A desperate father and a train ride with such grim echoes
Through the condensation fogging up this oven of a railway carriage, an exhausted, ecstatic face pressed itself to the window yesterday morning. A man in a pink T- shirt was raising his hand in a Churchillian V for victory as his train finally crawled out of Budapest’s newly reopened Keleti station, bound for the Austrian border.
In the morning queues for loos and standpipes around hungary’s largest railway terminal, several thousand of the saddest souls on Earth began to dream that they were on the move again after a twoday standstill. But not for long.
By lunchtime, the truth was out and spreading like wildfire through this infernal dump. This train had not been going anywhere near the border with Austria, let alone the longed-for embrace of germany. It had all been a monstrous hoax. A hungarian policeman admitted as much with a mirthless snigger the moment it left the station.
This cargo – there’s no way they could be described as ‘passengers’ – was actually destined for a railway siding next to the Bicske detention camp a few miles outside Budapest. The only welcome was police wielding batons.
As word reached back to Keleti, there was disbelief – as much among locals as the migrants themselves. You did not need to be a historian to sense the chilling echo of Europe’s not-too-distant past. The last time people were duped on to trains around here, they ended up in Auschwitz.
Let us be clear that there is nothing remotely comparable to the Nazi era in the conduct or intentions of the hungarian authorities.
But whatever the validity of their arguments that they are only following Eu rules, they are managing to do so with an astonishing lack of basic humanity – not to mention basic public relations.
It should also be said that many hungarians are appalled. ‘I have no words. I am ashamed to be a hungarian,’ gyorgy Kakuk of the opposition Democratic Coalition told me.
once the bogus train had ground to a halt, hungarian police ordered everyone off the train and into custody. You can only raise and dash a man’s hopes so often. Distraught that he had led his young family into a trap, one young man simply lay down on the tracks, screaming and clasping his wife and baby.
‘No camp! No camp!’ pleaded the new arrivals. Many refused to leave the train, barricading themselves in and refusing all offers of food and water as a stand- off continued into the evening. Bicske, like the other detention centres across hungary, will be their prison for no more than a few days before they are released into a penniless limbo, living rough or finding a new route to somewhere else.
But it was not the prospect of squalid camp conditions or barbed wire which terrified these new arrivals yesterday. It was the simple fact that they will be photographed, fingerprinted and registered here. under Eu rules, if they are later refused asylum or residence in another country, they can expect to be deported back to this one and thence to who knows where.
The events of yesterday merely underlined why almost none of this
migrant multitude want to stay in Hungary a moment longer than is necessary. It is the first step inside the European Union for those taking the long journey from Syria and Central Asia through the Balkans and on to the promised land of Germany where chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged room for up to 800,000 asylum-seekers.
Having crossed the Serbian border into Hungary, they have two choices. They can either pay smugglers to carry them in vans and trucks on to Austria – at a heavy price and at considerable risk, as last week’s discovery of 71 bodies in a lorry near Vienna testified. Or else they can take a train. And that is why thousands of people have been at Keleti station all week.
Beneath the grand but crumbling 19th-century veneer and the somewhat incongruous statues of two British titans of locomotion – James Watt and George Stephenson – there is nothing majestic about this one-time monument to AustroHungarian grandeur.
DESPITE the best efforts of these refugees to maintain basic standards of hygiene ( many are medics and pharamacists themselves), there is no escaping the unavoidable side effects of thousands of people living in a confined space with limited sanitation in 30-degree heat.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, thousands were to be found snoozing head-to-toe in their little groups across Keleti’s forecourt, its litter-strewn flower beds and the concrete walkways beneath. For two days, the station building had been closed to anyone without an EU passport while the migrant crowds on the doorstep kept growing. The greatest shortage was not food and water, although that was in short supply. It was the complete absence of information.
Having happily sold expensive international rail tickets to thousands of refugees earlier in the week, the authorities had now barred them from using them.
‘What should we do? We spent most of our last money on these tickets to Germany. Now we have nothing left for food and the tickets are worthless,’ cried Taheer Krabeej, 26, a telecoms engineer from Idlib.
The mood lifted shortly after 8am when the grilles and police cordons sealing off the station suddenly vanished. Young men with few – if any – possessions made a dash for the main entrance. Family groups with children and baggage took rather longer to sort themselves. But the good news was that the station was open for business.
Better still, a shiny locomotive with a German flag on the side was lined up behind several carriages on Platform 8. In no time, they were heaving with excited refugees. ‘To Germania!’ an elderly man shouted at me through a packed doorway.
Those with a grasp of English already had their doubts. The wording on the departure board, and periodic loudspeaker announcements, stated that there would be no trains to international destinations ‘for safety reasons’.
This train was a domestic service to the border town of Sopron. The Ger- man flag on the side was merely part of a decorative panel commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. And this locomotive was not actually attached to the carriages anyway. Still, as those with maps on their mobile phones quickly worked out, this train would take them to within a few miles of Austria. From there, they might be able to pay a smuggler or even walk crosscountry and enter Austria.
‘ Please, I need advice,’ said Ahmad, 36, a driving instructor from Damascus, pressing my arm. ‘ I have a two- year- old, an 11month- old baby and my wife is pregnant. Do we get on this train?’
I could only explain that it would not be taking him out of Hungary but that he might end up nearer to his destination. He smiled and ran off to round up his family. I dearly hope that they were too late to find any room on board after my dreadfully naive misinformation.
EVENTUALLY, more than an hour late and more than two hours after hundreds had started packing this train, it clunked and grunted its way out of Keleki. Muffled cheers could be heard from within. Those who had failed to find a seat waved them off and wondered when their turn would come.
Thanks to social media and the presence of the world’s Press, it wasn’t long before word filtered back what had happened to the train in Bicske. A pall of depression crept across the concourse.
Suddenly, no one was clamouring to get on any train.
Families who had just packed up their belongings found a new patch of concrete out of the sun and prepared to bed down once more and just wait for something to happen.
One man became hysterical and started screaming that he was going to kill himself, until his comrades beat him up. He calmed down.
Last night, Keleti was not just the miserable epicentre of this continental crisis – but also a shameful spectre of the very evils which the European Union was created to avoid.