Why two friends are seeking refuge in Sweden,
Displaced Syrians are everywhere in Istanbul. They beg on street corners for money, they ask café diners for food. Here, Syrians begin again with nothing, or they bide their time until they can flee to Europe, chasing dreams of a new life.
ISTANBUL— Socrat Homsi says he will use the constellations, the patterns of the stars taught to him by his grandfather, who learned from his grandfather, to guide him out of Turkey and toward freedom.
Homsi, 28, has been living in Istanbul for almost one year, crowded into an apartment with 15 of his family members — his brothers and their wives, nieces, nephews and parents. He is one of 11 children.
The family is from Homs, once Syria’s third-largest city of one million people and the seed of the Syrian rebellion. Homs’ crowded streets used to bustle with life. But shelling, artillery fire and bullets over the last three years has flattened the city.
“I left because of the destruction. We have nothing,” Homsi says through an Arabic translator.
Homsi has a football player’s body and he walks with a distinctive athletic gait.
But, as his first name suggests, Homsi is more than muscle. He was named after Socrates because of his father’s love of the Greek philosopher. At home, Homsi was a champion chess player. He has a black belt in karate and is an electrician by trade. But he has not been able to find work in Istanbul because he doesn’t speak Turkish.
During the day, he might play chess or surf the Internet on his phone. Sometimes he leaves his family’s apartment in the Aksaray neighbourhood and goes to the shores of the Marmara Sea to gaze at the blue, silky water.
There, he plots his escape to Europe. Homsi does not have a European passport so he will be forced to evade border guards and cross illegally.
“Staying here is not a possibility for me. I will go to Sweden,” he says, smiling at his friend Jihad Rahmoon, who is also planning to seek asylum in the Nordic country. Homsi is trying to convince Rahmoon to travel with him — two is better than one on a perilous journey.
Sweden has one of the largest diasporas of Syrian asylum seekers anywhere in the world because it is one of the few countries that grants them permanent residency.
“A lot of Syrians go there. We don’t have any other options, no choices. The journey is not safe. It will be easier to go with someone,” he says, sipping his Turkish tea. Homsi has spent the last year imagining his escape. “It is a long trip. Me and some friends will go to the Turkish-Bulgarian border, we will cross the border into the forests. We will walk for 50 kilometres until we arrive at a big city. From that city, we will take the bus to another city. We will take a taxi to the Romanian border and walk across. And when we are in Romania, a friend of mine who lives in Bucharest will pick us up and take us to Hungary. We will cross the border into Hungary and once there, we are in Europe,” he says, smiling. He believes it will take three days. It is nearly an 800-kilometre journey. “This is the plan,” he says proudly. “I know how to walk. I am good in directions and I have a compass to show me the road to the north,” he says. “When I find the North Star, I can find my destination. You see, the North Star keeps getting higher and higher. Closer to the North Pole, that star will be ahead. It’s easy. The angle of the star from Syria is about 40 degrees (from the horizon) and when I get to Sweden it is at a 90degree angle,” he says as he grabs a piece of paper and a pen and sketches out the movement of the North Star.
When asked if he knows exactly how many kilometres he’ll be walking, he laughs. “A lot, I haven’t counted.” (It is more than 2,100.)
Homsi knows there is nothing left for him or his family in Homs. Everything is gone. “If my living is good in Sweden, I will never go back to Syria,” he says.