ust beyond the Hara Hotel in Evzonoi lies the Greece-Macedonia border -- so close it seems to beckon to bone-tired travelers.
“Why can’t we cross now?” Salaam, an Iraqi man in his 20s, says impatiently as he watches a group of people leave the dingy hotel and head down a dirt path to the border.
“Because the smuggler told us to wait until nighttime,” explains his friend Mostafa, a 22-year-old Syrian writer and Arabic literature student from war-ravaged Aleppo.
But they couldn’t have picked a worse time to go to Macedonia. In just a few hours, Macedonian authorities will start a violent campaign to block the border for several days, preventing thousands of people from crossing.
The group of four -- Salaam, Mostafa, Abdo and Hamad -- are all “friends of the road,” as they call it, having met along the route from Turkey. But really, they’re family now.
Unlike most of the refugees and migrants crossing into Macedonia, they chose the land route from Turkey to Greece -- not the sea crossing.
“I would drown in two feet of water,” Abdo, 22, also from Aleppo, laughs as he shakes his head.
But still, they had to face the Maritsa, the river trailing much of the Turkey-Greece border. It took them five tries, three across the Maritsa and two by land, before they were finally able to evade Greek authorities and make it through. From there, they paid 1,400 euro each to be driven straight to the Hara Hotel.
This group is aiming for either Norway or Sweden, where they hope to finish school, find work and live the lives they had only started living before war made other plans.
“Whatever God has written is written,” Salaam says without fear, putting his elbow on the table and revealing a long, jagged scar on his forearm from a suicide bombing he survived in Fallujah.
Mostafa, too, has a scar to remind him of why he left home. It’s small and round, from the butt of a lit cigarette singed into his arm while, he says, he was held by Syrian air force intelligence.
“When you think about the past and what you went through, you have to be more daring,” Mostafa explains.
Hours later, they make their way to the border. But military vehicles block their way, and broad-shouldered policemen in bulletproof gear are wielding batons. Anyone who tries to cross gets beaten, tear-gassed and shot at with stun guns and rubber bullets.
It’s a post-apocalyptic scene by nightfall, with smoke billowing from small fires lit along the railroad tracks. The winds have picked up, and the temperature has plummeted -- people are burning anything to keep warm.
Yet despite the day’s tumult, it’s now tensely quiet except for the screams of children, whose mothers rock them under the unforgiving night sky.
There’s little aid here apart from the row of portable toilets and taps of drinking water set up by the UN refugee agency and Doctors Without Borders.
“We escaped Syria because of death,” says Anas, a 36-year-old man from Aleppo who used to produce cold-pressed oil, his face silhouetted by the fire. “We don’t want to die here.”
At dawn, the desperation swells. People are begging for a meal. Some have turned to the sunflower fields nearby, picking out seeds for nourishment. One father feverishly asks around for clean diapers for his infant.
The four friends, who slept on the train tracks and took a picture to remember the hilariously uncomfortable moment, are trying not to panic. The Macedonian authorities have to open the border eventually, they insist, so it’s just a matter of waiting it out.
“What, you don’t like our house?” Mostafa quips, pointing at the concrete ground beneath their feet. He runs to get coffee from the train station nearby, where the cafe is making a pretty penny off the mass migration.
Their conversations turn to the people they left behind who are worried sick.
“I sent a message to my mother yesterday,” Abdo starts. “And she said, ‘Oh my God, you’re so skinny, come back to Syria! But I said, ‘No, we’re halfway there!’”
Stranded on the border, Salaam, Mostafa, Abdo and Hamad don’t yet know that they will all make it to Oslo in just three weeks’ time.
“It’s all in my head now,” Mostafa says, with an eager smile. “Once I arrive, I have to write it all down. It’s an adventure.”
“Can I suggest a headline for your story?” he asks, ever the writer. “‘We are humans.’”
itting on a plastic tarp in the Kara Tepe refugee camp, a cluster of family and friends from Homs plays cards under the shade of a silvery olive tree that reminds them of their now-decimated Syrian city.
After making it onto Lesvos by dinghy, this group is now stuck squatting inside a sprawling refugee settlement in the port town of Mytilene, alongside thousands of other Syrians dropped off here daily by buses or those who walked the 40 miles from Molyvos. There’s no obvious NGO or government presence, nor any shelter or electricity.
"What is this screwed-up country?" asks Walid, the de facto leader of a 24-person group that has been waiting nearly a week for official permission to continue on to Athens. “We don’t want to stay here. We want to leave. We know that they don't want us."
