Path to tomorrow
Fleeing war and poverty, a wave of humanity is flowing into Europe on a scale not seen since the Second World War. Riley Sparks meets some of the people making the dangerous journey
IDOMENI, Greece— Stumbling from hay fields south of the Macedonian border, noses buried in Google Maps, dozens of Syrian and Iraqi refugees were surprised by Greek soldiers emerging from the bushes, cradling rifles. The soldiers, though, weren’t there to arrest them. Instead, they offered directions. “You have to go back, to the bridge, then over,” one of them said, pointing down the narrow river that flows through the border between Greece and Macedonia.
The group of about 50 had travelled by bus to Idomeni, Greece, from Athens. Most were from Syria or Iraq and had arrived in the country by making the often deadly crossing from Turkey in small boats.
In what has become the largest human migration since the Second World War, columns of refugees escaping war and poverty are now on the move in Europe, etching trails through fields and leaving behind the detritus of transit: crushed water bottles, worn-out sandals and endless packs of cigarettes.
The bus dumped this group at a truck stop five kilometres from the border — as close as the bus could go legally, the driver said.
In 30 C heat and direct sun, they stocked up on supplies in a gas station where employees were unloading crates of water into fridges that had been stripped minutes before by another busload of refugees.
“All of us here, we have nothing to keep us at home,” said Ayid al-Abood, who had studied English literature in Damascus and was now marching across cracked mud in a dusty field, his belongings in a half-full school backpack. “War sucks.” On the bus to the border, wired with exhaustion and anxiety, Mohammed Ali slept for a few minutes at a time, keeping up a continual stream of WhatsApp messages to his wife in Mosul, Iraq.
Before he left home a few weeks ago — he couldn’t remember exactly how long he had been travelling, only that he hadn’t slept in at least four days — Ali, 25, worked as a photographer.
Asked if he was travelling alone, he answered, “All of my friends were killed in Iraq.”
Ali was headed to Belgium. He hoped to find work with his electrical engineering credentials and apply for papers for his wife, a nurse. “I make this trip for her,” he said. The pair married a year ago, just months after Islamic State fighters took the city.
It was hard to be away from her, eight months pregnant with their first child, but Mosul had become too dangerous for him, Ali said.
“Daesh. Very bad. Many friends . . .,” he said, using another name for the Islamic State, and making a throat-cutting gesture.
Ali said he had been targeted by corrupt police when the city was still under government control.
Pulling up his shirt, he pointed to thick scarring on his shoulder and armpit, marking an entry and exit wound from what he said was his last encounter with Mosul law enforcement.
Deciding he couldn’t stay, he followed the now well-travelled migrant route out of Iraq, through Turkey to Lesbos, Greece, where police issued him papers allowing him onto a ferry to Athens. Far fewer women than men make the trip alone, and many men who spoke with the Star repeated Ali’s plan: they would find asylum, then work, then bring their families over by a safer route.
“I take Arab death boat. She flies,” Ali said, referring to the inflatable boat he took from Turkey to Lesbos.
In the fields heading north, the group separated into small, meandering bunches over the seven-kilometre walk — dozens of people following GPS directions on dozens of phones.
Crossing a bridge within sight of the railway tracks leading into Macedonia, one of the Germany-bound refugees practised his pronunciation: “Ich liebe Deutschland! Ich liebe dich! Wie heißt du?”
“I love Germany! I love you! What is your name?”
At the border, the refugees filed past tired crowds sitting on a railway platform and up to a police checkpoint, where they would wait for travel documents before boarding trains north, into Macedonia and one border closer to Europe. Special to the Star