to Europe, decided to go back home after they were finally relocated in their host country. I asked Riad why he thinks people like his uncle returned to Syria. “That’s what I don’t understand. When I was living alone in Turkey, I participated in a government program for minors. My parents could legally come over for ten days because of Eid [the end of Ramadan, a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims]. They came by car, visited me in Istanbul and stayed one month.” Riad raised his voice: “And then they wanted to go back! I don’t know why! I told them: ‘You can be here; we can rent a house and…’ But my father said:

‘No, no, no, no, no, I want to live in my home’.”

“After my brother had returned to Syria, I stayed in a very small room with five guys. I brought my mother there. When she saw the room, she said: ‘You will not stay here anymore. I will not leave without you. If you live in a nice house, it’s okay, but not here.’ The day my parents returned to Syria, they told me I had to go back with them, that there was no other option. So we went to the station to take the bus that would bring us close to Syria and from there we would go home. When we were at the station, I told them I was going to buy something and I took another bus, back to the place where I was living. My parents took the bus that drove them close to Syria. But I didn’t want to go.” 88

“When I had been living in Turkey for about two years, I received a message from my brother in Germany. He said there was a group of people who wanted to go from

Izmir to Greece. He told me he was going to pick me up when I arrived in Greece. The next day I went to Izmir. I stayed in Basmane for ten days before crossing the sea. We were fifty people. They first locked us up in a small container, like those you see on trucks. We all had to go inside, and they closed the doors. We couldn’t smoke and had to turn our phones off. We were in there almost the entire night. I think ten hours. The traffickers had told us we each had to pay one thousand dollars and that we would leave in a big boat, definitely not a small one. When went to the sea, we saw this small rubber boat. I said that I wouldn’t go with that boat, that we were fifty people and that the group was too large for this rubber boat. But they said there were police around and that we couldn’t return from the sea to the city center. If the police caught us, they would bring us back to Syria because we were going to Europe illegally.”

“I know you left Syria without anything, but did you bring any important object from Turkey to Greece?”

“I only had a small backpack with some clothes and my papers from Turkey. But we threw it in the sea. Because we thought it wouldn’t work. There were too many people and bags. So everyone threw one or two bags away. I wasn’t afraid of the sea. The point we left from, was very close to Lesbos. That’s why I thought I could swim if anything happened. But I don’t know what was going on… Maybe we lost the way. I thought that we could arrive in one hour. But we left around 5 in the morning and arrived at noon. It took us six hours. When we were at sea, there was a problem with our boat. It didn’t 89 work anymore. We tried to put the engine on again. But nothing happened. A girl that spoke English very well called the police. They came very fast and picked us up. They were not from Greece [probably Frontex] and treated us really bad. They started shouting

‘go, go, go’ and kicked and hit people to get them into their boat.”

“After arriving on Lesbos, they took me to Moria. I stayed one night outside the tent. Because I didn’t have any papers. The next day they sent me to the Safe Zone, because I was a minor. I mean, I said I was a minor, but I wasn’t. When I arrived in

Moria, people told me it would be better to say that. I stayed in the Safe Zone for six months. Then I moved to a minors house in Mytiline and five months ago I moved to a house for adults.”

“What is different about the Safe Zone?”

“It’s a place inside Moria for minors. It’s a better life. There are containers to live in. You don’t have to go to the line and wait for food because they bring everything.

There is a small school and they have workers for everything, including cleaning. You just sleep and eat. But I didn’t have a good life there. In Moria there are fights every day.

The first month I lived in the Safe Zone, I shared a container with seven people from

Algeria. I was the only one from Syria. There were other minors from Syria, but from

Kurdish Syria. They don’t speak Arabic like me and the Algerians do. That’s why they put me with the Algerians. But they were always smoking drugs. They woke me up at 3 or 4 in the night. To smoke with them or… I just left the room and went to the workers.

Inside of the container there were only beds. The showers and toilets were outside. 90

Twelve or thirteen in a row and always dirty. The minors house in Mytilene was better.

They cook better than in the Safe Zone.”

We laughed together. “Yeah, first thing I care about is food.” Riad pulled out a yellow plastic pouch with tobacco. He opened the flap, took out his rolling paper and put some tobacco in it. I asked him why food is so important to him. While shaping the tobacco in the rustling sounding rolling paper between the thumb and index fingers of both hands, he said, “Food is everything.” Again, we laughed together, and I admitted that food is also one of my weak spots. He licked the rolling paper, put the cigarette between his lips and said: “I couldn’t eat in Moria,” followed by the scratching wheel sound of the lighter.

“What is your favorite food?”

“Fish.”

“You’re lucky then, being this close to the sea. Is there is any type of food that reminds you of home?”

“There is a lot of food I haven’t eaten in two years. But I don’t know how to cook it.”

Who cooked in the minors house? Could you prepare Syrian food there?”

“The workers cook. They are always in the house. You can also cook if you want.

But then you have to cook for everyone who lives in the house.”

The food wasn’t the only thing Riad liked about the minors house. “You share a room with only two or three other guys. We had three rooms in this very big and nice house. We even had a small garden. We could ask for whatever we wanted. We could go 91 to school, play football, or swim. I only didn’t like the way they treated our papers. You just have to wait, wait, and wait. And they don’t tell you anything. I mean, I want to know when I have my interview. Tell me the date. Tell me why I’m going to have the interview. But they never told anything.”

There was a silence and Riad lit his cigarette again. “You know, in the beginning

I thought that I would stay on the island for two or three days and then they would send me to another place. I didn’t even know I was coming to Greece. I didn’t know there was something called Greece.”

“You mean you didn’t know Greece was a country?”

“I didn’t. I thought I was coming to this island, that after a few days they would give me my papers and that I would go to Germany. I wanted to go to Germany, but… the lawyer wasn’t very good. She always wanted papers from Germany. The bank account and passport of my brother. I sent her everything, and in the end, she wanted a paper with my father’s name, my brother’s name and my name. All in the same paper. I didn’t have that. I couldn’t give it to her. Then I decided to apply for asylum in Greece. I had my interview two months ago. When I went there, they gave me a new paper. They had cancelled my interview and changed the date to December 2021. That’s more than two years from now. For an interview that takes one hour. I can’t believe that the day I had the interview, they just told me to come back in two years. Greece is very, very lazy with papers. It takes so much time.”

“I can never feel at home, because they always send me from one place to another. From the Safe Zone to the minors house, from there to a house for adults and 92 just yesterday I had to move to another adults house. They just changed it. I don’t even know why. The responsible said we had to change. And we were living in such a good house. Now we can’t even sleep, because in our new place there are a lot of mosquitos and other insects. You can’t feel that you are staying here and that this is your home. I will feel at home when I work in Greece. When you work, you can have your own house.

A few days ago, the responsible came to my house. She said that I have my interview in two years and that I have to leave, to Athens. She told me they are not going to pay me anymore and that I have to find a place myself there. They have already done this with some guys from my house. They just send you to Athens. There is a big camp close to that city.”

It was clear that Riad struggled with the uncertainty. “I have my interview in two years. Maybe they will accept me, maybe not. You don’t know. But I have a lot of friends from Greece who work with organizations and I have my girlfriend. She helps me.”

“Where is your girlfriend from?”

“From Greece.”

“And you met here on the island?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

“How did you guys meet?”

“Hmmm…” He hesitated. “It’s difficult,” followed by his laugh.

“No problem, you don’t have to talk about it.” 93

“She was working at the minors house I lived in. As a psychologist. Although I’m not living there anymore, we don’t want people to know about it, because it could give her problems at work.”

“How do you see your future?”

“I want to study. Psychology. Or something with computers. I want to live in

Greece. I like it so much. If you live here, you can live like Greek people.”

“How is living in Greece different from living in Turkey?”

“The Greek are not as racist as Turkish people. They don’t let you feel you are a refugee. They are really good people. You know, in Turkey they just hit you because you are not from their country or don’t speak their language. Some of them are afraid to touch you or eat with you. They always feel they are better. Here it’s not like that. In Greece I can meet someone today, we can go to the sea tomorrow and the day after we sleep in the same house.”

Figure 7: View of the Saint Therapon church

CHAPTER 6: HAROON

“Hello. Do you need an English translator in Lesbos? I can speak English, Dari,

Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.”

I received this message in a private Facebook conversation on May 28 at 2:11 in the afternoon. I didn’t know the name of the sender and we were not friends on

Facebook. When I checked the profile, I didn’t get any wiser. I was quite suspicious about this. Who was this person and how did he or she know that in a few days I would arrive on the island of Lesbos?

I replied, thanking for the offer, saying I didn’t know if I would need a translator, but that I would be in touch when I did need one. I asked who I was talking to. “I’m a refugee from Afghanistan living in Kara Tepe camp on Lesbos.5 I saw your message in the Facebook group ‘Lesvos Volunteers accommodation sharing’.”

On May 14 I had indeed posted I was looking for a place to stay or to share in

Skala Sikamineas. That village on the north shore of the island was not anywhere near

Kara Tepe. But I thought it was interesting that some displaced people living on Lesbos became a member of the group, read the messages, and contact people to offer help or certain services.

