Mahmouds long way to Denmark

Mahmoud Baha-Aldein Alayoubi (30), man. from Palestine, Syria

I went to school in Syria until 5th class. I didn not finish school, father has school in Damascus, and I went to help him there at the factory. He went shopping for everything they needed at the factory. It’s a factory of uniforms and jackets. I escaped from Syria because of the war, I went to Aleppo in illegal way, across the border. At the other side of the border I found a taxi chauffeur, waiting there, and we were big group of people there, all from my family, about 32 people. We crossed the Mediterranean, to Greece, Athens, and then to Macedonia. The police in Macedonia put us in to prison, shot at us, they were crazy. Our story was in the newspapers, that we were shot at. Only when we told that we were refugees from Syria, they stopped shooting at us. I was in prison for two months there.  We were a group of young together there. My brother found lawyer for us, and got us out of prison, and we escaped there and went straight to Denmark. We took the train, me and my brother, from germany, and the police found us there and took us to the police station and then to Sandholm. We applied for asylum, and I got a 5 year permission to stay here.

Now I live in Aarhus, and I have permission to work. Mondays at 5 we go make food, talk, hang out here in Aarhus, at DFUNK, called Habibi. It’s a good way to be integrated here, meet Danish people, learn Danish, make a lot of activities. Now I get my own apartment, next month, here in Aarhus. We are 15-20 people from Syria, Egypt, Somalia etc. I go to school and want to do this every day. The police came and told me about the laws here in Denmark, what rights I have, and how to act, that was really good.

I go to praktik, work in a canteen, and I also go to school learning Danish.

Dublin Core: Language: en Subject: denmark, syria, aleppo, greece, palestine, a million stories, prison