Escape E-Book

Athena Demeter

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Escape is an extraordinary biography that takes readers on an emotional and transformative journey through the life of an Arabian woman who defied unimaginable adversity to reclaim her freedom and rediscover her identity. Born and raised in a country rife with turmoil, she endured a childhood fraught with physical, sexual, and psychological torture that left scars both visible and hidden. These early experiences cast a long shadow over her youth, creating a life overshadowed by darkness, pain, and a constant struggle for survival within a society deeply bound by oppressive norms.
Marriage offered no refuge from her torment, as she became a second wife and a mother, trapped in a cycle of despair and hopelessness. However, fate had other plans in store for her when a spark of determination ignited within her soul. The pages of Escape recount the gripping odyssey of this courageous woman as she traverses the unforgiving wilderness, facing hunger, thirst, and exposure to the elements. Her illegal passage from Palestine to Europe is fraught with uncertainty, danger, and the constant threat of being captured or lost forever. Throughout the journey, she not only battles external hardships but also confronts the demons that linger within her, wrestles with trauma, and seeks to mend the shattered pieces of her identity.
Her journey becomes a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a beacon of hope amid the darkest of circumstances. Throughout the book, the reader is drawn into a tale that serves as a powerful reminder of the strength that lies dormant within all of us, waiting to be ignited by the spark of courage and determination.
Escape is a profound exploration of the human experience, empathy, and the unyielding power of hope. Through its poignant narrative, the book sheds light on the plight of countless individuals facing similar hardships, giving voice to those silenced by oppression and injustice. At its core, Escape is a Journey from Torment to Triumph, is an intimate and transformative journey, a journey that will leave readers moved, inspired, and forever changed. This book serves as a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable pain, one can rise above adversity, reclaim their identity, and emerge from the darkness, unbroken and triumphant.

Leseprobe

Athena Demeter

Escape

© 2023 Europe Books| London

www.europebooks.co.uk

[email protected]

ISBN 9791220143660

First edition: October 2023

Escape

I dedicate this book firstly to myself as I know nobody who could be a beautiful soul and have a positive impact for others before being that for herself!

Secondly with deep love and great tenderness I dedicate this book to my little daughter who I know we both are connected beyond the borders and the humans barriers, I am sincerely looking forward to see my words reaching her when I decided to go and find myself having the faith in life that was the awaited light for both of us.

I dedicate this book to her with a whisper: we both are led through the light and love.

Thirdly, and most importantly, to all women in the world I dedicate this book to the human within all of us, to the wise, free, and wild spirit that lies subtly in our hearts, I want you to know you are the beauty with its strong meaning, you are the wisdom with its joyful flow, you are the change with its smooth compassion, you are the goddess!

CHAPTER 1 – PANICKED STEPS…

Do you know? There is what’s so much bigger than to write, so much more than to say! And there is something much deeper than words can formulate... but here I am trying. Trying to get the depth of my experience into this writing, trying to draw through my words the whole story of what I lived during my journey to find myself, when I was shaking as an annoying bell that tells you artfully there are so many things people are running after, you will miss!

But, who am I? What am I?

If I didn't get rid of all what the past perspective has put in my head? Yes...who am I? If I don't give up on everything the world has put in me while I am living now in times of self-vision?

What am I? If I don't see people and things from the dimensions in which I silently stand? Where do the stories begin? Does it begin in the fatuous moment where an idea is born? Or... Where is a lofty idea born? I guess it is neither this nor that! It is just born from the moment where reality shakes us, not caring about our distorted identities, or about what it means to us to live restfully in a notebook of what others’ expectations, wishes and desires dictate to us.

Hey, wise silence, give me cosmic ink. May the spirit of writing spread in my calm head so I dare to lift the veil beyond the title on the title alone, on what is worse than a male-aggressor reading that I fled from my country to another one.

Give me the tender power that allows me to touch the heart of all women, to shake every suppressed woman wherever she is, to shake her fears by telling her the story, and how I dared to choose my way even though I had to leave everything behind including my daughter. Hey wise silence, give me the ability to heal my wounded motherhood, to look into the eyes of everyone swore me because I left my child who was 7 years old and ran away… show me constantly the light.

I might be able to write the background of who I was according to that broken woman I was one day. A woman who was in all ways tortured by everyone around her: her mother, father, husband, and the whole culture.

It seems too scary to look back at that time and remember all the darkness with all its details, the scary woman there sat for years in a corner. Yes, my mother always wanted me to sit in a very tiny corner on the floor with my dirty clothes and messy hair for years!

This is not the beginning of the story, nor the end... this is only the fleeting memories that I let go of all along the way, thus here I am.

Here I am! Here I am world! Trying to beg my memory to take me to the farthest point in the past, the past that all of my visions are a result of! Trying to discover calmly the beginning of this story, where did the doubt begin? And how did my heart harness all its powers to ask in amazement: why?!

It might have begun on my uncle’s house stair in a moment that I remember absolutely clear, when I was 4 years old going up the stairs, and one of my cousins saw me and asked: “Do you search for your mother? Come with me I will get you where she is.”

He was at least 10 years older than me, and as I remember I was not searching for my mum! I did know where I was going. In the moment when my cousin asked me if I want my mother I’ve experience a moment of complete awareness, to the point that I don't remember what there was before that moment and what happened after it. All I know is that moment is one of the most unique moments when I was so aware of its existence. The clearest thing that appears to me about that situation in my mind is the state of intense awareness of the moment, and my strong realization to that question of my cousin: “Hey, are you looking for your mum?”

