Refugee Stories | Suleman Nazim
Tuesday 16th May 2017Suleman Nazim
23 years old
Born in Al Hasaki.
He has a fiancee, at this point she is in Turkey.
He told me that he was teaching and studying Arabic at a University in Damascus. He would travel from his home town Al Hasaki to Damascus to study. The journey to university would be 1hr 30 on the plane, it was extremely expensive but the safest way to travel there. If he would take the bus it would be at least 10hrs. Not only this but if he was found he could be forced to join the military as he was over 18. They could also find him at university too…
He had only studied for 2 years before having to leave due to fighting and the risk of being enrolled in something he didn’t believe in. He should have studied for 4 years at least.
Fighting began in his town too, it became too dangerous to stay, at first his family would leave for a week or so until the fighting seemed to stop. They would return and the fighting would start again…this continued for two months before enough was enough.
15 August 2015, he left Syria.
To leave Syria he had to run across the border. The journey was 30km, he said he was with a big group of people, 20 or 30 or so, of different ages and states of health. At some point they were found by the police, they were chased and those who were caught were beaten. 6 made it out.
When they crossed to Turkey they were met by a man who offered to help them, he had a car, they had no other options so they jumped in. About 1km down the road it stopped. The man demanded money. Suleman and his friends had nothing, he became violent and subsequently took their phones, IDs and all the money they had between them and drove off. It took them 2 days to walk to their destination - Gaziantep where he would meet his fiancee.
23 August 2015 he left Gaziantep and his fiancee for Viransehir where he would find some work as a plasterer, 12hr days for the equivalent of 1€ per hour. He stayed there for 4 months until he joined his cousin in Adana, who had somewhere to stay and some work for him fruit picking. He stayed there another 4 months but he became sick. For 2 weeks, he couldn’t eat, he would be vomiting if he ate or drank anything. He worked again but again he became sick, this time spending time in hospital until he was well again. He spend the remainder of his time with his fiancee until he would leave Turkey.
06 March 2016 Suleman travelled to Izmir. He had 1300$ at this point so he gave 600$ to a smuggler to take him to Greece. The smuggler told him everything would be ok, the waves are calm and don’t worry about the boat, it will take 1-2 hrs. Greece coastguard will come to collect you with the helicopter and you’ll be fine.
He was then told to get into a car. At this point he told me 30 PEOPLE WERE FORCED INTO THIS CAR! The smuggler said it would be for an hour at most. The people said for an hour would be ok. They would stay in the car for 7hrs, from midnight until 7am, waiting until the coast was clear to get in a boat. He didn’t have much to say about the journey. The worst part was being in the car for so long, not being able to breathe.
They were taken to Mytelinie where he stayed in a tent for a week and then onto Athens where he stayed for couple of weeks in what he said was a warehouse/store. They were then sent to Scaramangas camp, 2.5hrs away on the bus. When they arrived they were told that there was no space, they noticed the conditions were poor so they didn’t want to stay either. As they turned to leave they were told that a bus would not be arranged to take them to Athens. There were 300 of them and he told me they all walked together back to Athens. People stopped on the way to give them croissants, water, check they were ok.
Arriving in Athens, they jumped on a train to Thessaloniki as soon as they could. They didn’t want to stay any longer. Once there they took a taxi to the infamous Eko fuel station, right near Idomeni. This is where he met Kawa. He stayed for a couple of weeks, it rained the whole time and was very cold.
26 March 2016, he came to Veria camp with his new friend Kawa on the bus.
He found out his fiancee would go to Germany on the plane, her father was in Germany already. So he told me he wishes to be relocated there.
You can find the other stories below. Thanks for your support.
Kawa Selo
Borak Albaz
Shadi Al-Jouma
Other links
The Charity
More Photography
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This is good work @sammarkjames, telling the stories of the refugees. It helps make them more relatable and easier to sympathize with, leading people to, hopefully, take action to help.
Thanks @mweich for your continued support.
It seems the support has slowed for Greece and Serbia from a volunteer and fundraising perspective as the situation in Myanmar accelerates, which is totally understandable too.
Either way, as you said it highlights the people's journeys. I would add that I purposely didn't interview people who would give a reaction to the audience, from the standpoint that making people relive things is not right aor good for them unless they WANT to. Unless they trusted me. Therefore I kept this series relatively small but following that I will be talking about my experiences in Calais, Greece and Serbia. I would eventually like to head out the Myanmar with a team, and I have plans to try and achieve this using Steem, so keep an eye out for that, coming in November!
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i really like the photo. makes it seems more emotional and invigorating.