There’s an Arab proverb that goes something like this: Me and my brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world. It sums up my first encounter with the refugees fairly well.

The day started out innocently enough: I forgot to bring a plug adapter, and ran out of juice on all my equipment. I spent most of the morning walking around looking for an electronics store open on a Sunday. A few failed attempts later, I was looking for stray power cables in antique shops that might plug into my laptop charger. I was about to give up when I stumbled on a sporting-goods store selling me on “Travel the World!”. Day rescued!

I walked into the nearest Starbucks, feeling oddly satisfied at my ability to triangulate and navigate the small blocks of Oslo. Alright then. Power sorted, food eaten, coffee hot. It’s go-time, Majd! Let’s go find us some refugees!

How do you even begin this kind of search? My cold-emails to journalists who have been writing about the conflict have gone unanswered. I was imagining an overcrowded square in the center of the city with many despondent refugees more or less sleeping on the ground. The closest I found to that were apparently Romanis. I was feeling a little hopeless.

In desperation, Google seemed as good a place to start as any. “oslo syria refugee” seemed obvious enough to start with, and sure enough, some lucky research later, I found two leads: The local immigration directorate, and the main police headquarters. The former provides support, and the latter is the main registration point. Both were within walking distance.

I was feeling very agitated on the walk. On the one hand, I had been building up to this moment for months. On the other, I was dreading the task. What was I thinking? What qualifies me to do this? What will I even say? Will I come off patronizing?

My heart started racing the closer I got. I distracted myself with the comfort of architecture and fall foliage. Easy photos to take, but my head was elsewhere.

GPS told me to follow the road I was on. It curved slightly up and to the left. One foot in front of the other. Should I ask them for permission before taking a photo? Am I even allowed to be doing this?

Oslo is a quiet place. I’ve spent about 10 days here between this trip and the last one, and the place has always been almost eerily quiet. There’s no music to be heard, barely any sound of engine or motor. Nobody speaks loudly, and the city just whispers along.

I was coming up the last bend in the road before the police station, and I could hear the faint voice of people talking. I rounded the bend and saw suddenly in front of me no less than two hundred people standing shoulder to shoulder, moving this way and that. I found it! I freakin’ found it! My heart was seriously pounding now. Everything felt so real. Everything I’ve been hearing and reading in the news was now manifested in front of me. I took the long way to cross the street to meet them, giving myself a chance to calm my nerves.

I mustered up the courage to walk through the crowd, the camera by my side outing me as a journalist, which afforded me a certain level of invisibility. I passed by a television crew looking for refugees who spoke any English, and lots of refugees going into the center, coming out, and waiting to go in to the main courtyard for dinner.

Arabic is a very diverse language. You can triangulate a person within a few words of speech, often not just to a region or country, but to a specific city. Now, given everything I’ve been reading in preparation for this trip, I was expecting the vast majority of the refugees to be Syrian. So it was no little surprise to see how few Syrians there were in the crowd. Sudanese, Eritrians, Persians, and Iraqis actually made up the bulk, with Syrians a sizable subgroup.

The main courtyard where food was being served was surrounded by a terrace with people lined up along the siding looking down. The families seemed to get preferential treatment. They were allowed to enter the courtyard, line up for food and clothes, get everything sorted, then the men were allowed to enter. Food was occasionally tossed up to the terrace for the overbearingly hungry, but the scene was calm.

I overheard the men next to me talking in Syrian-Arabic, so I pulled out all the stops in trying to get to know them:

“Are you guys Syrian?”