I followed him with my small steps, and a calm face going to my mother, all the details after that have completely disappeared from my memory.

Or maybe the story has begun from another place that is so far from my uncle’s house stairs, from the city itself where I grew up… maybe!

Maybe the story began really there, between the massive trees in one of the Greek islands bordering Turkey, while I was stunned by the horror of the road, laying on my back next to two guys, I was neither awake, nor asleep, my teeth were chattering like a mouse nipping an old wall.

Hey, I now know how to remember that scene exactly, that stinky smell of incapability and death was not only surrounding us, but also penetrating into the smallest details that appeared to us, and had been with us in every small thing, in our wet clothes that were wrapping our shocked shaken bodies, in the bags that were hold by their owners stubbornly even though all the danger, as if these bags were carrying the death antidote.

Well probably they were hiding their passports, medicine and some money in the bags, otherwise each one of them would hold his bag this hard?! For me nothing has made a difference or an importance, the most present feeling in my mind was the lost and running away from everything to nothing! I was already drowning in me while I was laying on the ground with strangers, we were laying in a circular shape, every two or three people their bodies intertwined together as an attempt to beg for salvation to save us from the strangeness of this situation and the horror of its details. We were intertwined automatically together hoping the tired soul would attach with the others’ souls, so they oust the cruelty of fear and coldness. Or may the beats of the confused hearts give us the strength and patience that we desperately need! In fact, I didn't think at that time, when I was in this situation, about the reasons that motivated us to intertwine, but what was strongly present and effortlessly seen in that moment was that each one of us trusted all of us are equal, we were all in the same situation. Yes, we're living a life that exactly contradicted what we used to live as human beings, regardless of our nationalities, and where we came from after our countries did not fit us. Usually, people tend to hide their impotence, weakness and fears but here in this island no one even tried to hide any feeling, we did not need to, we did not think about that, simply we were all living the same experience… We were naked equally, weak and helpless, we were like insects clinging to the edges of a stone floating over a poisonous swamp after they got stuck.

From this dark event then I would like to start telling my story. To say its details wisely and expansively, without hiding a small detail knowing that the world might judge me for it, without worrying that my daughter’s questions if she looked at me one day asking: “Why mummy, why?”

The two guys who I laid next to were brothers, both a few years younger than me. My clothes were wet, from time to time I felt like I lost consciousness, I wasn’t asleep, I know now that truly while I am writing, I was every now and then wishing to throw my body in the circle where Reem and her children and brother and another girl 3 year older than me sat. They’ve made a small circle with their intertwined bodies; their circle was like a cuddle fit only for them.

While the other people including me were every two of them so close to each other, me being the only person there with no buddy, I had to hide myself close to these two brothers who were basically working for the trafficker, the unknown man who was getting paid to smuggle us through Europe, we've never met him, we were allowed to meet only his workers, the people under his power and mercy! It was silly that I thought at that moment these two brothers were the safest among us!

In fact, we were all at the same level of helplessness, even though I realized that I followed my delusional thought that being next to them protects me from any potential danger. I ran beyond a stupid trust in them, despite the first lie they told when we were still in Turkey…

They said before we lifted there: “Listen guys, the journey would be so much easier than you can expect, we may have to walk from 2 hours to 3 to cross the Turkish-Greek border, and then we will cross a river in a dinghy.”

It had been two months since I was in Turkey, when the news about starting the journey came from the trafficker’s team, they announced: “The Turkish city Ardahan is the starting point…”

During the two months that I lived in Turkey before starting this crazy journey, I lived in Istanbul, where I tasted freedom for the first time in my life with the joy of exploring new worlds I wouldn't explore in my city for a lifetime!

I arrived on a rainy night in Istanbul. It was a big event for me when the plane that flew from Cairo to Turkey landed, as the sight of sprawling cities on vast expanses of land gave me an astonishing key to the experience of watching our trace from above, to follow artful movements on the earth.

The world is pieces of plastic toys! People do not exist at all… and I was peeping out of the small plane window where I was sitting next to completely forgetting that I was crying before the plane took off… actually, before its scheduled time changed, or rather before Fathi had changed my flight due to the emergency issues that I had with my family chasing me when they found out I was at the airport. For sure that was a lifetime shock to the whole family, rather to everyone that knew me, actually it was a shock to everyone who heard about my escape: “Ghadeer ran away?!”

Well, I am writing this book now, answering that question with a soft smile: Yes!! I did run away! But to where? Honestly? To myself. To the truth. To the answers.

In their mind were two questions: “Did Ghadeer run away? How did she dare?”

One of my sisters was constantly in contact with me, she was the person who told me my family was planning to get me back or to kill me, after they found out that I was at Cairo International Airport. My brothers hacked my email and Facebook account, so they were able to know my location. She was also the one who told me about that. I was getting WhatsApp messages all day, luckily, she was with my parents in Egypt as they three had travelled earlier to arrange her marriage to someone who lives there. She knew all the details about my family plans to catch me through spying on our Mum’s phone. What was stuck in my mind out of all messages she sent was two things: the first one was that I should not let my parents get me back from the airport to their place in Cairo at all costs. She texted me: Hey Ghadeer, please do not give up, do not go with them, suicide but do not give yourself up to them!

The second thing was her message after I didn’t agree to meet my parents when they came to the airport trying in a cooperation with a member of the Egyptian Police to get me out of the airport, she texted me: Be careful! Ahmed (my brother) to pay a hitman to kill me then it is over!