Walid is a diabetic who used to monitor school Internet systems back in Homs. Now he hopes to relocate his family to Germany, where he has a brother waiting. But their hope, along with their cash, is running out.
The whole claustrophobic camp stinks of sewage because the few toilets are filthy and overflowing. Everyone is drinking as little as possible so they don’t have to brave the bathrooms. Amid the heat and filth, 2-year-old Lulu, a family friend in Walid’s travel group, has developed heat stroke and an itchy rash. They’re nervous it may be scabies, but there’s no nearby doctor.
A smattering of volunteers try to ease the tension by passing out juice boxes to the kids and information to the adults. “I would advise you not to go to the big cities,” Sarah, a German volunteer, says to Walid and his family. “In Munich now, it can take eight months or a year [to go through the asylum process].”
Once a day, a Greek police official arrives bearing an ever-growing list of names indicating who gets deportation papers necessary to continue on through Greece and approval to purchase ferry tickets. But even after receiving papers, it can take days for people to secure a spot on one of the boats.
Walid and his crew crowd around the trash-strewn camp entrance like everyone else. People frantically wave their arms in the air to claim their papers as a harried volunteer works his way down that day’s list. Arguments break out when people share the same name or when deportation papers end up in the wrong hands, either by accident or taken on purpose.
The keeper of the precious list is a sole official who has come from the port police station, an hour’s walk into town, where an understaffed and on-edge force struggles to maintain order and quickly process deportation papers. There are frequent clashes between the terror-stricken refugees and baton-wielding cops, including one plainclothes officer violently dragging a reporter from The WorldPost out of a crowd of refugees, screaming, “Get out of my country!”
"Barrel bombs are more merciful than this," says Taha, his shoulders burning crimson in the sun. Whenever a plane flies low over the camp, everyone grows quiet and looks up, a deep-seated habit left over from Syria.
It will be a few more days until Walid’s group makes it off the island on a UN-chartered ferry, and two weeks until they make it to Germany. But for now, stuck on this island, all they can do is wait.
To pass the time, the family from Homs and their friends float in the Aegean’s warm waters -- the same sea from which they were saved -- with arms outstretched and eyes closed. They crack jokes about Hafez Assad, Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, giggling deliriously. They sip hot tea and sing songs from home. They pray.
As the sun sets, people get ready for bed every night by hiding valuables in their tents and on their bodies. There is little light once the sun disappears, apart from the street lamps outside of the camp and the glow of cell phones.
One evening, the strains of a guitar emerge from the darkness, and then voices singing in Arabic, Kurdish and English. A group of young Syrians and Iraqis sit crossed-legged on the ground alongside several German tourists and a Greek volunteer.
First, a freestyle rap about the Kurdish struggle, and then one written by Syrian Kurdish rapper Sherif Omeri.
he sun rises quickly over Eftalou beach on Greece’s Lesvos island, gently warming the rocky shore. There’s not a soul in sight, just gentle lapping of the Aegean waters and a morning chorus of waking birds.
But then, a hum far off in the distance – the unmistakable sound of a boat motor. A dinghy, at first just a black blob on the horizon, moves slowly across the water from Turkey.
The neon orange of life jackets stands out against the slate-colored water as the boat draws near. Some two dozen men, women and children sit in the inflatable rubber raft, clinging to large inner tubes. One man raises his hand high above his head, waving to volunteers who have climbed down the steep embankment to meet them.
In the first two weeks of September alone, some four dozen people would drown in the Aegean Sea, one boat capsizing a mere 90 meters from land -- not quite the length of an American football field.
But this dinghy, steered by a refugee at the motor’s top speed, makes it to the rocky beach safely, landing near a Greek flag painted on the rocks. Everyone scrambles off, though one man with a cigarette in one fist and a knife in another pauses to pierce the rubber boat – a defiant move to make sure they can’t be sent back.
“Turkey, may God do with you what it wants!” a young woman screams at the Turkish shore on the other side of the water.
The passengers are Kurds from Iraq and Syria, hellbent on making it to Western Europe in search of asylum and a better life.
“Do you know where I can see a doctor?” asks Dlava, a three-months-pregnant Kurdish woman from Aleppo, where the Syrian regime routinely drops crudely made barrel bombs on rebel-held civilian neighborhoods.
She stumbles across the rocks with her husband, Azadeen.
“I’m worried about my baby,” she cries, holding her belly in a state of panic.
