The Girl from Aleppo

by Nujeen Mustafa

Postscript

  The Only Candle

  Cologne, January 2017

  I’ve been in Germany sixteen months now and the big news is that just before Christmas I got my asylum. I also got my disabled ID, which means I can go free on transport in Germany and to the zoo or cinema. That’s cool because I have Beauty and the Beast fever and can’t wait for the new live-action version, though I am also terribly worried they might ruin my favourite story. I am still cross with Nasrine that when we were travelling through Austria to get here we didn’t go to find the castle in the mountains where the real Beast and his beautiful wife lived.

  Getting German residency means I can apply for a passport and soon I can travel. This time for fun not to flee war. I have a long list of places to visit – Buckingham Palace of course for the Queen. She is celebrating her seventieth anniversary with Philip this year – they married on 20 November 1947, oh God such a long time ago! And so many museums and paintings I want to see like Starry Night by Van Gogh which is in MOMA in New York, if Mr Trump allows me to go to America. Probably not as I am a Muslim and Syrian. I also want to see Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, the one with all the melting clocks.

  I’ve been doing quite a lot of research about memory, it’s all part of my investigations in psychology. Last year I discovered the Myers–Briggs test to work out your personality type and started doing it on everyone, which drove my family mad. I am an INFP which I am pretty happy about as they are idealists and it’s quite rare and the same as Shakespeare, Princess Diana and Johnny Depp.

  The ‘I’ stands for introverted which I am. Not shy, which is different. At school they think I should interact more with the other children and socialise but I’m someone who prefers listening to talking and I’ve grown up always being with adults not children. I have a little group of friends at school and I’m happy with that.

  Otherwise school is going great. On the first day of this year I turned eighteen and I know it’s odd to only be in my second year at school but I am doing much better than I expected. English, of course, is my best subject, thank you Days of Our Lives. I’m getting better at maths and learning how to do percentages of things. My German is improving. It’s funny, Bland and Nasrine are doing a German course and they say ‘we’re in first grade and you’re in ninth grade’ – so I am helping them. It’s like our roles are reversed.

  I am actually becoming quite Germanized, waking up at 6 a.m. and doing German stuff like making appointments and being on time. Though I still don’t like German food, which looks too pale and tastes undercooked.

  Now I find it hard to imagine my life as anything different from getting up, getting ready and going to school on the special white bus. If you had told me a year ago that I would have this routine and it would seem normal, I would have said ‘Are you crazy?’

  I even like the fact I’ve got a brace on my teeth to straighten them – it seems such a normal teenage thing. And like I said, there’s a lot to fix.

  The physiotherapist says my mobility is improving and that my condition is much better than others with cerebral palsy so I have a good chance of improvement as long as I work a lot. I can feel my legs are more flexible and am working much better with my hands. I am more independent – we did a class trip to the Christmas market in Bonn which was completely magical, all the lights and gingerbread houses, and I bought myself a ring – the first time I ever bought something on my own. But I still feel I go one step forward and two back and my classmates have a lot of practical skills I don’t.

  I believe I grew up too much in these last two years. My family say I overreact and am too dramatic about things but it’s not easy being a teenager.

  When I am not at school, in the evenings and weekends we are all at home in our flat in Wesseling. Me, my two sisters, four noisy nieces and two brothers. We watch football, the Premier League and La Liga where of course I support Barcelona and Nasrine, Real Madrid. When Ronaldo got the World Player of the Year award (again!), oh my God I was vexed. Then the most exciting thing happened – a package came for me and it was a shirt signed by Messi. Nasrine was really jealous. She said, ‘I wish Ronaldo would send me a shirt.’ Anyway I don’t want to wear it as it’s really precious and I’m known since a child for destroying everything I touch.

  One day I watched a documentary about the oldest city on earth, Uruk, which was in Iraq and that got me investigating the Persian Empire and then the Roman Empire, started by the first emperor Augustus who lived on Palatine Hill, one of seven hills of Rome. It’s the hill where the twins Romulus and Remus were said to have been found in a cave by the she-wolf who brought them up. Some say they were the sons of the god Mars. Funny thing, did you know that the only planet not named after a Greek or Roman god is Earth? There are so many things to investigate.

  I’ve also been reading a lot. Agatha Christie; Frankenstein, what a depressing story; and about King Arthur and the Round Table because I had seen the sword in the stone in so many movies and wanted to know if it was really true.

  My school has arranged for me to do a three-week placement in a library which I’m pretty excited about as I will be able to look up many things and maybe give some of my good information to other people.

  I’m in the ninth grade and at my school when you get to tenth grade you go on to do more practical vocational work so you can have some kind of job in the future that they think is appropriate for someone disabled. But I haven’t given up on my dream to be an astronaut. I’d really like to complete high school and go to university to study physics. I don’t know why my brain likes these complicated things but physics is really interesting when you understand it and I like the order, maybe because the rest of my life has been so much disorder.