As if I was protected from a hidden force, nothing from their plans has succeeded! I cried, cried so long. Crying my 26 years that I lived without doing anything other than nodding, saying yes! Crying this pang of rebirth, of the woman I wanted to be! And yes, I was crying when I told Fathi about what was happening. While he was so calm and wise, he decided then to book a new flight for me as soon as possible, to fly to Turkey. So, he did!

My original flight was after two days, when he called me and I told him about the call that I’ve got from the Palestinian ambassador in Egypt attempting to pressure me to go back to my family, the ambassador became a party to my case after my uncle called one of Hamas members to get me back. Hamas is the strongest political party in Gaza strip.

All these situations passed anyway in full frenzy when I was in the airport. When I arrived in Istanbul a Syrian man greeted me in the airport. Fathi asked him to do that. I stayed at his apartment with the whole family for two months. I spent my time with monotonous days, before my journey date was set on a smuggling trip from Turkey to Greece.

And there I was! Laying on the ground like a rag! Among people I never met before. I insisted to stay as close as possible to the brothers who were working for the trafficker, they looked actually as if they were addicted to drugs or something else, too thin and dull, however they were responsible for the state of death that we find ourselves living in. I was looking around in the darkness and saw only laid bodies of tired and scared people not able to sleep. The distant life’s lights in the cities of the island reflected on the pale sky so I could see their shaded faces. Twenty people were knocking on death's door! I was looking and only noticing panicked glances, or necks bend forward while the body lies on the ground. Each one was putting a bag under his head, and I, my head was so heavy with all the burden I looked at the world’s face was terrified as well. The time was slow and heavy no matter how hard you kick it, it didn’t move forward! And this mysterious feeling with its cruel value pushed me to surrender! Well, nothing!

Damn to all the thoughts and the things! The only touching fact now was that I was stuck at night on a deserted island, the temperature is below zero, no food and not even water to drink, I indulged in that only thought, and kept my head down!

In an instant, it seemed like an eternity the 13-year-old girl had lost her consciousness! She was squatting and stiff. Her mother cried when she was trying to wake her up, but the girl did not respond for a while. I was not able to estimate how long she was unconscious, that was one of the most that we lived!

Why am I saying WE lived! I am sure no one of us lived as real as that woman Fatima. She was crying and begging the girl: “Please my sweetheart wake up, please… Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I did not feel the dread of a child dying in front of me! It was more selfish and animalistic than I thought at that time, despite all my sympathy with her for a long heavy moment, there was an ecstatic voice whispering inside me: “This death didn’t attack me!”

It is sad to say it was a long moment! Is it fair to describe that time with all its fears while the little girl was unconscious as if it was a moment? In fact, no! Maybe it is not normal to live a situation with losing the sense of time, feeling it stopped as if this fear will last forever, seeing the hours, minutes, seconds just as bullshit. Some few hours could turn the time upside down and change its course as if all the years before were nothing!

Within minutes, a person dies, and within minutes is born! Within seconds a thought crosses a human mind, so it revives it or buries it. Funerals take place part of the day, the weddings as well! And in that situation where I was facing an innocent child dying of hunger and coldness, there was no meaning of time, it only had weight, heavy and hurtful until she responded in a low voice. I did not understand what she said, I didn't want to, hearing her talks again after we all think she is dead, was so much enough! I thought at that moment: “That must be a good sign, she is alive.”

Actually, I wasn’t even able to be scared at that situation, I was exhausted I wished I could get rid of body, I was every now and then looking up to the sky begging the nighttime to finish, wishing to see the soft light of a new dawn, the night was for me the real mirror that reflects the monstrosity of the circumstance.

After the midnight I felt I was losing control of myself, my body was shaking, I started screaming and yelling at the two brothers who work for the trafficker, did not plan to say a word, but so many words were coming out of my mouth with unstopped tears running out of my eyes, all I remember is I was blaming them for what we’re going through. I screamed as I’ve never done before and asked them to call his boss and tell him we needed to move! He had to send the cars! I meant to blame him, to make him feel guilty. His answer was so low and slowly he said: “It is not my fault.”

But anyway, he called his boss, he answered him in maybe 2 hours and the cars would be here. They were all liars, we had been told that at least 3 times on this day, yet we all were ignoring this, all we wanted was to survive.

Deep down I wasn't able to believe him, the only hope I had was the possibility of a new dawn…

It was raining, for the first time I observed the sunrise, and witnessed it sneaking up little by little, removing calmly and patiently the cruelty of the night.

The beginning of the day was for me a motivation that allowed me to breathe, allowed my shrunken lungs to open, and at least it allowed me to see clearly the others' faces and appeal to its stiff features from fright.

Vaia had a call from her fiancé, who was for her the savior, she told him about the accurate details, how we sleep outdoors on the mud, how most of us have collapsed, and we have no food.

She told him about the trafficker and his workers’ lies about moving to Thessaloniki before we move to Athens, she told him how we are just stuck in a deserted island for the second day, with nothing to sit on, except the wet ground and the mud, with nothing to protect us from the freezing weather, and how her daughter Fatima convulsed and lost her consciousness, how her son Ali picked up happily a leftover dry bread from the ground, where he found it underneath a plastic piece protected from the rain. He ate it, the moldy bread leftover from a previous smuggling trip made her spoiled son jumps joyfully!

She was lowering and raising her voice up throughout the call with her fiancé Amr based on what she was telling him, she used a weak soft tone when she described what happens to the children and each one of us, whereas she used a strong assertive tone when she asked him to do something to get us out of here! She made her voice strong when she was swearing at the trafficker whereas she made it soft and calm when she begged him to find a solution.