Another young woman embraces a man sobbing into a cell phone. He made it to Greece safely, he tells a loved one on the other end through tears.
A family from Baghdad, giddy with excitement, takes selfies and photographs of each other posing in front of the dinghy before trekking up the bank to volunteers’ waiting cars.
Molyvos, Lesvos Island
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What Island Is This?
Syrian and Iraqi refugees gather in the early morning hours on Eftalou Beach after taking an inflatable rubber dinghy from Turkey to Greece's Lesvos island on Aug. 14, 2015. After taking selfies and photographs of each other smiling on the rocky shoreline, the crew of Syrian and Iraqi Kurds walk up the steep embankment with local volunteers who drive them into town.
“If anyone actually wants to come to Europe, don't come with her!” a young volunteer jokes, referring to his mother-in-law. She giggles as they scurry away from the deflated dinghy together.
Every morning with the rising sun, these volunteers watch the sea through binoculars, ready to greet boats of refugees. Once the travelers come to shore, volunteers and locals help people out of the boats. They give crucial information on the asylum process and road ahead, pass out food and water, organize shelter, provide free rides and take people to pharmacies and doctors.
“Morning, night, we’re here all day every day,” explains volunteer Philippa Kempson as she walks with her husband Eric and the group up the steep path to the road.
The couple has had a wood-carving shop on this island for 16 years and has helped refugees landing close to their home since last winter. There’s no pay, no formal aid group. Still, Philippa and Eric estimate they’ve personally assisted more than 30,000 people.
“I got an email from a Syrian man two days ago saying: ‘You are angels for what you do for the Syrian people,’” Philippa says, eyes welling. “It made me cry.”
The seemingly short distance from Turkey to Lesvos is deceiving, the waters treacherous for those not strong enough to swim long distances or unable to swim at all. Many cheaply made life jackets sold in Izmir are incapable of keeping a person afloat.
When dinghies come to shore -- beaches often packed with snorkeling vacationers and kids making sand castles -- even tourists like Peter Krajnc extend a helping hand. This leathery Slovenian retiree, who spends most summer days sunbathing nude on Eftalou beach, said he was “terrified” the first time he saw a dinghy full of men, women and children beelining toward him.
“I just didn’t know what to do,” he says, comfortably naked save for a straw hat. “Then I helped [give out] shoes and clothing. They really appreciate a bottle of water.”
Now, running to meet the dinghies has become routine. “There's nothing to be afraid of,” he says, smiling, eyes scanning for more boats. “They come and they kiss the land, just like the pope.”
Nearby, a young couple from the predominantly Kurdish Syrian city of Hasakah waits to get into Philippa and Eric’s small blue car. They clutch their toddler and a 15-day-old baby girl wearing a tiny green hat.
“Her name is Simav,” the mother, Amira, says of her tiny bundled newborn. “In Kurdish, it means ‘silver water.’”
With that, Simav lets out a larger-than-life wail. Just two weeks after entering the world, she’s already survived the sea. Next stop: Molyvos.
IT TAKES AN ISLAND
Molyvos, Lesvos Island, Greece
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s vacationers dine on fresh fish and sweet local wine at one of Molyvos’ most popular restaurants, the Captain’s Table, shell-shocked Syrians huddle only paces away in a makeshift refugee camp.
“I’ve seen death more than a thousand times,” says a man named Taha, a former Free Syrian Army fighter who stood up to the Assad regime in Homs. He fled Syria with both government and Islamic State bounties on his head.
A mother and daughter shiver next to him, soaking wet. The Hellenic Coast Guard saved their whole travel group after their rubber dinghy started to sink.
“We have stories bigger than the sea!” he bellows, stripped down to his undershirt.
The generosity of Greek locals, tourists and dedicated volunteers -- who have donated shoes, tents, food, water, rain jackets and backpacks -- means that more than a hundred refugees will sleep in this camp tonight instead of on the streets. Even if they had the cash, people lacking official Greek papers are barred from renting hotel rooms.
“Look!” gasps Melinda McRostie, a Greek-Australian woman who runs the Captain’s Table with her Greek husband, Theo, as 40 people at one table rise from their seats carrying cash donations.
“Look, they’re all getting up!” she exclaims as, one by one, the predominantly European diners deliver money to her niece, Alana, who has been sitting at a table near the kitchen all night planning aid distribution.
