We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled

by Wendy Pearlman

  Once while I was waiting for an appointment in one of the state agencies here I met a journalist. She told me, “The most important thing is that now you’re safe.” I told her, “But we haven’t come looking for safety. We’re not afraid of death.”

  And it’s true. We don’t have a problem with death. Our problem is life without dignity. If we’d known what was in store for us, we never would have come. But we did come, and now we can’t just return. There’s no way back.

  Yusra, mother (Aleppo)

  I never went to school, so I didn’t learn to read or write. I was married at age fifteen and had a son. Then my husband got cancer and died. I had no money, so my son left school and started to work when he was ten. When our problems became too much, he told me, “Mom, you should get married.” But whenever anyone proposed to me, he’d say, “This person isn’t good for you. I know by looking into his eyes.”

  Then one day, a man came looking for me. My son talked to him for a while and brought him home. He said, “Mom, I have someone to marry you. I know he’s a good man because I looked into his eyes and found kindness.” After we got married, my son told me that he wanted only one thing: siblings. He said, “I want a family. I don’t want to be alone.”

  I had a daughter and a son. They were four and two years old when the events began. People started to go out in demonstrations, and then the shooting started. We told ourselves that it would only last a little while. But then came the bombing. When my two-year-old would hear the sounds of explosions, he’d go completely still. He just stared with his eyes wide open, frozen like a tree. It took him a long time to learn to talk. Until he was four years old, he’d say only “bah” and “mah.”

  I was very scared for my kids, so we smuggled ourselves to Jordan. We took a car part of the way, and then walked in the middle of the night. We paid the FSA to guide us. Whenever the regime army heard a sound, they’d open fire. We thought we were going to die.

  We stayed in Jordan for almost two years. Life was hard. There was no work and we spent all the money we had. My husband was still in Damascus. I told him that we needed another solution. He’d worked in Germany in the 1970s and told me, “Germany is beautiful. It’s a country that protects the rights of women and children.” He had heart problems and high blood pressure, and couldn’t make the trip with us. So I told him that I would do it on my own.

  I took my two kids and my nephew, and we entered Turkey. There smugglers took us from one place to another. We’d walk up and down hills at night to get to the boats, but the police kept catching us. Once they detained us in a yard under the sun, without a tree for shade. We had no water and my kids got feverish and almost passed out.

  I took the kids to Izmir. We kept trying to get on the boat. We’d go, find the police there, and go back. We finally got on a dinghy, and after two hours arrived in Greece. I thought, “That’s it. No more struggle, soon we’ll be in Germany.” I didn’t realize that the real journey was only just beginning.

  We traveled with a group of about two hundred people. We went by boat to Salonika and then by bus to Macedonia. Then we started to walk. We walked for twenty-nine days. We got lost so many times. Thieves and mafias came out at night and attacked people when they slept, so we’d sleep during the day instead. The young guys would stay awake to guard us. They protected us a lot, but also told me, “You never know what might happen, so you should be strong and get armed.” I bought a knife and a big stick.

  We entered Montenegro at night and saw police up ahead. The rest of the group wanted to change routes and cross by river. Most of them were young guys and could swim. I was worried that I could lose one of the kids in the dark. I wouldn’t put my kids in danger, so I parted ways with the group.

  I took the kids and kept walking. Then the police turned their lights on us and shouted, “Police! Police!” I put my knife to my neck and told them, “If anyone comes near me, I’ll kill myself!” A woman spoke English and told them what I’d said.

  They responded, “We’re just trying to protect you from mafias in the area.” And that was the truth. The police were good to us. They brought us water and biscuits. They saw that I was dying to rest and let me go to a cave and sleep. They watched to make sure no one came near us. But after two hours they said I needed to get walking again.

  By the time we got to Budapest, my kids were in a terrible state. They couldn’t feel anything anymore. Their clothes were wet and they had diarrhea. We finally got to a hotel. I gave the kids a bath and asked them what they wanted to eat. They said chicken, so I went out and got some. We were just starting to eat when someone knocked on the door. It was the police. The hotel owner had reported me.

  At the police station they took us from department to department. They insulted us and then put me in one room and my kids in a different room. I cried my eyes out and heard the sound of my kids crying, too.

  The next morning they released us and we went back to the hotel. Thank God, we found other Syrians who were leaving that night. We left with them, and eventually made it to Germany.

  I’ve been in Germany for a year and a half now. My husband was able to join us a few months ago. I don’t regret a thing. Believe me, if I had to do it all over again, I would. Even if I’m still living in this refugee shelter. God willing, I’ll work and live a good life. The most wonderful thing here is the schools. They teach kids until they understand. I hope that my daughter will be an engineer or a doctor one day. I’m also going to school, and I started to learn the letters. Sometimes I mess up and my daughter laughs at me. But little by little, I’m learning. I learned to ride a bike, too. I fell down so many times in the beginning. But now I’m getting good at it.

  Osama, student (al-Qusayr)

  Everything in Jordan bothered me. My family, the government, the bad way the Jordanians treated us. My dad was missing in prison; until now, we don’t know anything about him. Personally, I wish that someone would just tell me that he’s dead. At least then I wouldn’t think about him being tortured.

