I’ll do anything to kill time, says refugee in Germany
BERLIN: In the Berlin gym that now serves as his home, Afghan student Yaza sweeps the floor over and over again, just to keep himself from ‘going crazy with boredom.’
The 24-year-old, who spent months on the road after fleeing the Taliban, told AFP: “I’ll do anything to not go mad.” That includes helping to distribute meals or building bunk beds. In between time, he rolls cigarettes with others in the same boat as him, exchanging stories about their road into exile, the countless borders they crossed and the exorbitant sums they paid to human traffickers. Tens of thousands from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are waiting impatiently for German authorities to process their asylum requests. Many long to return to work or college, but before they obtain residency, they have to find ways to kill time.
“I studied economics in Kabul but I can’t work here before I obtain a long-term residence visa,” said Yaza, who arrived in Germany three months ago. At the back of the gym, a group of young Iraqis and Syrians sporting track pants and slippers are sitting under a basketball net, listening to Arab pop music blaring from a mobile phone.
Idriez, 22, from the western Syrian port city of Latakia, was trying to work out the complexities of German grammar. “Der, die, das,” he recited, glancing at a white board where volunteers had written the masculine, feminine and neutral forms of the article ‘the’.
“I want to go back to school here but I need to be able to speak German first,” he said, before losing himself in his book ‘German for Beginners.’ — AFP