On June 17 I reached out to this person again. I had completed my first Korakas night shift the day before, which meant that I had stayed up all night and went to sleep around 8 in the morning. I woke up around 1 in the afternoon and managed to drag myself out of bed by 2 pm. Feeling guilty about not having done anything for my

5 A small camp that houses vulnerable families. 96 research that day, I decided to follow up on this. Even though I had only been a few days in Skala Sikamineas, I was already thinking ahead, maintaining the conversation with possible contacts. I explained my research, gave some information about myself and said

I would not need a translator, but that I was interested in hearing their personal story, if they wanted to share, underlining that participation is completely anonymous and voluntarily.

“I understand. I have experience with this. I know many refugees who have been living on the island for more than one year. I have experience working with international

NGOs in Afghanistan and am willing to talk to you anytime. I’ll send you my phone number. Can we have a WhatsApp conversation?”

Only at this point I was almost sure I was talking to a man, based on the profile picture and screen name. It was clear he preferred WhatsApp over Facebook and I wondered if that was more private. I told him I first needed to find something to write and warned that my internet connection wasn’t very stable. I was sitting on a wooden chair on the small balcony of my room at Pension Niki. I knew I would not have a better Wi-Fi signal inside. And I wanted to enjoy the breeze, straight out of the deep blue sea, which was sadly out of my sight because the village bakery blocked it. I was looking at the white tablecloth, kept in place by a heavy glass ashtray, blowing slightly in the wind, and took the decision to make the phone call from the balcony.

I was happy I had chosen to sit outside, because when Haroon (only now he introduced himself with his name) started talking, it was like an unstoppable train.

“Moria is the worst refugee camp in Europe. I know a guy who tried to slit his own 97 throat. But unfortunately, he is still alive. He said it would have been better to die in

Afghanistan. In Moria almost all the refugees have some mental illness. I can show you the medical certificates and all the other papers they have.”

I was overwhelmed by the information he shared, without me even asking about it. I thought we were just calling to get to know each other better, before meeting in

Mytilene. I had the feeling Haroon was marketing himself. He said he had experience working with people from two universities, one in Canada and one in California and that he could send me a picture of their business cards and the questions they asked. I told him that wasn’t necessary. Haroon explained how the research was done. “I brought people to a café in Mytilene, where they talked for one hour or one and a half hours. They got paid twenty euros. They can talk about anything, also about Qachaki [the Persian word for traffickers].”

My mind was racing, because this was not the approach I wanted to take. I had serious (ethical) questions about what Haroon was telling me. How did he recruit the people for the study? What were the criteria? Why did they participate? Just because they were getting paid? And in that case, how honest and open could they be when answering the researcher’s questions? How honest and open can you be anyway without knowing the person beforehand, without having built any relationship of trust? What was Haroon his benefit in bringing people to that café? Did he make the same people participate in both studies?

I really had my doubts and didn’t think this was an ethnographic approach, so I told him I didn’t want to use this method. It maybe would have been an easy and 98 convenient solution for my study: Haroon bringing the people to a place where I ask them my research questions, to never see or hear them again. I would have been able to return home with an answer to all my research questions. But my study is not about quantifying or generalizing results. And I had serious doubts about the wellbeing of people who participate in those studies, generating answers like a robot to the questions they are being asked, which to me seemed as if some factors such as retraumatization were not being considered. I ended our conversation by making clear that was not the way I work and that I was only interested in his personal story, repeating everything I had already said before.

We kept in touch and when I arrived in Mytilene, we arranged to meet. We had a phone conversation on July 8 and agreed to meet the next day at 10 in the morning. He would send me the location via WhatsApp. But from the message, I didn’t understand where it was, and I asked him to give me the exact description. He replied: “Okay, don’t worry. I will go there tomorrow before 10 am and send you the location. It is in the center of Mytilene, near the place where the big boats stop.” That was an extremely vague direction, and I told him I wanted to know before 10 o’clock where I had to go. I asked if he was talking about the place where the ferry boats arrive. I even sent him a map, to make myself clear. He sent me an answer immediately deleted it. I was too late to see what it said. I asked again for the exact name of the place. He replied: “Madam, I will be there before 10 am. I mean before you arrive. And then we can go inside together.” Why was he calling me madam now? I told him I like to know beforehand where I have to go.

I didn’t trust this situation anymore. Over the past weeks, I had been intimidated by 99

Greek authorities in different situations, while working as a volunteer in Skala

Sikamineas, visiting a cemetery in Mytilene, or talking to people in the proximity of

Moria camp. And now there was this guy, acting all weird. He knew what I looked like, because he saw my Facebook profile picture. A profile he looked up scanning a

Facebookgroup for volunteers. Maybe the fatigue and earlier unpleasant encounters made me half paranoid, but I was really suspicious, and told him that. I wrote that I didn’t even knew what he looked like and asked how I could know if this was even real. He replied:

“Can I call you know? Because in text messages I am sometimes misunderstood.” This made me doubt the situation even more, because now it seemed as if he was desperate to meet me the next day, as if he had something to lose. I told him I was not able to receive phone calls and went to sleep. The next morning, I saw he sent me two messages and erased them. Again. He had also called me. I really didn’t want to meet him anymore and decided not to respond to the deleted texts. And I was relieved he was not writing me either.

Ten days later, July 19, I came to senses and decided to give it another shot. I asked Haroon if he would still be able to meet. He responded immediately and we agreed to meet at One Happy Family, a community center for displaced people on Lesbos, not far from Kara Tepe. I was going there anyway, because they were organizing an African

Cultures Day with dance, theatre and food. And Haroon said he needed to be there to print something. When I arrived at One Happy Family, I still didn’t know who I was looking for. Haroon texted he was close to the kitchen. It seemed as everyone was close to the kitchen. They probably all wanted a taste of the African dishes. Suddenly a man 100 walked straight towards me, making eye contact. He was tall, broad-shouldered and had a military style haircut, the sides of his head shaven and a milimetered top. He reached his arm forward to shake my hand. I personally like to give a firm handshake and hate it when the other person’s hand slips through mine like a soft dishcloth. His handshake was quite memorable. He almost pulverized my hand when it disappeared in his shovel hand.

While shaking hands, I looked into his brown green eyes and saw his shy smile, and for some reason, I immediately trusted him.

We spent more than three hours talking in the One Happy Family garden, surrounded by colorful flowers, growing vegetables and the aroma of herbs, with the sound of African music in the background. After talking for half an hour, he said:

“Sorry for what happened a few days before.”

“No, it was also my fault,” I replied.

We realized that we both had been afraid of the other and laughed with ourselves.

One of the things he told me during our conversation, is that he has to survive with two hundred forty euros per month and how challenging that is. “After fifteen days, we run out of money and I have to take a loan with someone. Going to the store with my kids is really difficult, because I’m not able to buy them what they want. Last time they were pointing at a watermelon, saying they wanted to eat that, but I had to spend my money on other things.”

The following day, I remembered what he had told me. On my way to meet him, I stopped at a small neighborhood shop, looking for watermelon and ouzo, because I knew that was his drink of choice. They didn’t sell slices of watermelon in the shop, and I 101 ended up with half of a huge watermelon and a small bottle of ouzo. I cursed myself, because I had to walk all the way to the center with that heavy load, in a sweltering heat.

The plastic bag cut my hand and I walked like an old lady, unsteadily and leaning to one side. My fingers went numb and I had to stop numerous times, to change the weight from one hand to the other. When Haroon saw me arriving, he almost shouted:

“What is that?”

“I was thinking about what you told me yesterday.”

With great pride I showed him the bottle of ouzo, because although the watermelon was for his kids, I hadn’t forgotten about him.

“You forgot the cups and the water to mix it with.”

I didn’t know we were going to drink it together. It was 11 in the morning and I hadn’t even had breakfast. I hesitated, because alcohol on an empty stomach isn’t always a great idea, especially not while doing research, and I took my work very serious. But when we passed a shop, Haroon bought some plastic cups, a small bottle of water and an energy drink similar to Red Bull. “This drink works like coffee, if you haven’t had breakfast yet, you should mix that with the ouzo.” I wanted to follow his advice, but also bought some cookies fill our stomachs.

Haroon poured out our drinks, we toasted, and he started his story. “I was born thirty-two years ago in Balkh province in Afghanistan. I have one sister and seven brothers, of whom two are younger than me. I started going to elementary school when I was six and went to high school when I was twelve. I graduated in 2006 and took an exam to enter university. I passed it and was accepted into the Journalism program. 102

Unfortunately, I could not continue, because my family had economic problems. My father was working with the government, but his salary was only enough to bring something home to eat. My life was very difficult then. I tried to work where I could and combined it with taking private English classes. I had learned English at school, but wanted to improve, because I was sure that would help me finding a good job. My father had given us one advice: ‘Work and study, those are the only things you should do. If you have studied, you will never lose that.’ That is speak some English, which makes my life better than that of other refugees. It is also the reason why I could find my future jobs.”6

“In 2007 I applied for a job with No Lemon. It’s a company that supports police and army vehicles. I think they also worked with the U.S. embassy. The day of the job interview was very strange, and I still remember all the details. At first, they didn’t want to accept my cv. I knocked the office doors three times, but they didn’t open. Then a foreigner showed up. His name was William. He asked me what I was doing there. The guard answered in my place that I wanted to give my cv. William said: ‘Okay, let him go.’ When I entered the room with the other candidates, I saw that there were twenty people for three positions. I was wearing a very old pair of shoes, but they were clean. I didn’t have a bag with me, I just had some papers in my hands. The other guys in front of me were wearing nice suits and looked different than me. But I had the highest score on the exam [laughed] and they selected me. I started working as a contact person and

6 I thought this was an interesting paradox. On one hand, Haroon explains how important the English language was to find a good job and how he’s better off than the other refugees because he speaks it. On the other hand, it is his work with the international (English-speaking) organizations that forced him to flee from Afghanistan, and the English documents he brought with him on his journey caused him many problems. 103 interpreter between the police and foreigners in Afghanistan. When the vehicles returned from the war and needed to be repaired, I arranged the paperwork and made a report.