I wonder: what is the thing that leads a woman who crosses the death route, while she is equal with everyone there, to keep thinking that she is better than others and the money that her fiancé has would solve this predicament? When we are stuck in a place no one can reach, where no money, nor power can save us, our fate is only in the hand of the smuggler! This is what it is and I don’t know how your 36-year-old man didn’t tell you that with all the arrogance that you carry on, and all the pride that you blow your head with:

“You are nobody here but a person of these two young brothers’ group that they are smuggling it to Europe. These two brothers who work for the trafficker are the only people among us that know the route! You do see that, don’t you? They know the route as well as they know the malice of their trafficker master! Hey, who are you the strangers that I find myself with in this compelling circumstance! Who are you in the peak of this extraordinary situation, I am so insistent on knowing who you are, and what did gather us here, in this lonely scary spot of the world?! Is it our dreams? Or our tragedies with its all differences.”

They are Vaia and her adopted child Fatima who is in fact, her niece, the daughter of her sister! Vaia had adopted her niece Fatima when she was only a few weeks old, where she looked a disabled baby, blind and did not respond to any external influence, Vaia was not able to get pregnant for some unknown health issues for four years of marriage when the child Fatima was born. She told me later how she felt when she was visiting her sister after giving birth, how sad it was when she heard her sister says she didn't want the baby, she disliked her! Vaia saw how the little girl who was born weeks ago was separated in a different room, forsaken and lonely. She came closer to the baby’s bed with her husband, and in the moment she looked at the little girl and bent her body forward to kiss her, the little girl looked at Vaia’s face as if she was seeing her. She felt an indescribable feeling of love while she was holding the baby in her arms. She cried, whispered to her husband: “I want to adopt this girl!”

She took her home, and started giving her love as if she was really a daughter Vaia was pregnant with! When Vaia told me later about this, she was talking as a goddess who was gull of love and miracles, the moment she described how they found out the babe was able to see and she was not blind as her biological parents thought, her face lighted up, and her eyes were shining! She was different, well every time she talked about her story with adopting her niece Fatima she really looked different, like her true love was allowed to be each time she remembered that story with her daughter. With the absolute care that Vaia gave to the little girl she started walking at the age of three, she simply changed from a blind disabled baby to a normal happy child by the love that she got from Fatima!

I know love creates miracles. We are the children of love.

In the year that Vaia gave birth, the real parents of Fatima wanted her to go back to live with them as if they never rejected her or gave her up when she was suffering from some disabilities, yes, they are right! This is what the whole society says. This is what the culture itself says: the child belongs to his parents, no matter who they are, or what they are. This is how Fatima went back to her biological parents after 10 years. She was visiting them, as used to do each month, but that month was the last visit. Surprisingly she was told she would stay here for life, we are our family no one else!

No one can object. Nobody can say a word, this is the social constitution, nothing else matters!

It was a big shock to the child Fatima, a new different life, new different people, who rejected her when she was weak and helpless, are controlling her life, the people who gave up on her when she was a baby, she doesn’t remember, but she feels, her soul never forgot!

This is the world with its two shaking hands, carrying on his palms a contradiction that makes so many people suffer. Many beliefs push us to make some decisions that hurt us and not benefit us because we are worried about what others will think, and how they will judge us. Maybe it is not our right to judge others, but it is absolutely our right to wonder, to ask: why? Why is this happening?

Reconnect to the truth, people. Rearrange things and put everything in its right place, where it wants to be. Worrying about what others would say is just a fake monster, doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t kill you as well! Who are the others by the way? The others are you!

Okay then, there was on that deserted island Vaia, Ali (her son), and Fatima (her adopted daughter), who convinced hardly her parents to allow her to go in this journey, she seduced them by the opportunity to do a family reunion after their daughter was granted residency in the Netherlands, so they can easily follow her by the plane, without any sufferings.

There was also Ahmed, Vaia’s brother, a 24-year-old guy. There was also Jory, a 30 year old woman who joined this smuggling journey to arrive in Germany where her fiancé lives as a refugee after he ran away from the war in Syria.

There was Abo Abdo, Abo Kareem and his son, Abo Khaled, a 40-year-old guy and his female cousin. There were also five other guys, one of them is Egyptian, and one was Iraqi, the others were Syrian.

Hey all of you, be what you want to be, that doesn't really matter, nothing makes a difference here, we are all in the same boat, we are all sharing the same coldness, hunger and loss! Here we are together. Here we are. Shaking….and waiting!

In the afternoon the sky was clear, the clouds almost disappeared, the sun looked like the only sign of life, we sat closer in a circle with a new life force that we didn’t feel through the sun absence, we talked without any meaning, just random sentences were hearing in the space, I am laughing while I am remembering it now.

There was a couple among us, who were together all the time. When they sat, stood up, slept, went for a pee behind the trees, I thought they were a husband and a wife. We all thought actually, we knew after they were cousins.

I was listening more than I was talking, following the random conversion without saying a word except when a direct question was asked to me. But at the moment the woman who was clinging to her cousin as a mouse, says she is from Gaza.

I felt I was so concentrated as I had never been on this journey, I looked like I’ve been slapped on my face,I was terrified! Oh god, I ran away from Gaza, I miraculously escaped the killing, and now I find out there are simply people from that city with me! Walking this journey next to me, their steps on the ice and the mud remove mine. The city I ran away from sent some people here. I felt so scared as if they were also here to hurt me. I asked where she is from in Gaza. She shut up for moments, she became so confused, then she hesitantly mentioned places and street names that do not even exist in the Gaza strip at all!