  I try not to think about the war but you can’t really avoid it. Even if I don’t watch news, everyone is posting stuff on Facebook. The siege of eastern Aleppo and the attack by the Assad regime was pretty hard. The city looked like the end of the world, all those collapsed or hollowed-out buildings and rubble everywhere. How could someone bomb schools and hospitals? The schools moved underground then they bombed those too. I read that children were so hungry they were dreaming of a potato. Everyone in the world felt bad about those kids starving and dying while we were just watching. But for me this was my homeland.

  I was very upset that world leaders like President Obama and Prime Minister Theresa May did nothing. Does it matter to the world that thousands of Syrians are being killed or not? It made me really cross. It’s no good just wringing their hands and doing nothing. These powerful people need to take responsibility and do their homework. It’s not maths, it’s saving lives. I made my best effort to follow my Nujeen Rules and think positively but it’s very hard.

  Our area Sheikh Maqsoud remained under control of our Kurdish YPG but had of course already been badly bombed. After the offensive ended and Assad’s forces captured the city just before Christmas, some of our neighbours from two floors down, the ones who had the pet tortoise, went back to see what had happened to 19 George al Aswad Street. Our building is not totally destroyed; actually it’s in a much better state than others on the street but even so everything is smashed and broken. My terrace where I watched from is covered in rubble. No one is living in the street, it’s a ghost town. The football jersey shop, the fried chicken place, all gone. A few tears were shed. I didn’t want to look at the pictures but remember it how it was.

  It’s five years this year since we left. Of course I want to go back but it will never be the same. I don’t think anyone is going back there – half of Syria has left and are in Germany and other places. When I message with friends and relatives on Facebook I have to keep remembering where they are – Turkey, Lebanon, Europe . . .

  It’s heartbreaking to think part of your life is gone. And to think I will never see the old souk or the Palace of Justice and all those other historic places that were destroyed.

  I feel terribly homesick, particularly at night, and I miss my mum an
d dad so much. I’d like them to come and see me here happy and normal. I thought when I got asylum maybe they would be able to come to Germany through family reunification but that seems pretty difficult. There’s this person inside me who wants to cry sometimes but I always go to Julie Andrews for advice and ‘simply remember my favourite things then I don’t feel so bad’.

  Assad called the capture of eastern Aleppo ‘a watershed moment’ and I know some people are saying he has won with his Russian and Iranian friends. I may be childish but my belief is bad guys never win. There’s always justice in the world and we are right and I still believe we will win and he can’t be there for ever. He has killed so many people, how can we accept him? I worry that in fifty years I will be watching documentaries and they will describe us as a failed revolution but I don’t think we have failed. I still have faith in people. Look at Trump and the women’s marches. To see how people around the world united was awesome.

  Sometimes I think I am being over-positive. But when you think of all the madness happening in the world and how much melancholy and you try to be the only candle, that’s not a bad thing, right?

  This sadness should not be contagious; you need to have your own strong immune system because these days germs of despair are all around.

  It’s not always easy. The war back home is not the only bad thing. Here in our new home, the year which began with outrage, after hundreds of women were molested in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, ended with a man ploughing a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve people who had just been enjoying an evening meeting friends, eating sausages and buying gifts.

  The killer was a Tunisian not a Syrian but he had come to Germany as an asylum seeker in 2015 like us, so when I was talking to my teachers I said I understand some German people might feel we brought with us something they never had in their country. But the school and everyone was very supportive and people started a campaign, Keine Angst or Don’t Be Afraid of Refugees.

  Angela Merkel told people to live their lives as normal or the terrorists would have succeeded. ‘It is particularly bitter and sickening when terror attacks are committed by people who seek protection in our country,’ she said in her New Year’s message, but ‘in going about our life and our work we are telling the terrorists you are murderers full of hatred but you will not determine how we live and want to live’.

  However, opposition politicians say Merkel brought disaster to our country with all these refugees. That makes me sad, that doing the right thing is considered a mistake.

  We know we are guests. That’s why I think I should do something to improve the image of refugees and be a good ambassador for our culture and region and make videos on what might shock Germans about us and vice versa so we can understand each other.

  I saw on the refugee trail so many people didn’t look away but did help and that gives me faith.

  In our porch we still have that old second-hand wheelchair that was too big and broken, the footrest tied on with wire, in which I bumped across Europe with Nasrine pushing. Sometimes I look at it and think, Did we really do that?

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my family for so whole-heartedly embracing this unexpected extra child and always showing so much patience with me.

  I thank God for giving me everything I have and I pray for the story of my life to have a happy ending.

  The last year has been a journey I could never have imagined back in our fifth-floor apartment in Aleppo. I have gone from the girl who never left her room and saw the world outside only through TV to crossing an entire continent using every form of transport – all that’s left is a cable car, submarine and of course spaceship!