After a few months, the site manager called me. I was going to be recognized as employee of the month. They gave me two hundred dollars, a cell phone and two blankets. I was also offered the higher position of Mobile Maintenance Supervisor. The manager explained that the job was a little bit dangerous, but that they were going to increase my salary. When I started working, I earned three hundred dollars per months and they would raise it to nine hundred. Because in the northern provinces of

Afghanistan, and actually everywhere, there are fights and it is not safe. Together with two mechanics I had to go to other provinces with the mobile maintenance car, carrying the tools to repair the vehicles. The mechanics did the repair and I made a report of it, which I brought back to the main base.”

“In 2010, we were caught in a Taliban ambush in Ghormach district. We were driving towards a village and suddenly the car in front of us exploded because it hit a mine. All the windows in my car were broken. The Taliban were hiding behind the trees and shooting on us. One of my colleagues died. I was so scared that I couldn’t move my legs. When this happened, my parents were still alive. Sitting in that car, I had a vision of them. My brothers and sister also came into my mind, I just saw everyone. I called my family and explained them what had happened. I told them I didn’t know if I was going to return home alive or not, and I said goodbye. They were just saying ‘God Bless You’ the entire time. Luckily, the Afghan National Army Convoy arrived and rescued us.

When I returned home, I talked to my mother, who had cancer at that time. She told me: 104

‘My son, just quit this job.’ I resigned because of her. When I went to the office, they said they wanted to pay me more. They were encouraging me not to leave. But I said no. After

I resigned, they gave me a recommendation letter.” (Haroon showed me the document he was talking about.)

“The next months I was jobless. I tried to find work, applied for many positions, but never got accepted. Until I went to Global Security Company, where I explained what

I had done in the past. They gave me a job as vehicle commander for body armored cars.

The company had a contract with an NGO related to USAID. The USAID clients took a plane from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif and I had to bring them from the airport to the main office. They also monitored projects and I drove them to the field in other provinces, where they distributed seeds to the farmers. After six months, the project was finished, and I had to look for another job.” (Haroon showed me his badge from that job.)

“I applied with Solidarités International and they hired me as a field supervisor for a project with vulnerable people who had lost their house, livelihoods and land after a natural disaster. We received money from the European Union for this project. The first idea was to give the money directly to the people who had lost everything. But when we discussed this, we decided it would be better to implement some projects with them, and then give the money. We organized activities for the women, such as tailoring, hygiene projects and cooking. The men made retaining walls, roads and bridges and we paid them for that. I had to oversee the entire project. When it was finished, the manager evaluated me and said he had another position for me: he needed an assistant. I travelled from

Bamyan province to Kabul for the interview and was accepted as project manager 105 assistant. I also have that recommendation letter. I had to go to district meetings and a large part of my job was conflict resolution. When that project was over, there was a party. I can show you the pictures. The site manager evaluated me again and told me that

Solidarités International didn’t want me to go to another company and that they would increase my salary. I had to go to Kabul again for an interview and was promoted to a permanent staff member of Solidarités International Afghanistan. I started working as a community mobilizer supervisor and had eight employees in my office, four women and four men. We worked on a project to avoid floods from natural disaster. We taught people about water management. They learned to grow seeds in the mountains and what to do when the water arrived. Before starting the project, I went with my staff to the village to talk with the community. We gathered them in a mosque or a school. The four male employees spoke with the men and the four female workers talked with the women and kids. The villagers gave us advice. We showed them their village on a map and had participatory mapping with lots of colors. In the next phase, we tried to face their problems using a comedian.”

“I continued in this position until 2013. It became very difficult to continue working there, because I got engaged. One day my brother called me: ‘Congratulations, you are engaged.’ I didn’t choose my wife. My family selected her. That’s how it works in Afghanistan. Family members start asking around if anyone knows about a good girl.

When they find someone, they ask the neighbors and the Mullah of the mosque information about the family, for example how long they have been living there and other details. I knew that they were looking for a girl for me. I had told my brother that I 106 wanted a girl who accepts everything about me. If I have money, she should stay with me, if I don’t have money, she should stay with me as well. I was in Kabul when I sent my brother an email with my picture. He gave that picture to the girls’ family and they accepted me. My wife was sixteen years old and I was twenty-six. I have the English translation of my engagement document. Although I did not choose her myself, I am very happy with her, because she respects me and agrees with me. She is also better with finances than me [laughed]. When I receive money, I immediately give it to her. She manages it very well and knows how to make it to the end of the month. Today she gave me twenty euros to buy something for myself, because I am meeting you. But when I was working in Afghanistan, I also gave her the money immediately. The first two or three times I tested her. Because some women give their husband’s money to their mother or sisters. But she didn’t.”

“At that time, I worked with Solidarités International in Bamyan province. Every two or three months I returned home to Mazar-e-Sharif. The journey almost took a full day and was very dangerous. The road was bad and there were many Taliban checkpoints. If they find out that you are working with international NGO’s, they can kill you immediately. After a while, Solidarités International gave me plane tickets from

Bamyan to Kabul and from there to Mazar-e-Sharif, because it was too dangerous. When

I was in Bamyan, my wife called me a lot, saying that she was worried about my safety, telling me that I should find a job in Mazar-e-Sharif. Every evening after work, I was applying for another job. When OTCD [Organization of Technical Cooperation for

Community Development] invited me for a job interview, I requested my fifteen days of 107 vacation and went to Kabul. The day OTCD called me to tell me I got the job, I resigned with Solidarités International. They asked me if I quit because of my salary. When I left, they gave me a recommendation letter.” (Haroon showed me the document.)

“At OTCD I worked as a field supervisor of school infrastructure improvement in different provinces. [Haroon showed me his business card.] I also got married then, because I had a better salary. In Afghanistan, the man pays everything. I made a home and bought a car. Everything was on me. I also invited more than thousand people in a hotel.”

I made a sound of surprise and said: “Thousand people! I can’t believe it!”

“Why? If you don’t believe it, I can show you three hours of video.”

“No, it’s not that I don’t believe you. I was just surprised, because that’s a lot of people. I have never seen a wedding that big and I don’t know thousand people.”

“Yes, I spent more than forty thousand dollars. In Afghanistan you have lots of relations. When you invite people, you cannot just write ‘Dear Ahmad’ or ‘Dear

Mahmoud’. You have to write ‘Dear Ahmad and family’. And when I say family, it means the entire family can come. You can ask other Afghani people how it goes or look it up on Google [laughed]. At first, there is a lunch for the men, they have lamb kebab.

After that, the women have lunch. In Afghanistan men and women celebrate separately.

Especially in our province it is not mixed. Only the closest family men can be with the women. I was with my wife at the party, but there were no other men.”

“At OTCD, we started with an assessment of schools in nine northern provinces of Afghanistan. We encountered a lot of problems. In one village, a pregnant woman died 108 during labor. There was no female doctor and the husbands didn’t allow their wives to go to male doctors. We saw that there were no schools. And if there was one, there were no chairs, no blackboard, no books or notebooks, nothing. There were no teachers for the girls. When the girl became an adult, which is at the age of twelve, they were not allowed to go to school anymore, because the teachers were men. Girls also got married at a very young age, for the money. The people in the villages thought that girls were only to marry. There was one man who had four wives. That’s why our focus was on the girls’ schools, although we also helped the boys’ schools.”

“When I went to the villages for the girls’ schools, the inhabitants, especially the uneducated ones, came to see me. They looked like this [spread his eyes wide open] at our vans and were talking to each other: ‘This guy became pagan, un-Muslim, taking money from America and making our girls bad.’ But I am Muslim! But they said: ‘You are taking money from foreigners.’ And in the villages of Afghanistan, people don’t think about Europe or other places. They only think about America. So I was accepting money of Americans [laughed]. In all the villages and provinces, I heard the same thing: ‘You are coming inside of our girls’ schools, you are looking for them, you are talking to them.