It was a relief, she was surely lying, for some reasons she thought if she says that they are from Gaza no one will kick her back to Turkey, where they lived as Syrian refugees for years after the war started in Syria.

Yes, the dirty political games do not care who lives or dies, and in that period many Syrian refugees were running after safety without finding a safe road leading to it.

Hours passed, heavy and long hours, but nothing happened, only few calls from the workers trafficker to their boss filled with lies about the time when the cars reached us. I couldn’t endure anymore: it was the third day for us stuck here, the death in the same line with life in our eyes, would we survive or not? Was it the end?

I was powering my phone off most of the time, to save the battery, and turning it twice a day for minutes to talk to my sister, the only one who talks to me out of six sisters, and to talk to my friend Nidal, and finally to talk to my guardian angel Fathi!

At a moment in that day which looks eternal each time I remember it. I lost the desire of being alive, I felt nothing except the closeness to death, I bid farewell to myself in the greatest way that a wise human could bid farewell himself! Without any resistance I opened my mind up to the idea of death, broken and submissive to the end, the end that I’ve never expected or even crossed my mind when I decided to travel! I shook my head in humiliation as I was surrendering to the death. I was sitting on my bag and the other people of this smuggling group were around me, my memory was empty except from a nostalgia’s whispers to whom I believed they loved me, I held my phone and walked with shivered steps to a place no one else could hear me.

Firstly I called my sister after three days of lack of communication, I needed to hear her worries about me, even her unrest while I told her how it went there, while I slept for three days outdoors with nothing to protect me, with no food, and scarce water, and how I was dying of cold, my voice was pale, and my tears were running on my face.

The fears that my sister held about me, gave me a sense of love, a feeling that I was craving for, like… I am important to someone!

And yes, there is someone who feels sorry for me, an encouraging sentence from somebody, or even a sentence filled with fears about me would be at the moment more than enough to remove a bit my feelings of being insignificant, slender, and close to death.

I don’t remember exactly how the conversion went between us, but I remember how that call from that strange and deserted place gave my heart some warmth and added to the emptiness of my feelings some hope.

The second person I called was my friend Nidal, I was looking for certainty that tells me things will be alright as I want and even better!

My voice with him was more real than it was with talking to my sister, I didn't beg the tones of fears to come, I thought I didn’t have to, I believed he was able to know everything without even saying to him the whole sentence, my words go to him so pure and innate as they exactly are in my heart, I told him the things that I told to my sister but with it felt like I was talking to myself, not to a friend who is in another side of the world!

After these two calls my body got more exhausted, but my soul strengthened and became in a whole neutral state, not desiring life nor afraid of death! still and calm waiting for what would come, waiting patiently, whatever it was, just I let it come! I got sick of waiting in this hell!

After the two calls I made, I joined the group of those strangers again: everyone was overwhelmed with fatigue and despair and talking again with no meaning or point! Some of them envied a guy who got back to the city when we left the vehicle that took us to the closest point to the Greek border to walk for hours until we crossed it, because he fell down and broke his knee as we all assumed, he sat on a rock as the man who works for the smugglers told him! Waiting for the vehicle to come back to get him back to the place where he came from, he fell when we were all running as fast as we could, that's what we’ve been told to do, to avoid the Turkish police border between Turkey and Greece! The moment he screamed when he fell we all felt as if the shout was ours! It felt like we all screamed through his voice, this how we dared for seconds to allow our suppressed fear to show itself up, it was for seconds, afterwards we had to keep running, leaving the injured guy sitting on the rock, without being sure if really the trafficker had sent a car to pick him up or no! We kept running with a gaze only looking forward, as if the guy we left was a piece of paper, or a stone that dropped within this crazy running.

Yes! All of this is happening where no one sees, between the international borders where the escapers of injustice are facing the most injustice situations, lonely worlds, the fugitives with their dreams live, while any of them could die, insulted or killed, without anybody knowing about them.

It was the third day for us here, stuck on a deserted island, the day was almost over, and no sign said that we were going to leave from here to move to Thessaloniki Island where we could sleep in a house like normal people!

I prepared myself to sleep another night there again, in the place that fills me with loss, scattered my soul mercilessly. I gave up for the tenth time on this journey, I surrendered with no choice only to let what would happen. I was still alive, and there was nothing I could do here, only waiting!

Yet a sudden call came to the trafficker workers, a call that woke up each one of us from the state of fatigue we were living in, when we heard him screaming loudly, telling us: “Be ready now. The cars are coming within 10 minutes. You have to run, each one of you should run, anyone is late, we will not wait for him, the cars will stop for 2 minutes where the track is, I am telling you know, and what happens after, not my business.”

He said that despite knowing that Vaia’s knee was injured, after she fell when we were running in Turkey to cross the Greek border, he knew that she was still limping, she did not stop complaining of pain, we all witnessed that.

I don’t know how I found myself running among others with extreme panic and speed, I suddenly realized that we were running to the cars. I had no idea who told me to run now when it was the time! I had no idea who gave us the go whistle, I really did not know. All I knew was that I ran like racing against the time, filled with fears, anger and enthusiasm, feeling indignant at the world. I ran without turning around to see Vaia, resisting a desire to go back and help her to catch us. I glanced back fast, and I watched the disturbance on her face, and on her brother’s face as well, while he was giving her a hand to lean on it. He was carrying three bags on his shoulder, also holding Vaia’s son’s hand. Of course, I was somehow able to help them and to run back..., but I didn't do it. I was barely able to hold myself, to run with all of the heaviness and the fears that I carry on me chest.

