I am 23 years old. I studied banking in Syria. In the 2nd semester I dropped out, I did not finish. I studied during the war. I come from Homs, from Al-Rastan. There were a lot of soldiers in my town. They freed themselves from the army and founded the Free Army. That’s why we were a red rag for the regime. I have always had a lot of problems with the city on my ID card. There were many explosions, bombs. I could no longer live there. That is why we moved to another city, to Damascus. Also this place was bombed, grenades, rockets from above. When we were still in my homeland, my older uncle was killed, he was hit in the head.
When we went to Damascus, it was also bombed, then we moved on again. We went to a village. At that time my older uncle was still in Al-Rastan. He was hit by a bullet as he looked out the window. My two uncles, of course, also had family, children. The younger one, when he died, had a six-month-old child; the other had four children. He worked as a truck driver. Whenever the children saw a truck, the children ran out and shouted “Papa, Papa”, but there was nobody there. One day we were attacked by soldiers of the government. They broke into our house, they destroyed everything, they took my father with them, handcuffed him, although my father never had anything to do with politics. They only took my father with them because our neighbour used to be a soldier and he still had an old uniform with him in his apartment. It was only because of this uniform that the government said we had something to do with it. They insulted my father, my mother, although we had nothing to do with it. They put the people in a row, including my father, and asked for their identity cards. My father said that he had already given the ID card, because if they had read the city on the ID card, they would have taken it with them immediately.
Then we were attacked again, there was another explosion. We had to flee again. That all happened in 2013. When we had to leave the village again, we went to the south of Idlib, to a village. We only stayed there for a month. There suddenly six airplanes came and threw cluster bombs at us. We hid under the ground. Then we saw the people hurt, dead, full of wounds, there was blood everywhere. We could not stand it any longer. We drove with a car to another city. On the way there was a checkpoint of the government. We got out of the cars. They said: get out, we will kill you all, we will rape you and everything terrible. We were three women, my brother, my father. They said we were terrorists and troublemakers and they had to kill us. There was another soldier there: “Come on, you can see that they have nothing to do with it, leave them alone. When we were on our way to the base, there was a sand base that we had crossed, but we hadn’t noticed. We were four families. We were afraid. We got out and went to Hama. When the soldiers from the first base saw us arrive, he told us, “What have you done? You’re all yellow in the face.” We were just tired from the journey.
We went to Hama. There was my sister, she is married and we could go to her. At this time I had just my Abitur and I have registered at a university. A certain place in Hama was bombed and so we could not leave our house and we remained locked in the apartment. We had neighbours there. They were originally from Homs, they were bombed. Only one child of nine survived. Behind our house there was a garden and since you could not leave the house, they buried the neighbours there. After the situation calmed down, they took the bodies out of the ground and buried them in a cemetery. We were then searched, the house was searched, then it became quieter. I studied and was already in my 3rd year. When I was in my 2nd year, 2015, my father was already in Germany. He fled with my brother. We just sent my brother with my father to Germany because he looked much bigger and stronger than he was and we feared that he would be drafted into the army. It took them 25 days to get there. During this time we took care of our documents that we would need for the family reunion. The appointment came. We had to go from Hama to Idlib, to Turkey and all that with someone we gave money to.
At the connecting point between Hama and Idlib there was one last base of the regime. When these soldiers saw our identity cards and especially our birthplace, they held us tight and insulted us. They took us to a room next to the base, 1m² large. They interrogated us there. I was there, my mother and my 2 sisters. They asked: Do you want to go to Turkey? And when the government finds out that you want to go to Turkey, it’s a real disaster. So we said no, we had to lie. We said we just wanted to see my sister. We said we didn’t have any money for the trip either. We had only had 800 dollars with us at the time. They sent one to search us and snoop around in my cell phone. They didn’t respect anything, they looked at my pictures where I don’t wear a headscarf, of my sisters. Soon there will come one that will search you, undress you, they said. We had hidden our money at the undersole of the shoes. We gave them the 800 dollars. They do everything just to get money. They threatened us of course, they said, we will lock you up and torture you, all just to get money. We begged them because we are girls and said we don’t want to go to prison. After we gave him the money, he said, “Get out of here”. There came another car with a soldier and he said, “Come, take her to her sister’s house. We came to a base of the Free Army and tried to calm down. We said we didn’t want anything, we just wanted a car to take us to my uncle who lived on the border. We arrived at my uncle’s house, stayed with him for ten days and from there we went to Turkey.
From my uncle we hired a tugboat to take us near Turkey. We stayed for 20 days in the region between Syria and Turkey. We lost a lot of strength there, it was a difficult time, because we tried again and again to flee, it did not work, then back again. We got tired during these days. At last we made it. We walked nine hours over mountains. There we had to wait three months for the visas. My little sister and my mother got the visas, me and my other sister didn’t because we were already over 18. The whole thing went back and forth for seven months. Then we hired a smuggler from Turkey to Greece. The way there was really terrible. It took us three days, we slept in the woods, surrounded by insects. I arranged a bus on the Greek island because I could speak a little English. Arrived in Athens we had to engage a tugboat again. This smuggler then gave us identity cards with photos that looked very similar to us, so that we could get to Germany by plane.
Arrived in Germany I saw my brother and my father after three years finally again. The reunion was very emotional, we cried, it was very moving. We left our homeland and decided to go to Germany because of the education. I didn’t come here to take advantage of something, but because I had to leave my homeland because of the war. I want to continue my studies and work in finance. I want to become a good role model in Germany, I want to work for my money, not as I do now. I don’t want my money to come from the efforts of others. I would like to learn the language very well here. I am now eight months in Germany, I have already come one language course further. I want to earn my own money and I also learn a lot. I have the feeling that I have lost a lot of time in my life. Probably the last four years of my life were so long that I couldn’t concentrate on anything in which I couldn’t achieve anything. I can’t just sit there and do nothing. That doesn’t fit my person. I want to use my abilities. Of course I will as soon as I am ready, as soon as I am able to give back to Germany what it has given me. Because Germany embraced me when the Arab countries let us down. They did not allow us to go to their countries and Germany opened its doors to us and gives us education and does not ask us about our religion. I will do everything I can to become a good and exemplary German citizen. The most beautiful thing that has happened to me is that I live together with my whole family. Only the youngest sister is still missing. I wish a miracle would happen and she would still come here. I feel well after I have told it. I am relieved. People need to know what is happening in Syria. I lost many people in the process, my uncles, they were very important to me.
Storyteller’s name: Anonymous
Interviewer’s name: Sarah Dudek and Sarah El Desoke
Country of origin: Syria
Sex: f
Age: 23<