You are making them pagan and un-Muslim.’ I called the main office to talk about this problem. They said: ‘If you want to implement our projects, you can. If you want to work, you can. If not, we will choose another person.’ I even called with the country director of the office. But in Afghanistan everything is about corruption. If you pay the police and government, they won’t do anything. If you kill someone and you give them money, they will release you. It’s like that.” 109

“At my previous job with Solidarités International, during a training about conflict resolution in Kabul, I had learned about the importance of self-security. When you are going to the villages to implement projects, especially when religious people are involved, you have to take measures to keep yourself safe. You have to find a local that is honest, someone you can trust. I had a person like this. His name was Haji Shafiqullah and he was a community leader there. He had lived most of his life in main cities and his wife was also an educated person from a large city. He had lots of land and contacts with everyone. Including the Taliban. Every year the Taliban took sheep from his cattle and weeds from his harvest. This is a rule, because of ushr and zakat.7 If you have hundred sheep, you have to give ten to the Taliban every year. They say it’s because ‘We are going to Jihad. We are fighting against the foreigners. You are not going, so you have to give us this.’ The day before going to the village, I called the man, because I knew the network would not be working in the mountains. I told him: ‘I am coming tomorrow to distribute some tables, chairs and books for the school.’ But he said: ‘My son, you cannot come.’ He told me people had been saying bad things. Very early the next day, I travelled from Samangan province to Ruyi Du Ab district. It was very hot. It was in May, I believe it was the 15th. I was looking at the distribution list and I said to the driver: ‘Give me my cigarettes, I’m tired, I just want to smoke.’ I remember the packet of Seven Stars cigarettes, a Japanese brand. We stopped, I sat down, and when I had smoked half of a cigarette, I saw a motorcycle and the trail of dust behind it. The motor was coming

7 Ushr and zakat are Islamic taxes. Ushr is a 10% tax on harvest. Zakat (one of the five pillars of Islam) is a 2.5% tax on personal savings that have to be donated to the needy who are not your near relatives. The Taliban use these forms of taxation as a source of income in the areas under their control. 110 towards us. As it got closer, I saw that the rider’s face was covered. He was wearing a mask. He came close to me and called me: ‘Haroon, come on!’. It was Haji Shafiqullah. I said: ‘Why?’ and he answered, ‘Just come with me.’ I asked him: ‘What’s the problem?’

He said: ‘Nothing. Just come with me and I will explain.’ I asked him: ‘What about the van?’ He replied: ‘Leave everything here.’ I was scared. Really. I didn’t know what was happening. So I went with him. We didn’t go to his house; he took me to another place.

We sat down, he called someone to bring us tea and said: ‘I know you are a good guy.

You’re helping us. You’re helping our women. Now I want to help you. The Taliban has put you on their blacklist. They want to kill you. Some bad guys from the village always complained about you to the Taliban. They said that you are coming to our village, helping the girls, building schools. The only thing I can do is let you escape from the village.’ I asked him how and he said: ‘You will see.’ Around 10 in the evening, he brought me Afghani clothes. I was wearing a pair of jeans and changed my clothes for traditional wearing. The man called a private driver, who said to me: ‘I know everything.

Give me five thousand afghani [eighty euros] because something can also happen to me.’

I told him it was no problem. I would even have given him twenty thousand afghani.

Before we left, Haji Shafiqullah said a prayer for me. He also said: ‘You go my son, and don’t come back here. It’s up to you. But I informed you. They can kill you. It is not a problem for them. They can pass on their motorbike, shoot you, and tell their boss that they killed the target.’ I left with the driver. We were going so slowly through the mountains. But I couldn’t tell him to go faster, because the road was very bad. I was scared the entire time. I was shaking. I was constantly thinking that maybe after the next 111 curve of the road there would be a Taliban checkpoint. Or maybe Haji Shafiqullah wanted to do something against me? Luckily, I arrived to Samangan, where I took another car. When I arrived home, I held my babies and my wife. I was laughing and crying at the same time. I laughed because I was happy that I was with my family. But I cried because I thought: What will happen to them if I die?”

“My wife asked me what had happened, but I told her I first needed some time.

She brought me tea and water and when I had calmed down, I told her everything. She also started crying and saying ‘God Bless You’. Later my big brother Jimmy, who has a clothing shop, came to my home. He called my sister and other brothers to come as well.

My wife prepared some food for them. My brother said: ‘When you worked with No

Lemon, you were single. If anything happened to you, you were alone. The work with

Global Security Company was also dangerous, but you were still alone. Your job with

Solidarités International wasn’t safe either, but you were alone. Right now, you have a wife and kids. If something happens to you, who will take care of them? Who will raise your daughters? When they grow older and ask about their father, who will answer that question? What do I do with your daughters? The only thing I can do is give them someone to marry when they become thirteen years old. There is nothing else I can do.

And your young wife, what will happen with her in Afghanistan? You better leave. You are different from us. You have worked for more than ten years with foreign people. You have to go’.”

“Then I took the decision. I sold everything. My car, my house, and all the things inside of it. Everything. In fifteen days. I bought a family visa for Iran on the black 112 market. The Iranian consulate doesn’t give them, especially not to Sunni people like me.

But in front of the Iranian consulate, a lot of people are selling illegal documents. I also bought plane tickets to Teheran. That part of the journey, the visa and the plane, costed five thousand six hundred dollars.”

“I had been talking to a human trafficker before travelling to Iran. When I arrived at the airport of Teheran, he picked us up and brought us directly to Urmia county [region in Iran which borders with Turkey]. They kept us in a room with twenty people from

Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran. Families, older people and single young men. The trafficker had told me we were only eighteen and that they would drive us in one car. We were happy. But the next evening, a small car arrived. It was like a Toyota Hilux. We ended up with thirty-five in that car, because they brought fifteen people from another house. They pushed us into the car and put a tarp on us. We couldn’t see anything. They just gave us some bread and water and we drove towards the mountains. We were dropped somewhere. Another man met us there. We could only see his eyes, because he covered his face. We walked through the mountains for more than eight hours. My wife fell down multiple times and she was crying. My kids were also crying. They wanted milk, but I didn’t have anything to give them. That situation… [deep sigh]. It was extremely cold. I couldn’t… But the smugglers that were guiding us, used Tramadol pills, which is a very powerful drugs that makes you stronger [According to my online search it is an opioid used for pain relief].”

“Around 3 in the morning Sepâh [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces] caught us. We had been walking for more than eight hours, 113 from mountain to mountain. They transferred us to their base and put us in a sort of house. Our clothes were wet and everything else we had with us. The kids cried. But guards didn’t give anything to eat or drink. When we wanted to go to the toilet, they handcuffed us. The next morning, we were all begging to let us go. They said they would release us if we paid hundred dollars per person. But then there was an internal struggle between them, and they said that we would be send to investigation. They brought us to another place where they separated the men from the women and children. The men had to clean the guards’ offices, their toilets and pick up cigarette buds in the yard. We had to do all that work, because when we didn’t, they beat us. They didn’t give us food. We had to pay them to bring us something to eat. They made it very expensive. For example: we had to pay ten thousand Toman for something that costed five thousand Toman. [Toman refers to the old Iranian currency but the name is still being used today]”

“We were sent to Ettela'at [Ministry of Intelligence] where they put us all in one container and locked the door. It was very cold. When we wanted to use the restroom, we had to knock on the door and beg them: ‘Please, please, come on! We have to go to the toilet!’ They were saying bad words and insulting the Afghani, Pakistani, everyone. They said we destroyed their country. But I had a visa! I had a passport! I had everything! And they kept on asking why I had come to their country illegally. We had to pay them, and they transferred us to Urmia Camp, which is like a jail. People were living in horrible conditions. The place was like a big restroom, with toilet water going everywhere. People were being hit. The women and children stayed in another place. The food was very bad: a little bit bread and some uncooked rice. The guards were just running a business. On the 114 day of Eid Qurban [also known as Eid al-Adha], the biggest Eid of the Muslim people, they said they were going to release us and collected money. I have a family of four and I had to pay for four people, but when we entered the bus, they only gave us two seats.

They told us we had to take our kids on our lap. We couldn’t say anything, because they would beat us. They also took our shoes of, saying that we were dirty people, that we had to wash our feet and that we were making their cars dirty. All the men were handcuffed, and we were escorted by the police to Teheran, where they put us in another camp, with the same problems. They next day, we had to pay them again and they brought us to

Mashhad. They separated me from my family. I could not see my wife and kids for three days. All the official offices were closed because of Eid Qurban. On our last day in that camp, they woke us up around 3 in the morning and we had to pay again. I started crying when I finally saw my daughters. They told us they were going to deport us to the border town Islām Qala, in Herat province in Afghanistan. When we were on the way, all the busses stopped at another office. A guy came to us and said he was a representative of the mayor or Masshad. He told us: ‘You Afghani are dirty people. You make our cities filthy.

You have to pay fifty thousand Toman per person. If you don’t pay, we will send you to jail.’ We had to pay again. I told him that I had only been in his country for ten days and that I had a visa. But he didn’t care.”

“When we arrived in Herat, there was no way for me to return home in Balkh. I had escaped from that place and could not go back. I went to a hotel where I met a man who told me: ‘You have an Iranian visa and it doesn’t have an exit stamp because you have been deported. If you pay me two hundred dollars per person, I can take you back to 115 the border. I will use half of the money to give to the police and keep the other half myself.’ That trafficker brought us to the Maku mountains, where we met a new guide who told us we had to stay there for one or two nights because the police was patrolling a lot and we would not be able to cross the border. It was extremely cold during the night.