Seriously, I got the idea of running back to them out of my head, hearing the trafficker workers yelling at her to rush up! Something inside me made me feel responsible for what happened to her, I ignored it and got in the vehicle.

The driver of the vehicle was standing behind it hitting with both his hand its back door hardly, and screaming like a wild animal, yelling at Vaia to rush up, the moment I saw him doing this, I knew we would be caught! Soon I got this idea out of my head as well.

Here was the second shock, a lie that is absolutely attached to the first one that we had been told in Turkey about the cars that will move us to the next point, was so scary when we found out there are no cars! There was only a small cargo vehicle that we got into like getting into a small tight box! And here we were again! What happened a few days before in Turkey, was happening again in Greece! There were no cars, only the fucking small vehicle. The room in this one was so much less and tiger than the one that was available in the vehicle that moved us in Turkey. No one of us was able to sit down in this one! We all stood up clinging to each other. The moment the driver closed the door, we were in a complete darkness, there was no single window to breathe. He drove so fast, we were shaking to the left and to the right, none of us was able to stand steady, from minute to a minute someone fell on the other feet. So, we all pulled him upward helping to stand up again, luckily I didn’t fall down at all, but as others my feet were trampling the fallen body, each time someone fell!

I was in the back of the vehicle leaning against a corner, in a moment I felt a hand was sneaking into the dark to reach me, it held my hand, easily I knew it is a man’s hand, I looked around to see whose was that. I didn’t try to leave that hand in the beginning, I actually thought it was an attempt to support me to stay standing balanced without falling down under others’ feet, after seconds I saw the man who was holding my hand, I was so grateful and thankful, in few other seconds he got my hand up to his face he was running slowly my hand around his face and beard, that literally terrified me, within a second I pulled my hand back, with a sense of confusion that remove my fears of the way the driver was driving!

I recognized his face despite the darkness. The little light that came through the phones where people were trying to use Google maps offline allowed me to see his face clearly! Actually, he was the cousin of that woman who said she is from Gaza! My feeling was a mixture of relief and disgust. Yes, I needed someone to hold my hand, to look at me with caring and love rather than that person, a mother, a sister, a lover, a husband, or a friend, didn’t matter where I felt myself beloved and by whom. All I needed was the feeling of being loved and supported, but for sure I didn’t want it this way. I didn’t want it with a sexual desire, for sure he felt my anger when I looked at him as a tiger that could even attack him. My eyes looked towards his eyes, telling him: “Bastard!”

I wonder now while I am writing: why would I seek love from the outer world? How I underestimated my heart essence to live the love and create the love with every breath I take. I didn’t even know what that meant at that time! I didn’t expect that I was running away from the place that always hurt and suppressed me to find the answers, to find the questions! I was running after the truth, but I simply didn’t know that, all I thought was I couldn’t live in a box anymore!

I wondered before about the man, who got my hand and pulled it towards his lips: how was I able to think about my desires of being loved, my anger at his behavior in the moment, just how? I mean I was so scared of the road, expecting the worst scenario that says we would end up back in Turkey after the police catch us.

Well, maybe thinking at that decisive moment about that man behavior, and analyzing my feelings was keeping me away from the fears and the worries that we all felt in that crowded vehicle, maybe my mind made it an exciting story to use it to forget about the danger around me, maybe that man himself was trying to run away from his fears by holding my hand, who knows?!

I don’t know actually why I didn’t think about my journey at all, all I did was only look at him with contempt, each time we met.

Maybe this is what happens to all of us. We rush to judge others, their behaviors and speech, we do the same to ourselves as well, judging without any compassion or an open heart.

We tend to judge without a single attempt to understand what is beyond the behaviors or the words, for sure there are unacceptable behaves but understanding where they come from would allow us to see the whole image about us, others and the world itself, then that would make the connection with the truth deepening and happening joyfully, we are judging usually without diving deeper in the hidden meaning of things, words and our stupid, upset, and rash behaviors, so making reactions and decisions according to our quick superficial judgments about others, and about ourselves as well!

But, how can we look at things with this complete neutrality that I have now, if our hearts are full of anger, fears and worries?! How can we do that if we are living the oppression and all its pain, how?!

How can we remove the dusk that fills our minds and hearts as we see life hurting us and hitting our heads with fear and contempt?!

I was absent-minded before I saw a 50-year-old man trying hard to breath: he was fighting to get an inhalation, everyone in the vehicle turned around looking at him, he wasn’t able to talk, he pointed slowly to his bag, trying to tell the people to get him the medicine that he carried in the bag, easily they understood him.

Within seconds the medicine was taken by his shaking fingers, and someone got him his own little bottle of water that was hidden for emergencies. We knew later that man had a heart disease, luckily, he did not die in that vehicle where the fresh air was lacking!

After minutes of that incident, while we were stacked in the vehicle, its wheels stopped, the back wheels were stuck in the hard mud, the driver got out to push it forward and someone else was trying to drive, it took us at least 7 minutes to get the wheels out of the mud, at that time I was so nervous, I actually expected the police surrounded us on all sides. But I thought we were lucky enough that when the vehicle started moving normally again, we continued our driving trip with the same level of anxiety and excitement.