Melinda and her team of volunteers often use the restaurant as home base. Cash contributions go toward purchasing essentials that are distributed daily, along with other donated goods collected on the island or mailed there from around the world.
Up a rocky path, the beneficiaries of those handouts huddle under green tents. Inside one, bubbly 20-year-old Aya from Idlib points to a little girl.
“Her sister was hit with a shell at school,” Aya says. “The next eye surgery would cost three million Syrian pounds [roughly $16,000]. There are bits in her [sister’s] head and there’s no more medicine in Idlib.”
The group says the little girl’s life depends on making it to Germany, where some refugees get medical attention almost immediately after arriving.
Just a 10-minute walk away, along the shoreline and farther into town, Posto Cafe owner Theano Mavragani is one of the only businesses allowing refugees and migrants to use the bathroom. The rest close their doors to the weary travelers, deeming them dirty and unwelcome.
“It’s a serious problem,” she explains with a sigh as a woman from Afghanistan politely asks to use the toilet. “Tourists give me toilet paper.”
Across street, people wait for UN buses to take them to the other side of the island to register and wait for deportation papers that allow them to travel onward. Theano dispenses supplies -- women’s underwear, baby diapers and shoes collected by volunteers -- to new arrivals. Other volunteers mull about answering questions like “Why aren’t we allowed to take a taxi?” and “Why can’t we pay for a hotel room?”
Iakovos Hatzistavrou/AFP/Getty Images
Fifteen-day-old Simav, whose Kurdish name means "silver water," wails in her mother's arms after landing ashore on Lesvos on Aug. 14, 2015. She was too small to fit into an infant life jacket, so her mother held her tightly in her arms the whole journey from Turkey.
One such good Samaritan, a middle-aged, Converse-clad New Zealander named Jenni, hopped on a plane after reading Facebook posts about Lesvos’ deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
“We’re doing this off the bones of our backs,” Jenni explains. "If the aid dries up, who knows? These refugees are running from war. I've met people who have walked for two months.”
“I really want to express my thanks,” says Mohamed, a Syrian lawyer whose back is raw after goons attacked his dinghy and beat him with sticks. He puts his palm to his heart.
Jenni innocently kisses him on the cheek. He blushes, saying his wife, back in Beirut with their three children waiting anxiously to join him in Europe, would definitely not approve.
Not everyone waiting in this lot is able to secure a bus seat; families with children get priority over solo travelers. Some people walk the 40 miles to Mytilene rather than gamble another day away waiting in the sun. Cars aren’t an option; taxi drivers face thousands of dollars in fines if they’re caught transporting undocumented refugees. One taxi driver admitted to ferrying a family with small children under cover of night, saying he could not bear the idea of them struggling that distance on foot.
Those walking to Mytilene often stop at a small refugee center in the town of Kalloni for a much-needed break, or in search of a safe place to sleep. There, they might meet Father Efstratios Dimou, known as Papa Stratis, a local priest who has tirelessly advocated for refugees and helps run the center. Recognizable because of his gray, untamed beard and long blue cassock, Dimou founded a small nonprofit, Agkalia, which has been helping refugees since 2009. The name means “embrace” in Greek.
“One word has been said by all religions: love,” Dimou says with an oxygen tank hooked up to his nostrils, a cigarette defiantly dangling from his fingers.
“Love is without condition,” he adds quietly in between shallow breaths. “Unconditional love is the only way to fight the people who have chosen hatred as their weapon.”
Dimou would die of cancer soon after, on Sept. 2, at just 57 years old. But others carry on his work. Writer and butcher Giorgos Tyrikos and his wife, Katerina Selacha, a teacher, are two lead volunteers who make sure those who seek shelter at Agkalia have access to food, water and medicine.
Today is Katerina’s birthday, so she shares chocolate cake and a berry tart with the several dozen Afghan men, women and children currently seeking refuge within Agkalia’s walls.
“I’m so happy here,” grins 17-year-old Altaf as he waits for a slice. If he makes it to Germany, the smiling teenager wants to play rugby like he did back home in Afghanistan, where this year’s civilian death toll is set to be the highest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
And yet, the sweetness of birthday cake doesn’t mask the group’s anxiety. The Afghans have already been traveling for two months, with a long, tiring road ahead. One young man panics when he hears Giorgos discussing a dosage of Depon medicine, mistaking it for the word “deport,” only to erupt into laughter once his friends correct his flub.
This volunteer work has taken over Giorgo and Katerina’s lives.