The women and children were crying. The smuggler brought five big old tires and set them on fire. We also collected some wood. The cold wind was horrible. I didn’t sleep for two nights. During the day it was a little bit warmer, but then our skin burned. One night, a guy came by horse and brought us some bread, nothing else. When we finally tried to cross the border with Turkey, the Iranian police started shooting on us. Half of the group managed to escape to Turkey. Mostly the young single man. I couldn’t run away because I had my family with me. My oldest daughter fell down, with her head on a rock.

She was bleeding. You can still see the scar today. We had been walking for almost nine hours through the mountains and the Iranian police made us walk three hours more, to their base. They told us they had seen us with their infrared cameras. When we arrived at their base, they searched our bags. They found a copy of all my documents and started kicking me. My wife and kids were crying. They didn’t even give us a tissue or a Band-

Aid to put on my daughters’ head. I asked them to please give us some water. But they said: ‘No, you have worked with American and Israeli people. Why did you come here?

You are an agent.’ I heard them talking on their radios. They said they had caught a lot of people, but that there was one Afghani family with a man who has many documents from the Americans and Israeli’s. They took the other refugees somewhere else and only kept me and my family there. My kids were still crying for some water. I cried along with 116 them. ‘Please, give us some water! Are you human or not?’ They were cursing at us, using a lot of bad words, it was so humiliating. It was… I… [swallowed a lump in his throat and paused a minute]. We stayed there one night and then they brought us to another place, where we slept in a shed with animals. Horses, donkeys, dogs. There was one soldier… I will never forget him. Because they didn’t give us any food. But when he received his food, two boiled eggs, one tomato and a slice of bread, he gave it to my kids.

I started crying because they were so happy to see food. I will never forget what he did. I still see him in front of me. I have his phone number. When I reach a better place, I will send him some money. He said: ‘What can I do? I can’t do anything. Everything is political’.”

“In that place, they took my money. I had one thousand and four hundred dollars on me. They also took my cell phone and broke it. I stayed there two days and the next evening they brought me back to Urmia camp. When I arrived there, the manager of the camp shouted: ‘You fucking guy, are you here again? I will put you in jail! You and your family.’ He humiliated me so much. Only me, not the other refugees. I don’t know what advice the border police had given them. They kept me there for one week. They had a judge in that place, who came to see me. He told me: ‘I just want to give you this advice: if you ever come to Iran again, I will put you in jail for the rest of your life. You will not see your family or anyone else. Just go, fuck off man!’. I couldn’t say anything.”

“They deported me again, following the same route as before. In Teheran they took my fingerprints and my visa showed up on the screen. The man asked me why I had come back. I was really crazy at that time. I told him: ‘What do you want to do? If there 117 is anything you want to do, just do it, but don’t ask me questions!’ He said I had to pay him two hundred dollars or that otherwise he would tear my passport. When I arrived in

Herat, I went to the same hotel I had stayed before. I called my brother, explained him what had happened and asked him what I should do. He said: ‘Don’t come here! There is one thing you can do. Your passport doesn’t have the exit stamp from Iran. Pay someone to get that stamp and I will get you a Turkish visa from the black market. Then you can go directly from Herat to Kabul and from there to Istanbul.’ That’s what I did. I again paid two hundred dollars per person to that man in the hotel. He went to the border and got me the exit stamp. Then I sent all my documents to my brother in Mazar-e-Sharif. He talked with a man from the government and needed three thousand dollars for each visa.

So twelve thousand dollars in total. Nineteen days later I received my Turkish visa. I paid one thousand two hundred dollars for the plane tickets to Istanbul. I’m telling you: I almost spent thirty thousand dollars to get here.”

“When I arrived in Turkey, I couldn’t feel relieved yet. Because we hadn’t completed the entire journey. We still had to cross the sea. Before travelling, I had done some research about Turkey and it is not a good place for people like me. I would not be able to have a good future there. They only like you if you have money.”

“In Istanbul I went to Zeytinburnu, a neighborhood where a lot of Afghani people live, including many smugglers. I went to a hotel named Faryab Hotel, which is run by

Afghani people. Faryab is the name of a province in Afghanistan. I talked to a guy named

Suleyman. You can write his name down. He’s a smuggler. I knew him from

Afghanistan, that’s why I trusted him. We were in the same school. He’s one year older 118 than me. I deposited four thousand dollars on his bank account and paid him two hundred dollars cash. He said he was going to pay for my hotel stay, that it was part of his job.

After ten days he told us to get ready, because that night we were going to travel to Izmir.

From there they would take us to Çeşme or Bodrum. A speed boat was going to drop us on one of the Greek islands and return to Turkey.8 I was only thinking about my family, I wanted us to travel in a safe way, not in one of those rubber boats. In Izmir is stayed in

Ankara Hotel. The hotel manager was an old lady that was constantly drinking beer.

Inside the hotel I saw a lot of Afghani refugees that were trying to go to Çeşme or

Bodrum. I stayed there for one week. I had to pay it from my own money, it was twenty or twenty-five Turkish Lira per night. When I called the trafficker, he said that the plan had changed and that we had to go to Balıkesir. When we arrived there, some Turkish people took us in their car to Akçay, a place close to Ayvalık, where we stayed in a room.

A Turkish guy constantly came to shush us. After one week he told us he couldn’t find other passengers for the speedboat and that we were going to leave that night. We didn’t even know that they had been looking for other refugees to cross with us. They bought us to Ayvalık. It was around midnight when we arrived there, and the Turkish guy said he couldn’t bring the boat closer to us. I don’t know what happened, but suddenly an alarm went off. I think it was the coastguard. The guy said we couldn’t cross that night and that he couldn’t bring us back to the guesthouse. We had to stay in the jungle for one night.

One of the other refugees told me I had to throw away my passport. He said I would be

8 While volunteering on Lesbos I learned that crossings by speed boat are much more expensive and happen less frequent. 119 deported if authorities caught me with passport and visa. I threw it away in the jungle.

Around 8 or 9 in the morning the police discovered us. They took us to the police station.

The police commander came in and asked who could speak Turkish. No one answered. I stood up and said: ‘I’m sorry sir, I can speak English if you want, then we can solve the problem.’ He said: “What??? You fucking guy! Why can you speak English? You are not a Muslim! Do you have children?’ I answered him: ‘Yes, I have two small kids.’ He asked if they were boys or girls. I told him: ‘Two daughters.’ He said: ‘Oooh, you are taking them to the European people, to the Greek people. When they become adult, they will become out of your control.’ He humiliated me so much and my temper raised, but I could not say anything. He was a policeman. He took our fingerprints and they brought us to the hospital. They gave us a black plastic bag with some clothes and broken stuff in it. And they just took pictures of that. Only to be able to say: ‘We gave them clothes.’

They also took pictures of us standing in front of the hospital with a bottle of water in our hands. Then they brought us to Ayvacik camp. They separated me from my family. There were different units for men and women. We stayed there for one week and only once I could be together with my family for a moment. Sometimes I could see them during the dinner line, through the window. After one week they collected one hundred Turkish Lira per person and they brought us to Istanbul, where they just left us somewhere on the road.

I decided to go to Ankara Hotel again. But first, I called Suleyman the smuggler and asked him what I should do. He said: ‘Don’t ever call me again. If you call me again, I can do anything with you. I speak Turkish, I know a lot of smugglers and have contacts with the police. I can deport you, I can do whatever I want. Don’t call me again, you lost 120 your money.’ Later he also sent me text messages with warnings. He said that if I ever called him again, he would do something to me I would never forget. He said that I would forget all the things that happened in Iran, because it would be so much worse. I still have the text messages. I have everything. I have recorded conversations with him, I have his picture, I have screen shots of all the emails and text messages. I also have the proof that I deposited money on his bank account. I don’t know when he came to Turkey and started working as a smuggler. He changed his ID and everything. But I thought he was like how Afghani people are in Afghanistan. I trusted him. That’s why I put the four thousand dollars on his account and gave him cash. I lost around five thousand dollars to him, if I include the hotel I paid for.”

“Back in Istanbul, I sold my wife’s golden necklace for seven hundred dollars in

Zeytinburnu market. It was a gift I had bought her. I have the documents of the shop where I sold the necklace. I also got a loan of seven hundred dollars from my brother.

And he sometimes paid me hundred or two hundred dollars per week so I could buy food.

I’ve received a lot of money from him. Maybe one day I will find a way to pay him back.”

“This time, I didn’t pay the smuggler immediately. I blocked the money in a shop.

The smuggler told me he was going to bring me from Enez to Thessaloniki, a trip of eight hours by rubber boat. A Turkish man drove us to the sea. After two and a half hours on the road, he received a phone call. The police had destroyed the boat we were supposed to take. I think they burned it. We had to return to Zeytinburnu and stayed there for a few days. It was one of the last days of December when we had to go back to Balıkesir. We 121 stayed in the house of Turkish people until the first of Muratuary. We were there together with their family and they prepared us food. On New Year’s Day they brought us to

Babakale. We stayed one day in the jungle because when they prepared the motor, it didn’t work. We were fifty-six people. At 3 in the morning we started our journey at sea.