I was confused and enthusiastic dreaming about the moment where we would arrive to Thessaloniki Island, Fathi gave me a number of a person he knew there to get in touch with when I arrived to find me a place to stay. I was wondering who that guy was: was he excited to help me? Was he happy with seeing me? How old is he? Oh, I didn’t know, I was just so excited to arrive, to end up with this scary journey, where we could face any trouble any time! Just giving in to that daydream made me feel free, made me feel that I am breathing freedom!

I was drowning in the temptation of this daydream, as if I was not in this scary situation anymore, so when I realized it was just a mind imagination I quickly went back to the reality and its fucking heaviness, I got all the happy illusion out of my head, assuming living this sweet daydream was painful as if to look back to the reality of being scared and stuck with strangers in the narrow vehicle! I was telling myself: “Hey, just wait please, wait until we arrive, I do not want to live the shock of defeat, let’s see what will happen, if we are going to survive or not.”

O reader: have you ever tried to touch the scary feeling within you in a weak moment, in a time when you are surrounded with danger?! Have you ever tried to see the hatred that you carry in your heart, have you ever tried to face it at a hard moment, where you can’t lie to yourself?! Have you ever tried to see the truth of that hatred as it fights you not anyone else, the deeper meaning of it, as it happened as a rejection of the situations and behaviors not of the people who make these situations and behaviors? I guess no, you didn’t!

We usually hold the hatred and grudge in our hearts towards the people who hurt us and push us to face the pain, while we are living the difficulties that they threw on our ways, then as much as these difficulties pass or as we get over it all the hatred and the grudge turns into a state linked to these people. I mean our mind believes that all the hatred and the grudge that we feel is towards the people as humans, but what if we turned it into a more wise perception, what if we see consciously what it needs to be refused and hated is the situation, or the circumstances that caused by this person or these people!

We need to understand the feeling of hatred and grudge as an indicator that points to the injustice of the circumstances. We need to be aware of why this happening, to know how there are some motivates in the environment and inside us has given those people the power and the ability to hurt and control us. I am sure if we understand this with consciousness, we will be able then to find the right way to protect ourselves to know that we are not here on this planet to be controlled, we would wisely and easily shift that hatred and grudge into a real state of a mature refusal to submit to those who desire without any right to control us and define our fate. You know, no one has the right to control you, either directly, or indirectly.

In that time in this small narrow vehicle while we were trying to get some calm breaths after what happened with the heart sick man, I was silent as I’ve never been before. Even my mind was in a very focused state! I was observing, nothing else. I didn’t think about the big questions that my heart carried: “What am I doing here? What is the reason that led me to cross the countries, the seas and the forests to be here, in this vehicle with more than 25 strangers, moving inhumanly in these fatal circumstances, on deserted roads, like places of nowhere!”

I didn’t give the question a chance to be heard. In spite of all that suffering, I was carrying a flame of love and hope inside me, I knew that even through all of this pain, danger and death I will reach life! I just knew! Suddenly, when I was drowning in my heart's confusion attempting to choose the least painful one to think about, we were intercepted by a police car!

How or why that happened I had no damn idea! Just suddenly we found ourselves in front of them after the vehicle has stopped. I had no idea what happened when I saw everyone getting out of the vehicle and running somewhere I’ve been asked to run, so did I for less than one minute, until I realized I didn't even know where I was going, I stopped where Vaia and her children, her brother and Layal stood. We were in the same place where the police caught us, we hid in the cemetery only the six of us, whereas everyone else disappeared, even the policemen ran after the people who were with us in the vehicle.

It was difficult to decide what to do or where to go, as I mentioned the whole group disappeared and the police were chasing them, for us the situation was different: we agreed without saying a word not to run, we hid behind tombstone for few moments, I thought at that time to run also away, I imagined what if I ran and ran, until I found a house. Then I knocked at its door to ask the people who lived there to help me. I imagined it clearly that just seeing me the people would be welcoming me and giving me clean and warm clothes. I thought for a second that might happen. Hesitantly, I looked at Vaia, who was begging her brother to run alone to survive from being caught by the police, but he wasn’t listening, I said to her with a shaken voice: “Shall I run?

It could be a good idea, couldn’t it?”

She looked at me with no expression on her face: “It is up to you.”

Then she started picking up the tissue boxes that people left with candles on the tombstones with Layal’s help.

The way she answered me when I was wondering if it is a good idea to run, made me feel sad, not because she had to be a listener, but because in the moment I trusted her as a person who can give an advice, she introduced herself like that, she gave us the permission to think she was always ready to help, actually I did not want any help, all I wanted was an honest road company! And that is what I’ve never got through that journey. I sadly and simply knew I meant nothing to her, and me being with her was nothing except the benefits that she might get from Fathi as rich powerful man in her eyes, I knew as well if I was dying that didn't even matter to her.

We stayed in that cemetery for ten minutes I became in these 10 minutes too enthusiastic to the idea of running to knock the first door I would come across, I really imagined that I could run so fast, until I reached the closest town so I could hide myself there while people are so happy to help me. I thought myself in that daydream as a hero of a fictional novel, the world changed its rules and broke its laws to make her dreams come true. I was naive enough to spend the 10 minutes dreaming about the magic of doing this, while I was holding hardly my anxiety and fear, knowing the police would appear in front of us in any moment!

By the way, I am wondering now, what if I really followed that imagination and ran for it, would that change the scenario? I wasn’t brave enough at that moment to try! I think because I haven’t really experienced what it means to be a refugee in a strange country yet, I was able to imagine smiling faces and opening hearts meeting me! And I haven’t experienced any rejection from people, I didn’t know that some people would see me as a serial thief who came to their safety and peace.