  I was in Jordan for two years and worked a lot of different jobs. People exploited us, because they knew we needed to work to survive. If I quit one job, I might not find another. At the same time, my boss could call the police on me at any moment, because Syrians were legally prohibited from working. They could throw me back to Syria.

  If I’d been earning money, at least I could say that I was supporting my family. But the problem was that I wasn’t earning much of anything. I enrolled in ninth grade again, because I hadn’t finished before we left al-Qusayr. I studied the whole year and took my exams, but they wouldn’t give me papers saying that I completed the grade.

  I had an uncle in Denmark and told my mom that I wanted to go there to move forward with my life. My brother and I left together. We went to Turkey and agreed with a smuggler to leave on a boat for Italy. We tried two or three times, but the police caught us.

  Then another turn came. They threw us on this really small boat. We were 313 people, one on top of the other. It smelled like fish, and everyone was throwing up. Nobody could go to the bathroom and everybody fought over their one glass of water a day. After five days we switched from a metal boat to a wooden one—the kind of boat that tourists take to have a quick swim offshore. We got on and it started sinking. Thank God nobody died.

  We were just riding in the water without a clue. The smugglers didn’t tell us, but they headed back to Egypt to pick up more people. We were in Egyptian waters when the waves got really strong. The boat almost flipped over. Later, water started to come in from the bottom of the boat. It flowed into the motor and flooded the supply of bread. We took the bread to the roof to dry and it turned all sorts of colors. But we had nothing else to eat.

  We moved on to Libyan waters, though we didn’t know it at the time. I helped the captain dump buckets of water from the boat so I could get an extra glass of water. The captain liked me and would talk to me. At some point he told me that the boat could take only about
six hours more, and then it was going to sink.

  By that time you could hear the wood cracking. Everyone started to scream. One guy would pray, others would yell at each other. People started to fight over life vests. Some people would wear one vest and hide another. It was like the rebels in Syria, stealing from each other. My brother and I didn’t wear vests. If the boat sank, people would charge at you and beat you to take the vest. So I thought that I was better off without one. And anyway, if we were going to drown, the vests wouldn’t help.

  Night came. My brother and I were never really close, but during the trip we became closer than I ever imagined possible. We sat together and he’d hug me tight. We looked at pictures of our family and said goodbye to each other.

  Then lights appeared. A boat approached us, yelling, “Italian coast guard!” Everyone started to yell back. It turned out that someone had contacted al-Jazeera and our boat was in the news. We got on the Italian ship. They gave us water. We drank so much, but couldn’t quench our thirst. I’d told my mom that the trip would take ten days, but by then, fourteen days had passed. By the time we got to Italy and called our family, they thought we were dead.

  In Italy we were placed in a refugee camp, but then managed to escape. We found a Syrian guy who agreed to drive us to Denmark for 500 euros per person. But in Germany our car got pulled over. The driver got like ten years in prison, and we were in jail for two days.

  I made it to Denmark. I was in a boarding school for a year, and it was the best year of my life. At first it was hard because I didn’t speak the language. But I really wanted to learn, so I started reading and listening to Danish music. Danes won’t take the initiative to speak with you; you have to go and talk to them. And that’s what I did. I got a Danish girlfriend; she taught me a lot of Danish and now I’m teaching her Arabic. I even visit her family and join them for birthdays and stuff.

  I’ve played piano for years, but only played Arabic music. Here, I’ve started to play fusions of Western and Eastern music. I play and my girlfriend sings. And it took five years, but I finally finished ninth grade. For five years I was always scared or angry or sad. Then I got a chance to be normal again. I’m happy now. In the end, there’s hope.

  Abdul Rahman, engineer (Hama)

  I left Hama and went back to Algeria. I got engaged to my love. We were very happy, but in my mind, I was still running and shouting, “Freedom in Syria!” I was spending like ten hours a day reading the news on the Internet, six hours studying, and four hours attending classes at the university. Stress, stress, stress. I got alopecia, a stress reaction disease. I started losing my hair. Later it attacked my eyebrows and eyelashes. Then it started to disfigure my face.

  The president of my university knew that I was an activist and he started to close doors on me. He supported the Algerian government, which supported Assad. I was supposed to be admitted to the PhD program automatically because of my high grades. Then, all of a sudden, the department told me that I had to earn admission through an exam like the others. I took the exam and got the second-highest score, but the professors told me, “You’re never going to be accepted. Please, just withdraw and give the chance to the student behind you.”

  I was in shock. I lost my only source of income. My residency in Algeria became illegal. And then I read that Algeria deported nineteen Syrian pro-revolution activists back to Damascus. I told my fiancée and her family that the only solution was for us to get married officially, so at least I had some sort of legal papers in the country. Everybody accepted . . . except my fiancée. Something was wrong. I felt that she had changed. She said that I had changed. Maybe I had.