After one and a half hour in the water, we saw a boat. The GPS showed us that we were sometimes in Greek and sometimes in Turkish water. But the boat had a Turkish flag…

They shouted that we had to stop. They threw ropes at us, but very hard. It was not to help us, only to make us stop. They moved very fast towards us and then turned their boat, making waves causing the water to fall on us. It was winter and we were soaking wet. We were afraid our boat would capsize. They took us into their boat and one and a half hour later we arrived at Çanakkale. They put some deportation stamps on our documents and brought us back to Ayvacik. But that camp was full, and they didn’t keep us there. Once again, they collected one hundred Turkish Lira, brought us to Istanbul and left us there in the road. I went to Ankara Hotel again, where I met the same smuggler.

On January 9 he brought us to the same house, but this time we left from another place.

We were a group of twenty-one people, sixteen adults and six children. The sea was very rough and our boat broke. The wooden pallets on the inside were all separated. But we couldn’t call anyone, because it was so cold and wet that we were not able to move our fingers. The boat was constantly going up, very high, and then down again. The women and children were crying. Almost three hours later we arrived at a lighthouse on the

Greek side.9 It was around 9 in the morning and we saw two volunteers, a woman and a

9 Korakas Lighthouse where I volunteered (fig. 8, fig.9). 122 man. They helped us a lot. I can’t thank them enough. They gave us raisins, blankets and told us that we were safe, that we could relax and didn’t have to worry. They transferred us by car to a small camp where they gave us clothes and shoes. Then the police came and brought us with a small bus to Moria.”

“When I arrived in Moria, I didn’t have anything. I forgot my bag in the car of the smuggler in Ayvalık. When I called him, he said that one of us hadn’t paid for the passage and that he was going to keep the bag. He told me he would burn it if I didn’t pay him one thousand dollars. I sent him some money and received all my documents in

Mytilene. I was so happy! When I arrived in Moria, they didn’t accept me as an Afghani, because I didn’t have an ID. I gave them my flash drive with all my documents, but they didn’t accept it. When I showed them the real documents, they believed me, and I could register as Afghani. They took my fingerprints and I had an interview for almost three and a half hours. The two interviewers said to each other that they could write a book about me. I passed part of the interview on March 22, but I have to go back. I don’t know why. My wife’s interview is already finished! They gave me an appointment for June 21, but when I went there, they postponed it. My next interview is July 23.”

“When I arrived in Moria, the big quarantine tent was full. There were probably twenty families inside. The first nights I slept in a tent with some single men and my family slept in a tent with another family. This is how it works: on your journey, you meet people and you become friends. A guy I met in Istanbul had arrived on Lesbos before me. When I met him again in Moria, my wife and daughters stayed in a tent with his family, and he and I found a place to sleep in a singles men’s’ tent. We did this for 123 three days. In the meantime, I went three times to Eurorelief to ask for a tent. They said they had nothing. They couldn’t give me a tarp, not even one nail. My tent was number two hundred nineteen and I completely made it myself. I spent one hundred seventy euro on it. I bought nails and a hammer, wire, socket, sewage and a small heater. One night, my tent almost burned when the heater fell down. I also bought wooden pallets from other refugees. Everyday a truck stops at the camp to distribute water. The refugees who help with the distribution, get the pallets for free. They collect and sell them. One pallet costed two and a half euros and I needed twenty-six, so I paid sixty-five euros. I bought a tarp for thirteen euros from a guy in the jungle. I think he stole it from Eurorelief or somewhere else [laughed]. Everything here is about corruption. I have seen people selling

UNHCR tents. When they leave to Athens, they sell it. Depending on the location of the tent it can cost between twenty and one hundred euros.”

“Moria is not a place for human beings to live. Depression and stress rates are very high. There are fights day and night. Especially in the food line and when people drink too much. There is no space for eight thousand people, the official capacity is two thousand. My oldest daughter had scabies and chickenpox. I’m happy that we were recognized as a vulnerable family and can stay in Kara Tepe. The security and management are better. But there are also problems, especially with the infrastructure.

My oldest daughter is four and a half years old and suffers from depression and stress.

There are no psychiatrists or psychologist for kids. The only advice the doctors give us, is to keep her in a good environment and let her go to school. But we live in camps inside of 124 a container. How can this be a good environment? We only have a small fan. In summer it’s too hot and in winter too cold. We don’t get good food to eat.”

“I’m sure that my daughter’s mental issues started before she was even born. My wife also suffers from depression. She has already tried to kill herself twice when we were living in Moria. It started in Afghanistan. I think part of it was my fault. Because I was working with foreigners outside of the city and she was constantly worried about me.

But the largest trigger was when she lost our first baby. My wife was two months pregnant when there was a suicide bombing in front of our house. After that she had dark thoughts and played with dead. Six months later, God gave us a new baby. But while she was growing in her mother’s womb, she felt all the stress and depression. What happened during our journey also plays a big role. The situation in the mountains of Iran, crossing the sea multiple times. It increased her depression. She doesn’t eat, cries a lot, has nightmares and wakes up shouting. When I give her paper and pencil and she starts drawing, I ask her why she cries at night. She says it’s because of the things she sees in her dreams. When I ask her what, she starts drawing the mountains, the sea and the boat.

She’s almost five years old now and can’t control her bladder and bowel, she still needs pampers. I took her to a private doctor for the depression, but he said he can’t do anything. He can’t give pills, because she is just a child. Her mother, who has suicidal thoughts, can’t take pills either, because she is still breastfeeding our youngest daughter.

Depression is really very dangerous.”

“What does home mean to you?”

“To be in a safe place.” 125

“Did you feel at home in Afghanistan?”

“No. I had everything in Afghanistan. A beautiful home, a nice car, a great relationship with my brothers. I had a job with a good salary. I could do everything I wanted. But my life was in danger. I could not stay there, because it meant a short life for me. I was constantly scared. I also got depressed, because I couldn’t stop thinking: If something happens to me, what will happen with my daughters? If they grow up without a father, what will become of them? I’m happy that I’m with my family and at least we’re in a safer place. But I don’t know what the future will bring. What decision will they take? My only goal is to have a better life with my family in a European country and give my girls good education.”

“In Afghanistan your work was to promote education for girls. Is that why it is so important for you that your daughters study as well?”

“Yes, that’s why. In Takhar province, Darqad district, a thirteen-years-old girl married a sixty-years-old man in front of my eyes! Because of the money. The girl was crying. The man looked so old, he walked hunching over. Who can guarantee my daughter’s future? That they won’t have a life like that? It’s why I never want to go back to Afghanistan. I want my daughters to have a better life than the kids in Afghanistan.

Maybe later they can return to their home country. As a doctor, or an engineer, to help other women in Afghanistan. Because in Afghanistan there is nothing for girls. Maybe my daughters can help them.”

“What is the most valuable object you brought with you?” 126

“Nothing. Only the documents I have. Whoever I talk to, if they don’t trust me, I can proof everything. The recommendation letters of my previous jobs and the documentation of my journey. Unfortunately, the Iranian police broke my phone.

Because I had videos and pictures of everything what happened in the mountains, including their jails.”

Haroon and I sat in silence. I was looking at the empty ouzo bottle and how the wind played with our plastic cups when he asked: “What do you think about my story?”

“It’s like a movie,” I told him.

Haroon laughed. “This is my life history. It took me seven months to get here. I have lost everything. I feel bad for my kids. Everything that happened to them is because of me.”

We remained silent again, until I told him: “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

“If I would have had another job in Afghanistan, they would be safe. Nothing would have happened.”

127

Figure 8: Korakas Lighthouse, where Haroon landed on Lesbos

128

Figure 9: Left from Korakas Lighthouse: the spotting hut where Lighthouse Relief volunteers do the nightshift

129

CHAPTER 7: PIERRE

Basmane comes to life in the late afternoon, hours after the sun has reached its highest point where the bright rays proudly produce a pressing heat. On June 6, 2019 I witnessed the neighborhood waking up while talking with Pierre, a thirty-nine-year-old from Congo. We were lucky to sit in the shade on a wooden plank, with our backs against the pastel colored wall of one of many hotels in 1296 Sokak (Street).

Pierre started his story by saying something that surprised me. He didn’t want to cross the sea to Greece. During my two months of fieldwork, Pierre was the only person who didn’t want to reach Greece. “I have already lived in Europe. I left Congo March 9,

2015 and arrived one day later at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I still remember the exact date,” he said.

To explain what had happened, Pierre took me back in time. “My dad was murdered à l'époque de Mobutu and my mom was seen as a collaboratrice of her husband. She was not safe anymore and in 1994 she fled the country. She went from

Congo to Switzerland and then to France. But it happened very quickly. We are six at home, I am the oldest, and she only took the two youngest with her. I was going to a boarding school and could only go home during vacations. She couldn’t take me with her.

At first, I didn’t even know she had left. The following years I lived with my uncle, the brother of my mother.”

“If she left in 1994 and you arrived in Paris in 2015, you hadn’t seen her in a very long time.”

“Trop même [too much].” 130

“And in those days WhatsApp and smartphones didn’t exist. And long-distance calling must have been difficult as well.”