  I am just one of millions of refugees, many of whom like me are children, and my journey was easier than that of many. But it wouldn’t have been possible without all the kind people who helped along the way, from the old ladies and fishermen on the beach in Lesbos to the volunteers and aid-workers who gave us water and helped push me.

  I can never express enough gratitude to Mrs Merkel and Germany for giving me a home and my first ever experience of school. There, I have been helped enormously by my teachers Ingo Schrot, Andrea Becker and Stefanie Vree and my physiotherapist Bogena Schmilewski. Thank you to my German guardian Ulrike Mehren for guiding me.

  Thanks as well to the writers of Days of Our Lives who had no idea they were giving an education to a little girl in Aleppo. In particular to Melissa Salmons, who worked on the script of EJ and Sami – and for the kindness of its wonderful fans especially Giselle Rheindorf Hale.

  I’m incredibly grateful to Christina for putting words to my story, and her family Paulo and Lourenço for their support (even if they do like Cristiano Ronaldo and, by the way, congratulations Portugal for winning Euro, shame it wasn’t Spain!)

  Thanks Fergal Keane, Nick Springate and Robert Magee for bringing us together! Christina would like to thank all the people who helped in her reporting of the refugee crisis, in particular Babar Baloch of UNHCR, Alison Criado-Perez of MSF and the Catrambone family. We would both also like to thank Hassan Kadoni. Thanks also to our agent David Godwin, and fabulous editor Arabella Pike and her team Joe Zigmond and Essie Cousins, fantastic copy editor Peter James, designer Julian Humphries, and to Matt Clacher and Laura Brooke for getting so much behind the book.

  Above all to my sister Nasrine for pushing me all across Europe and putting up with all my information even if she didn’t always listen.

  Appendix

  My Journey

  Total distance 3593 miles, total travel cost 5045 euros (for me and my sister)

  Syria

  2012

  27 July

  Aleppo to Manbij

  56 miles by minibus

  2014

  August

  Manbij to Jarablus

  24 miles by Uncle Ahmed’s car

  $50 (46 euros) to cross border

  On the same day

  Jarablus to Gaziantep (Turkey)

  107 miles by Uncle Ahmed’s car

  ONE YEAR ON

  Turkey

  2015

  22 August

  Gaziantep to İzmir

  691 miles by plane: 300 euros each

  İzmir airport to Basmane Square

  18 miles by taxi: 15 euros

  1 September

  İzmir to Behram

  156 miles by bus and taxi: 100 euros

  2 September

  Behram to Skala Sikamineas, Lesbos (Greece)

  8 miles by boat: $1,500 (1330 euros) each, plus 50 euros each for life jacket

  Greece

  3 September

  Skala Sikamineas to Mitilini

  30 miles by car (lift from volunteer)

  9 September

  Mitilini to Athens

  Taxi from Pikpa camp to ferry: 10 euros

  261 miles by ferry: 60 euros each

  14 September

  Athens to Thessaloniki

  312 miles by train: 42 euros each

  Thessaloniki to Evzonoi

  55 miles by taxi: 100 euros

  15 September

  Evzonoi to Gevgelija (Macedonia)

  1.2 miles on foot

  Macedonia

  15 September

  Gevgelija to Lojane

  125 miles by taxi: 200 euros

  Lojane to Miratovac (Serbia)

  1.9 miles on foot (or by wheelchair)

  Serbia

  15 September

  Miratovac to Belgrade

  243 miles by bus: 35 euros each

  Belgrade to Horgoš

  124 miles by taxi: 210 euros

  16 September

  Horgoš to Röszke

  7.5 miles by bus: 5 euros each

  Röszke to Apatin

  78 miles by taxi: approx. 125 euros

  Croatia

  16 September

  From Apatin through fields into Croatia, then by police van to a small village (name unknown)

  Small v
illage to Zagreb

  209 miles by bus

  17 September

  Zagreb to Žumberački road

  21 miles by taxi: 100 euros

  Žumberački road to Slovenska Vas (Slovenia)

  0.6 miles on foot

  Slovenia

  17 September

  Slovenska Vas to Perišče

  2.5 miles by police van

  18 September

  Perišče to Postojna

  100 miles by bus

  20 September

  Postojna to Logatec

  17 miles by bus

  Logatec to Maribor

  99 miles by train

  Maribor to Spielfeld (Austria)

  14 miles by taxi: 5 euros

  Austria

  20 September,

  Spielfeld to Graz

  midnight

  31 miles by bus

  21 September

  Graz to Salzburg

  173 miles by train: 60 euros each

  Salzburg to Saalach bridge

  5 miles by police bus

  Saalach bridge to Rosenheim (Germany)

  50 miles by bus