The Balkans: a place where local poverty, refugees fleeing war and privileged western tourists collide

I’m taking a picture of a monument, when someone suddenly asks “Bist du Deustch? (Are you German?).” The guy who had just sped up to get out of my frame and not ruin my photo is talking to me. “Nein (No),” I answer, “Ich bin Spanisch (I am Spanish), from Madrid”. Surprised, he answers back in perfect English: “No way you’re Spanish, you’re either German or English.” So, I start talking to him in fluent Spanish. He starts talking back in a very decent Spanish too.

Samir Tarik is a Syrian family dad in his fifties. We bump into each other in Skopje (North Macedonia’s capital). I’m the only person who has talked to him in days. He says that, in Macedonia, nobody wants to stop to talk to him. He is invisible. He needs 15 euros for a train ticket to Belgrade (Serbia), where he plans to get help from ASTRA, an organization dedicated to eradicate human trafficking, among other things. “It’s the only place where they can help me get my family out of Syria,” he says. “There is intense bombing every day, my family is in a bunker nine meters underground.”

Samir has spent $10.000 to get out of Syria. He paid smugglers, who have been making big business out of people’s misery for the past years of conflict, to take him from Aleppo to Greece. He walked all the way through Iraq, Iran and Turkey (I’m guessing that it’s impossible to cross straight to Turkey from Syria), from where he managed to get into Greece. I didn’t have time to ask him about the Greek border, (given the current situation that is going on there). Maybe he managed to get into Greece before last week’s tension broke out.

He spent eight days in Greece before getting into North Macedonia. He then made his way up north, walking for 12 days, until he reached the capital. He went into a mosque in the Albanian quarter of the city (there’s a big Albanian community in the western part of North Macedonia and most of them are Muslims) to ask for help. “I talked to them in Arabic and they didn’t understand me. When I explained myself in English they didn’t want to help me. They are bad Muslims,” he says. He tried his luck again in a church, but the pastor couldn’t help him. “Macedonia is a poor country; the pastor’s salary is 80 euros a month. He even showed me the donations basket and it was empty.”

After having been kicked out of the construction site where he slept, we meet. “I have to go to Belgrade, it’s my only option,” he says. “I don’t even know if my family is alive […] my wife, my kids…,” he almost cries. Samir hasn’t eaten in 18 days because of the knot tied in his stomach.

After listening to all of this, I call my friends and, together, we manage to give him 5 euros, 200 Albanian Leks and 1.000 Macedonian dinars (a total of around 20 euros). He thanks us and confused (he doesn’t know it adds up to more than 15 euros), he begs for a bit more to buy his train ticket. We tell him that he has enough for the ticket and to get something to eat and as soon as he hears that, he breaks down and starts hugging us, kissing us, thanking Allah for us and blessing us. He shakes my hand, looks me in the eye, and kisses my palm before hugging me like no one has ever hugged me in my entire life.

It’s around 1:15PM and he knows there is a train to Belgrade at 1:45PM. Before he speeds off, I ask him if he has a phone number or an email where I can contact him. “Look at me, I look homeless. I have nothing, I had to sell my phone and everything of value to survive during the trip,” he says. I manage to take a very rusty portrait of him (I didn’t want to waste more of his time) and I promise him that I’ll write his story. He thanks us once again and waving his hand in the distance, he disappears.

[…]

While writing this story (in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria), I take a break and look out my window. A couple of Bulgarian Roma teenagers walk by. I look at them. They stare back hard at me, probably thinking I don’t like them, like most non-Roma Bulgarians do. “Zdrasti! (Hello!),” I say. A huge smile on their faces. They say hi back and wish me a good day.

That’s the Balkans.