“There were some kind of agences de communication, places where they had fixed telephone lines. My mom had left me the addresses of those agences. The people who ran the place contacted me to tell me when I could receive a phone call. They said for example: ‘this evening at ten o’clock your mom will call’. Then I knew I had to be there at that time.”

Pierre unlocked his smartphone and started showing me some pictures of his wife and daughters, who are two and four years old. “They are still living in France. I wasn’t even there when my youngest was born. My wife and kids sometimes come to Istanbul so

I can see them. I saw my youngest daughter there for the first time. It’s very hard.

Yesterday my oldest daughter said twice ‘Papa, j'ai besoin de toi [I need you].’ I want to be with them.”

Pierre started browsing again through the photos on his phone. He showed me selfies, wearing a blue helmet and like-colored uniform, with the name of the company that he worked for as an electrician when he first arrived in France.

“You know, I had actually thought that in Europe I was going to earn money easily. I wanted to earn money in a fast way, to return to Congo and start a business. But I quickly realized that was not going to happen with my job. And then I met some friends who knew how to earn money in a fast and easy way.”

When I asked him about these friends and how he met them, Pierre was rather vague in his answers. The only thing he shared with me, is that they were also Congolese. 131

Ditto for the money-making strategy. “Un truc hors la loi” (something outside the law) was all he said. When I asked him if it involved drugs, he just smiled, but didn’t want to affirm or deny.

“My wife didn’t know anything about it until the day the police caught me. I got arrested. That’s how she found out. I remember she said: ‘This is not the man I thought I married’ and told me to stay at home, so I wouldn’t do it again. But I continued and got caught again. I had to stay six months in prison and after that was deported, on November

15, 2016. My wife was seven months pregnant then. I was banned from returning to

France for three years.”

“When I arrived in Congo, I couldn’t feel at home anymore. I had lived another life in France, with other friends and wasn’t able to connect with the life, family and friends in Congo. That’s why I only stayed three months. My first idea was to return to

France with the passport of my younger brother, because we really look alike.”

Pierre showed some side-by-side images, where he put his picture next to the one of his brother. The likeness was indeed striking. Pierre was not the first person I talked to during my fieldwork who mentioned travelling with a passeport de resemblance. Seeing the pictures of him and his brother helped me understand better how tempting it might be to put this tactic into practice.

“But then I began to think. What if they start taking fingerprints or scan my eyes?

I decided to play an honest game. To re-enter France, I needed proof that my wife and I are married. The problem is that we only had the mariage coutumier, which is tradition in our culture. Because marriage is not only about the connection between two people, but 132 also about the alliance between both family clans. Before celebrating the mariage coutumier, the girls’ family makes a list for la dot [dowry], which has more a symbolic value than an economic one. During the celebration we sign a document, which enables us to continue with the civil and church marriage. But my wife and I only did the mariage coutumier, and in France they don’t accept that as an official marriage.”

Pierre showed me his passport with the Turkish visa in it. He even had a Turkish social security card, which really is a luxury compared to all the other people I have talked to and who couldn’t receive decent medical attention.

“I had heard that it is easy to get married in Turkey and that’s why I came to

Istanbul. But when I was there, I learned that getting married here is really hard, especially all the paperwork. My wife and I will now try to get married in Morocco. But I first need to save six thousand euros.”

I thought I didn’t understand it well, and that maybe he meant six hundred euros.

“No, I really need six thousand euros. It’s not just the administrative cost. I need to get our two witnesses to Morocco. My younger brother who looks like me will be my witness. The plane tickets to Morocco and other transport costs, the hotel, the food, the dress, it’s all expensive.”

When I asked Pierre about his most valuable object, the answer didn’t come as a big surprise. “Argent. Money is everything. I need it to eat, sleep, travel, for everything I want to do.” He didn’t carry any objects with him of sentimental value and I realized this was the second time that Pierre’s situation and answers differed so much from the other 133 people I talked to. Pierre, Soraya and Riad made me realize how my initial abstract objects-based approach didn’t always work out in real life.

Sitting next to Pierre, I saw that many people knew and greeted him. I sensed some kind of respect from the community towards him. Was it because he was twice as old as most of the young single men from Sub-Saharan African countries who had made their way to Basmane? I wanted to know why he was staying in Izmir. During our conversation, my mind had wandered around some questions. If he didn’t want to cross to

Greece, then why would he stay in Izmir, in Basmane of all places? Everything in this shady neighborhood was related to the trafficking business. I also thought that he had shown too much interest in finding out how I knew about Basmane and its clandestine activities. He had asked me the question in a really weird way, and at first, I had no idea what he was asking. He even used Google Translate to make sure I understood his question. During the conversation we hadn’t needed this app before and were able to communicate perfectly. I asked him why Izmir. “There is a lot of work in Istanbul and I travel very frequently between Istanbul and Izmir.” My suspicion started raising and

Pierre continued talking: “I have to do business here so I can pay for my hotel and food, and to earn money for my wedding.” At this moment I was almost sure that he was involved in the trafficking business and I asked him what his business is about. He reacted in the same way as with his truc hors la loi and I asked him point-blank if it was also something illegal. “I’m just hustling, ‘moving things’. I have to do something to survive.” I suspected that Pierre was involved in transporting refugees from Istanbul to

Izmir. Because if there is so much work in Istanbul, then why come to Izmir? And he had 134 the advantage that he was in Turkey legally. He could travel the country without being arrested.

***

On July 19 I met Pierre again… in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. An encounter that I wasn’t really expecting, given everything he had told me six weeks ago. I said I was a little astounded. “I didn’t expect to come here either. Do you remember I told you about the money I had to collect for the wedding? I talked about it with my wife and it would have been too difficult to save that amount. I had two options: return to Congo or try to cross to Greece.”

Pierre arrived on Lesbos June 7, twelve days after our conversation in Izmir.

“From Izmir we went to the sea in a small van. The ride took four and a half hours and they dropped us at the beach around five in the morning. We left Turkey at six and arrived here around eight thirty in the morning. We were forty-six, including the children.

It was a large inflatable boat and we moved slowly. The traffickers had shown us to go towards the towers (fig.10). When we were close to Mytilene, the Dutch Frontex came towards us.” (Later, when I was with Pierre in the bus, he showed me the two red and white striped factory chimneys which sometimes release smoke and are indeed a clear landmark.)

“The sea was very calm when we crossed, but honestly, it’s not easy. When I saw the sea, I got really scared. Even when I look at the sea now, I’m still very scared. I wouldn’t do it again, even if they would give me money to do it. It’s just too scary. C'est comme si vous êtes en train de vous suicider sans savoir [It’s like you’re committing 135 suicide without knowing it]. I swear you! Because before leaving, I watched a video on

YouTube about des balises dans la mer [floating buoys with lights on] and how to navigate. But when we were crossing, there wasn’t anyone who knew anything about those buoys and the signals they send out. That’s why it’s like killing yourself without realizing.”

I asked Pierre if he was wearing a life jacket and told him about the fake ones.

“Yes, I was wearing one. But it doesn’t matter if they are fake or true. I don’t think that they will come looking for you when a dinghy capsizes.”

The day I arrived on Lesbos, seven people drowned when their dinghy overturned. I talked about it with Pierre. “I heard that their boat wasn’t in a good condition. Dinghies have different chambers that you have to inflate one by one. Some parts were not inflated well. They even left with deflated compartments. I know a boy who was on that boat. I also knew a lady who died. I met her in Izmir. Did you see the woman with the red hair?”

I told Pierre I couldn’t remember. After it happened, Jimmy sent me the pictures of the people who died. He knew many of them from his preaching services, and some were also at the one I attended. I couldn’t remember if one of the women on the pictures had red hair. I asked Pierre if she had kids, because a few days ago I visited the cemetery and I saw that recently a Congolese woman was buried with her daughter. The uncle was morning their graves. “I don’t know. There is one woman who died with her two children, if I’m not mistaken. I heard that a pregnant lady drowned and also two young women who didn’t have kids.” 136

In Izmir I had already met a lot of people from Congo, but when I was volunteering in Skala Sikamineas, most of the landings were with people from

Afghanistan. I learned that the traffickers divide the sea and have their territories. In

Mytilene and the refugee camps in its surroundings, I again noted a high presence of

Congolese. I asked Pierre why. “Il y a la guerre là-bas [There is war over there.] Il y a misère. Women are being raped constantly. That’s why people flee. Everyone knows that there is war in Syria, but it surprises us Congolese that no one talks about our country. I can say that three hundred women are raped every day. Villages are burned down. Il y a impunité. No one stops the people who do this. They don’t know how to identify them.

This is happening in the part of our country where there are coltan mines. Coltan is really expensive and nowadays it’s used a lot. You can find it in smartphones and computers.

The multinationals want it cheaper and they create war to do their business. Samsung,

Apple, even Bill Gates goes there. All those big companies and rich people. They go to the villages and recruit people who have to conquer a territory. They give them money and weapons so they can form an army. Once they have obtained a territory, they start mining. And those people will rape women and kill everyone who opposes and doesn’t do what they want. There is no autorité de l'État.

We kept talking about war and problems in his country and other place.

“In our countries, where there is war, we don’t produce weapons.”