  We got married, but the marriage went downhill quickly. My friends saw my wife with another guy. I confronted her and she said that she was in love with someone else. We divorced, which meant that I lost my residency. I started working in the middle of nowhere in the Algerian desert, because there weren’t many police there. Then I got a phone call: My little brother had been killed in an airstrike in Syria. I couldn’t handle any more after that.

  I got the idea of fleeing to Europe. A Syrian friend came with me. We used smugglers to cross from Algeria to Libya. The smugglers were like an armed gang. They took everything we owned and locked us in a stable for the night. The next day they took us to another smuggler who said what they always say: It will be a very nice boat, with no more than 50 people . . . it turned out to be an old wooden fishing boat about forty meters long, with 350 people on top of each other.

  We were at sea for twelve hours before the motor stopped and water started coming into the engine. We started sinking in the middle of the sea. Luckily, the Italian coast guard saw us. They took us onto a big military ship, which was already filled with other immigrants.

  In Sicily they asked us if we were educated: engineers, teachers, doctors . . . if you said yes, they took your fingerprints so you stay in Italy. If you said no, they told you to keep moving to northern Europe. My target was Norway, so I told them that I was a laborer.

  And so I went—from Milan to Austria to Munich to Hamburg. One train after another. Whenever the police came and checked passports, I’d hide in the toilet. That worked until the German-Danish border, when suddenly the customs police appeared. This very tall guy asked me, “ID, please.”

  I gave him my expired Syrian passport. He flipped through the pages seriously, looking for a visa or something. He looked at me directly and said, “How did you make it here?”

  I gave him a big smile. “By the sea, in a little fishing boat.”

  He didn’t want others to know my issue. He whispered, “Where are you going?”

  I said, “Norway.”

  He gave me back my passport and said, “Good luck.” And then he left the train.

  I had an aunt in Denmark and stopped to visit her. She convinced me to stay in Denmark. It took me fifty-one days to be granted asylum. I started my integration plan, which takes three years. I was very serious in language school and then did an online course in computer programming. After two months, I got an internship in an industrial company. All the other interns had been studying for three or four years. I was fully charged with desire to compensate for the years of life I’d lost. I guess it was a way of getting rid of negative feelings of stress and guilt.

  Today, I have a job at the biggest IT company in Denmark. My salary is higher than 66 percent of Danes. This company trusted me even though I’m a Syrian refugee with an Arabic, Muslim name. I might have the longest name in the Danish directory.

  We have built a Syrian revolutionary community here. The older community of Syrian migrants was too afraid to hold demonstrations. Even in Denmark they said, “Assad supporters will kill us.” But we do our demonstrations. Our first one was outside the Russian embassy. We were ten people and the embassy employees treated us like dogs. But we had legal permission and kept going. Our last demonstration attracted at least two hundred people. It was the first of its kind in Copenhagen. I led the chanting, even though I have the ugliest voice in the world. It was so beautiful that I cried. I had the same feeling as when I was in al-Asi Square in Hama.

  We want to show that the free Syrian people are outgoing, open-minded, successful, and organized. We came from the revolution and we still support our revolution. But I feel guilty. It’s not just me. Everybody feels guilty. We talk about it a lot. There were people living peaceful lives and we got them involved in our dream. It was an honest dream, a dream for everybody. But our will—our honest will, our pure will—couldn’t make it past international collusions.

  Sometimes I dare to think about going back to the revolution. But then I remember that it won’t make any difference for my country. After I left, my cousin was arrested and killed under torture. Hama today is nearly without men. There are only women and old people. My sister calls it “the Widow City.”

  Kareem, doctor (Homs)

  Jordanian physicians were worried about competition, so it was impossible for Syrian physicians t
o get licensed. Instead, we’d work and a Jordanian doctor would claim the work in his name. But the situation was unsustainable. The Ministry of Health heard rumors and began to do inspections. I needed to find an alternative.

  I asked around and learned that you could apply for a visa to the United States for only $150. I decided to try. I did the interview and they gave it to me. But then I applied for visas for my wife and children, and their applications were immediately rejected.

  I came up with a plan: to book a plane ticket to the U.S. with a layover in Germany, and then get out and stay in Germany. But the airline companies had their own security checks and they refused to approve an itinerary through Europe. Instead I flew directly to New York. I stayed with a Syrian friend for ten days, and during that time consulted with an immigration lawyer. In the U.S., the government basically gives you a work permit and leaves you to fend for yourself. I’d have to study for a long time before I could practice medicine again. During that time I wouldn’t earn any money to feed my family.

  So I decided to take the other option: Europe. I bought a ticket from the U.S. to Turkey with a two-hour layover in Frankfurt. In the Frankfurt airport, I waited in a café and kept an eye on my plane to Turkey. They called again and again for a late passenger. Finally, I watched the plane pull away from the gate. When it moved to the runway, I went to the nearest officer, declared that I was Syrian, and requested protection.

  A month later I was granted asylum. Within five months my family joined me. I did months of language training and my German is now good, praised be God. At the same time, I was a guest observer at hospitals. I gradually took on more and more responsibilities. About two years after arriving here, I got a contract to work at a hospital. Today I’m a licensed physician again.