“What would you do if a bomb fell on your house?” Katerina implores. “Would you leave? I can't see people suffering and just ignore them.”
It’s a dual question of human decency, they say, and history. Giorgos’ own grandmother, Eleni, fled Greece in 1943 during World War II with nothing but what she could carry. She made it by boat to Bodrum, a city on the Turkish coast. And then, she walked the nearly 800 miles to Aleppo, where a Syrian family took her in. It’s a journey that closely resembles that of modern-day refugees and migrants, but in reverse.
“They were very kind to her,” he says of the Syrian people. “We are repaying a debt.”
A Syrian man hangs up his family's Syrian passports, still soggy from an illegal boat trip to Greece from Turkey, in a makeshift camp on Greece's Lesvos island on Aug. 14, 2015. The camp, known as Kara Tepe, reeks of sewage and trash.
Father Efstratios Dimou, a local priest known as Papa Stratis, sits in his car outside of the refugee center he helps run in Kalloni on Aug. 8, 2015. He has an oxygen tank hooked up to his nostrils. Recognizable by his long, gray beard and blue cassock, Dimou has been helping refugees with his organization Agkalia since 2009. He died on Sept. 2, 2015 at just 57.
Katerina Selacha and several other volunteers make sandwiches in her family-owned deli on Aug. 8, 2015. They're for Afghan refugees staying at a shelter in Kalloni run by the NGO Agkalia. Selacha and her husband, Giorgos, have made thousands of sandwiches for people staying at their shelter.
Iakovos Hatzistavrou/AFP/Getty Images
“No one here is illegal”
Mytilene, Lesvos Island, Greece
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A Syrian man hangs up his family's Syrian passports, still soggy from an illegal boat trip to Greece from Turkey, in a makeshift camp on Greece's Lesvos island on Aug. 14, 2015. The camp, known as Kara Tepe, reeks of sewage and trash.
Syrians from Homs float and swim in the Aegean Sea on Aug. 16, 2015, just a short walk from Kara Tepe informal camp. Just days earlier, they risked their lives in that same water, only to be saved by the coast guard when their boat took on water.
[Translated.]
For the one who dreams to get out of here and flee outside
For the one whose dream it is to have a job
And the one who stays up all night
And the one who understood what’s going on and can’t get any sleep.
The one who hit and ran away and has strong connections
And the one who spoke up and protested and now he’s the victim
Suffering, needing, hate, despair, thinking and all the doors are closed
What, are you going to wait for a long time? No.
Take a look at the youth, they’re growing up and thinking of solutions,
Contradictory thinking and they’ve suffered a lot of harm
They’re dreaming of the future, and they’re imagining a lot
They’re lost in this world and diseases have spread amongst them
Anxiety, emotions, mental illnesses, madness, depression, inferiority complex and schizophrenia.
You like to show others that you’re living the life of luxury?
How long are you going to keep lying to yourself and others, huh?
Till when?
Get up wake up and take a look at yourself in the mirror,
Take off the mask because the story is over.
Who do you want to complain to?
Talk about our tragedies?
We will tell the story
And you (can then) judge us.
We’re lost in this world and nobody cares about us
Each one of us has his own concerns and the world makes us forget,
You want to complain? To whom will you tell our tragedies?
We will tell the story and you (can then) judge us.
“We challenged the sea,” says 21-year-old Mohamed from Damascus. Then he looks over at a German man strumming his guitar. “We would like to thank the volunteers. They’re helping us forget where we are.”
Soon, a dozen people join in on the chorus, their voices defiantly rising, building in number and in strength.
“Illegal, illegal,” they sing. “No one here is illegal.”
Charles Ommanney / The Washington Post / Getty Images
“We Are Humans”
Evzonoi, Greece
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Mostafa al Khaled, a 22-year-old writer and Arabic literature student from war-ravaged Aleppo, poses for a photograph at Hara Hotel on the Greece-Macedonia border hours before attempting to illegally cross into Macedonia on Aug. 19. He's traveling with several Syrian and Iraqi "friends of the road." Much of his family remains in Aleppo, where the Syrian regime frequently drops crudely made barrel bombs on rebel-held civilian neighborhoods.
Refugees defiantly sit in front of the blocked-off Macedonian border on Aug. 21, hours after Macedonian authorities responded with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets when men, women and children desperately tried to cross. With nowhere to turn back to -- cash-strapped Greece offers little safety or security for refugees -- they waited, hoping the border would eventually open so they could continue on to Western Europe.