“You’re right, they are produced in my country”, I answered him, thinking about

FN Herstal, a firearms manufacturer located in Belgium. 137

“Weapons are being produced in your countries and given to people in our countries. They give them to people who aren’t educated. And what do you think they will do with it? Shoot the guns and kill each other.”

Pierre wanted to continue talking about the Congolese in Turkey and Greece. “A lot of people, here and in Izmir, say that they are from Congo, but they are not.”

“Do they lie?”

“It’s not that they lie, but they are also Angolan. Do you understand? I don’t know if you have studied this, but there was a civil war in Angola. I think from 1975

(septante-cinq like you Belgians say), until 2002, when they killed Jonas Savimbi, one of the protagonists. During that war, a lot of Angolan fled to our country. Their kids grew up or were even born in Congo, and can speak some of our national languages, like

Lingala and Kikongo. They also know about the history and geography of our country.

When the war in Angola ended, a lot of people returned to their home country. Most of them had not studied and they started small commerces. Those are not that successful as before and that is why a lot of Angolan want to come to Europe. But Angola is not really a country at war like RDC, so they request asylum pretending to be Congolese.”

Pierre said he also wanted to apply for asylum. He showed me some papers. “I arrived here June 7 and I have my interview June 23, 2020, at 7 in the morning. That is more than a year later… I will look for a lawyer, but I first need my passport. I left it in

Izmir because I was afraid that I was going to lose it. A friend in Izmir will send it to me.” 138

“You know, I think my story is amazing. The day I left Kinshasa to go to Turkey is the same day I left Turkey to travel to Greece. But if anyone would come to me in

Congo and tell me that they want to leave, want to cross the Mediterranean, I would tell them to stay at home. Je dis la verité hein.”

“Is that the advice you would give people in your country?”

“Ben oui, ben oui. Even me, I stayed two years in Turkey. Because I didn’t want… If I hadn’t my two daughters in Europe, jamais jamais jamais jamais je sortirais de mon pays. There is a saying in my language: mboka o’ koma te mapata ekweya. It means: Where you haven’t been yet, you think that the sky will touch the earth. But when you arrive there, it’s the contrary. You thought it was going to be a better place, that the sky would touch the earth and that you would be closer to God. But once you’re there, you see that the sky is equally far away from the earth as it was in your hometown.

You’re even in a worse situation, because you’re not home and you left your people behind. It’s about having illusions and then encounter the opposite. When I was young, my mom and brother were living in Europe and that’s why I also wanted a life there. But when I was living there, I understood that it’s not la fin du monde and that you will not be gathering money. One day I said to myself that I have to print it in my head and understand that tout est vanité. It’s not because you see a nice car or a beautiful home that you can buy it. If you have a lot of money, of course you can buy everything you want.

But when I was in Europe, I realized that when you start working, you really work most of the time. You use your money because you need to eat something and maybe you can buy a pair of pants, maybe a shirt and then you’re done. The money is finished. 139

Especially in Congo there are people who do not want to work but want to have a lot of money. But how can you have money if you don’t work? Do you understand what I am saying? If in Europe they really collect money, then I would be a millionaire right now, no? But I swear you, I worked so hard, even during the winter and early mornings. If I didn’t have my kids there, I would not go. I’m telling you the truth. I have lived there.”

Figure 10: View on the two towers used as a landmark by Pierre's traffickers

140

EPILOGUE

July 22, 2019

It felt very unnatural. I was ready to travel in the opposite direction. From Greece to Turkey. Something the people I had met would never do. I had witnessed sliced dinghies, out of fear to have to return to Turkey in the same vessel. I had heard stories about people jumping into the sea during a Turkish Coast Guard pullback, to avoid being brought back to Turkey. That’s why some of my participants didn’t understand. Even when I told them that I had started my research in Izmir and had to catch my plane there.

At 7.15 in the morning Mytilene was slowly waking up. Street cleaners had already started sweeping and people who slept rough removed their cardboard beds. The harbor looked peaceful and quiet. For the first time since my arrival, there were no like warship looking official vessels on the water. Only fishing and pleasure boats. It was a completely different image. This is how touristy Mytilene must have looked like years ago.

As I walked along the quay towards the port building, I passed several groups of young volunteers, mostly girls, sipping their frappé coffee while heading towards the bus to Moria and surroundings. Their t-shirts revealed the different organizations they worked for. 141

Figure 11: The Turkish flag on the ferry, leaving Mytilene behind

Taking the ferry from Mytilene to Ayvalık was quite easy (fig. 11). I didn’t even need a passport. Belgian nationals can travel between Greece and Turkey with only their

ID card and an electronic visa, which is valid for ninety days. I requested it online and paid eighteen euros and thirty-three cents.

As we left the harbor, we passed the Statue of Liberty, based upon the one in New

York, and ironically supposed to symbolize freedom and welcome incoming ships. I saw

Hellenic Coast Guard approaching the harbor, probably after patrolling the entire night, and I thought other official vessels would soon follow, changing the image of the environment.

Looking at sea will never be the same again. I noticed I kept scanning the horizon for suspect dinghies. My weeks as a volunteer had led to some kind of professional 142 deformation and I couldn’t help staring at the water with hawk-eyes and a constant alertness. As we left the open sea behind us and approached Turkey, I started looking at everything next to the water. High grasses, bushes, trees, a shed. With every place I saw,

I wondered if this would be the jungle. Is this where Haroon threw his passport away?

Where Murat refused to enter the dinghy and after three days was forced to?

As we arrived in Ayvalık, I was surprised how smooth the trip went. Of course, I had traveled to Mytilene the same way. But that was before meeting the people on the

Greek side and hearing their stories. I had been aware of my privilege the entire time but crossing in the opposite direction once again made me face the facts.

On the bus from Ayvalık to Izmir I tried to relax. I was trying to get comfortable when we made a stop and the doors of the bus opened. Sitting right next to the door I looked outside. My heart stopped and I felt a knot in my stomach. I witnessed a scene of a family saying goodbye to a woman who entered the bus. It wasn’t the kisses, hugs and tears that caused my reaction. It was the t-shirt of the youngest girl, who was crying.

Pink, with the drawing of a flamingo standing on one leg and the words “cute flamingo”.

My thoughts went back to June 13, when I was walking along the shore of Skala

Sikamineas. Near To Kyma, I witnessed some remains of a dinghy. A pink shirt with a flamingo drew my attention (fig. 12). I kept looking at it, thinking about the age of the girl that would have worn it. Until I saw a red string. I first thought it was part of the design, but then saw it didn’t belong there. I kneeled and took a closer look. Five large

Coca-Cola bottles had been sewed into the t-shirt to use it as a floating device. 143

I wasn’t thinking about Izmir anymore. That one memory ignited many others, taking me back to Lesbos.

Figure 12: Plastic bottles sewed into a t-shirt to use it as a floating device

Hundreds of people have lost their lives in that narrow stretch of water I crossed by ferry. My participants made it alive. And they have been trying to move on. Five weeks after saying goodbye to Haroon, he texted me that his political asylum claim had been accepted. Three weeks later, he shared some more good news: his wife was pregnant. December 5, Haroon contacted me with the news that there had been a fire in

Kara Tepe, the camp where he lived, and that a woman from Afghanistan had died. One day later, Haroon let me know he was at the hospital with his wife. She had lost the baby after five months pregnancy. Five days later, Haroon finally received his ID. He hoped 144 that would be the start of a new life, but mid-March 2020 he was still on the island, with a lot of worries: “Six months after receiving my ID, UNHCR stopped paying. I have also been asked to leave Kara Tepe. The camp manager tells me every day I have to go. If I don’t, he will call the police. But where can I go? I don’t have any money. I have been looking for a job to rent a place to live. But I can’t find a job. I can’t send my daughters to school either. The European Asylum Support Office say I can’t stay on the island anymore and that I have to go to Athens. But if I go there with my family, I won’t have a place to stay either. I really don’t know what do to. Everyday I’m having discussions with different organizations and authorities.”

March 2020, eight months after our first conversation, Riad let me know he is still on Lesbos. He sounded discouraged and downhearted: “I feel there is nothing to do anymore. I had created a life here. I was studying and working, had friends and enjoyed my time. But the last two months, everything has changed. I was going to school and studying with the hope to start at university in 2021. But I couldn’t continue, because the new Greek government doesn’t allow refugees in public schools anymore. I had papers that allowed me to travel inside Greece, but they took those papers from me and now I can’t leave the island anymore. I feel that everything I have done was a waste of time.

I’m just spending my time alone in the house now, thinking the entire time about what I have lost and wondering what will come next. I’ve been together for two years with my girlfriend and I sometimes even hate her! But I know I can’t blame her, and she also hates her country.” 145

On October 24, four months after our conversation in the Kültürpark, Ahmed sent me a message: “I’m back home. I am in Palestine.” Jimmy is still in Izmir but wants to go to Canada. He is planning to return to Burundi first, to apply for a Canadian visa. Soraya is still working in the kitchen at Home for All on Lesbos. Murat also remains on the island and keeps waiting for his asylum interview.

Thursday September 26, 2019 at 2.46 in the afternoon I received a WhatsApp message from Pierre. He said hi and asked how I was. I replied, asking how he was doing.

“Je vais bien. Merci. Je suis déjà à Paris.”

146

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