The Death Trip

From Syria to Amsterdam, on foot and by boat; it’s a perilous journey.

By Waseem Khrtabeel

It was my 8th week greeting refugees at Centraal Station. I was waiting for an international train to arrive with a group of other volunteers.

It was one of those moments when I thought back to how I got here. I thought back to the time when I lived in Syria, safe, and then when I fled to Iraq, Kurdistan in May 2013 when the war had made it too dangerous to stay. I was fortunate enough to find a job in my profession, as mechanical engineering soon after I arrived in Iraq.

But in 2015, I had to flee again. The war had spread. I was scared for my life. I remembered the talks I had with my family about what to do…

The train from Frankfurt arrived. A woman in her fifties stepped out of the train. She immediately reminded me of my mother. She had the expression in her eyes that all mothers have: protection and worry.

She had a lot of luggage. As I helped her, her daughter stepped out of the train, followed by her 15-year-old brother. They seemed tired, but careless.

Her younger son reminded me of my brother. He arrived in the Netherlands in December 2014. Did this boy have a similar story?

How did he say goodbye to the rest of his family? I remembered how I said goodbye to my mother. I still remember her tears and the look on her face; she was so worried about me not surviving the death trip.

The mother introduced herself as Am Omer, meaning “mother of Omer”. I felt so comfortable around her. I wanted to take care of her, and at the same time I wanted her to take care of me.

We gathered food and some blankets. She started to talk about where she had come from. She had to flee from her home in Iraq. She told me which countries they crossed: from Iraq they walked to Turkey, from Turkey they continued by boat to Greece. Because they were poor, they weren’t able to take a flight or a train to Germany. So they walked.

They walked for days from Greece to Macedonia, to Serbia, to Croatia, to Slovenia, to Austria and finally to Germany. In Germany they got a train to the Netherlands.

When I made my way to the Netherlands, I was young. How hard must it have been for this mother?

Did she also have to pay smugglers thousands of dollars to get to Greece? Did she have to run at 4am from point to point without being seen by Turkish guards? Did she also get caught and sent back to her home-country and have to try again?

Did she have to get a bus with a smuggler to strange places in the middle of the night and wait up for hours in the cold? Were they not allowed to speak, sleep or use their phones either?

Did she also have to get on a tiny inflatable boat with 40 other people in the middle of the Mediterranean? Did her boat have no captain either? We were just pointed in a direction, and shown how to use the motor. Half of the passengers had life jackets — the others didn’t.

Was she as terrified as I was from the high waves? Did her motor also stop? Did she have to call the Greek coast guard to rescue them? No-one came to rescue us.

We arrived on an uninhabited island and slept in the cold for a night with no food before the police came. I was detained in jail for 10 days. We had no warm water, and it was crowded with people.

I don’t even want to think about how she managed to walk the road from Greece to here. I was lucky enough to fly from Athens to Düsseldorf and get the train to Amsterdam where my brother was waiting for me. That was my story.

The mother told me how tired she was. She told me that she never wanted to leave her country but that she had no choice. They were in fear for their lives every day.

She asked me if they were safe now and if this was a better place for her children. I tried to comfort her. She didn’t know anything about Europe. She only knew Iraq; her traditions, culture and customs. I brought them to the shelter, and did my best to tell them that it would be all right.

Before I went to bed that night I said goodnight to my mother on WhatsApp. I told her about Am Omer, and how she reminded me of her. I told my mother that I was safe and that I’d send her another message tomorrow.

Sleep well mama, sleep well Am Omer and son Omer. It’s okay now.