Anyway, I didn’t run anywhere: I stayed as a mouse next to Vaia, I didn’t want to give up my fate after all of the torment that I faced, I didn’t want to surrender my path to a reverie thought!

But now, I look back to that imagine, it seems to me a big indicator that shows how much the person is ignorant to others, and about others, how much it is unfair to expect or judge others’ behaviors and characters without any prior contact with them, or any contact with their reality and lifestyle. We are a result of the life that we live, our perspectives come from our beliefs, worries and fears, I believe now in every spot in this planet you will not find a nation without their own fear.

I came out from behind the tombstone finally, I looked speechless at Vaia and Layal while they were justifying stealing the tissue boxes with our need for it. I felt when I was looking silently to them so annoyed with being with them as a company through this journey. I had that deep uncomfortably feeling about them, I was suspicious of trusting them, I didn’t know exactly why! I think it was because of their fleeting behaviors that I saw, despite the crowded situation with many events that lead us to even not seeing our hunger, our longing for warmth and safety! I was feeling by the time that I am with people I don't want to be with! But it was up to Fathi and his decisions, it wasn’t up to me…at all!

12 minutes passed after we’ve got caught by the police, me and Vaia’s family and Layal didn’t move far from the cemetery, we didn’t even plan to, we moved out of its gate just 2 minutes before the other people from our journey group showed up scared, their arms on their back heads and the police following them screaming and hitting one of them with a thick stick! It was Abo Kareem!

Oh wow. No one said a word. The police asked us to sit down on our knees, they were yelling at us with their strange language, and using some English words when they give us instructions like: “Sit down. Shut up!”

They put Abo Kareem alone in front of us and the five of them kept hitting him in turns on his back with their thick sticks without allowing him even to say a word, until a guy of us said in English: “He is not the driver, he is just one of us!”

Then the police stopped beating him, and they asked him to come back next to us, as they started to ask madly: “Who is the driver here? Where is the fucking driver?”

No one said a single word! I was looking at Abo Kareem's face turning totally red, his eyes were full of tears, I saw him hiding the pain he feels, repressing his anger and crying his helplessness!

I don’t remember the moment that we got into the police van, the one I've only seen before in the movies, where the criminals are taken to transit from a prison to another. We were sharing our thoughts while the van was driving us, most of us guessed that we were taken back to Turkey!

One of the guys was trying to know where the van was going by using Google Maps offline! He told us sadly: “We are getting closer to the Turkey border!”

My heart panicked when I heard his news, God what a disaster! Why is the fiasco always following me?! Even after that long fight I had with myself to be there, why? Now they will get us back where we’ve been. What am I? Am I just an insect? Am I just a toxic snake that should be trapped in a tightly closed box not to hurt safe people? Rather, what are we? We, who are walking the death steps hoping to find a safe life, dreaming a deeper different meaning of life! I don’t know who the right person is to blame?! And what is a word that could perfectly describe the world that pushes us to the road that ends in either death or life?! And even though it stays mad at us, spits on our faces its anger, as if we are really thieves trying to steal others' peace!

But how can I tell them that I have no place to go! I have no country to belong to?! How can I tell them there are no stars bright in my city’s sky that aren't bright in their country’s sky as well?! How?!

It is not easy not to tell, especially for a woman like me! A woman that always breathes life and love, a woman who is always forced to shut her mouth up, pushed harshly to walk a road that is not for her, yet she didn’t give in! There is a subtle voice always within her rejected slavery and submission, always refused to follow what others are forcing her to be.

This is my heart, O world! And those are my feet… Those my eyes, my wings…

Do not want a religion, ideology, culture, customs or traditions to cut them! Or to define the space for them to fly and grow!

Hey new world that meets me on this other side of the planet! There is a shy part in me, shy of the people who are refusing me as a refugee in their country.

I tried to understand their worries and I knew it wasn’t a conscious choice that they’ve made, it was a reaction that they adopted according to what they think. And that was me who ran away from a city that was killing love and life, I didn’t want to know neither if they had a right to reject me as a stranger comes illegally to their countries, nor if I myself have the right to cross illegally the borders between the lands, I was so far to ask a question like this one,

O world, I was tired, and all I wanted was safety! But I realize now, everyone in the world has the right to spread its wings to the place that calls his heart, the place that feels the right one to live in. The way that it feels his way, the way that leads to survival and enhances freedom. I know the secret of survival doesn’t lie in the places as much as the secret lies in how we see the places, and how we see ourselves in this places, but I admit that I wasn’t even able to feel myself at all in my city, I stripped there of my birthright to walk my steps.

And there we are, moving our time according to what the world expects from us, and we don’t even think about what this slavery could lead to?! The slavery that we don’t even see! And here starting from this scratch I decided not to allow anyone to tell me how to be or how to live. I know now each of us is a self-contained being as wide as the universe, no one on the earth has the right to confiscate a human being. So let whatever happens happen at this holy moment as I am writing this book!

Back to that police van, where we got scared and confused, feeling we are insects that are trapped. After 2 hours the van surprisingly stopped!

They got us out of the van one by one, then walked in a line towards a huge suspicious building, we were following the instructors when we got inside the building, at that moment I was looking at the people who were with me in the van. I was reading their faces expressions, maybe attempting to suppress my own fears and anger!

Vaia looked so scared, I think she was scared to get back by the Greek police to Turkey, Layal with her small face that carries a child kindness, and a teenager girl was copying Vaia's reactions blindly and acting exactly in the same way!

She was 3 years older than me, but when it comes to strength and patience, she seems ten years younger with her weakness!