andering through Budapest’s main Keleti train station, two familiar faces emerge from the crowd of rushed travelers -- Dlava, 22, and Azadeen, 23, the young Syrian couple from Kobani. They look different than they did two weeks earlier,
when they scrambled off an inflatable dinghy on Lesvos, but their warm smiles are unforgettable.
Dlava is calmer now but fatigued after two weeks of trekking.
Azadeen, who was a fifth-year architecture student, had found good work in Erbil as an engineer until the company went broke. He couldn’t find a decent job after that. Dlava was a determined second-year mechanical engineering student before war ripped apart her plans.
Displaced from Aleppo and then Kobani, they now desperately hope to put down roots in Germany and finish school. “We're done with that catastrophe,” says Azadeen.
But first, they have to leave Budapest. Here, hundreds of people sprawl out on the concrete outside the train station waiting anxiously for a way out of Hungary.
As “illegal immigrants,” refugees like Dlava and Azadeen can either sneak onto trains with tickets like everyone else -- and risk getting caught by authorities and sent to a camp -- or they must pay a smuggler the equivalent of thousands of dollars to drive them across Austria and on to Germany. It’s not an easy choice: In late August, the corpses of 71 refugees were found in Austria in the back of a packed smuggling truck. They had suffocated to death.
Hungary’s policy changed soon after that tragedy, which made headlines around the globe, yet the country’s approach remains in flux, with borders shared with Serbia shut on Sept. 15. Now refugees who make it through Croatia and into Hungary usually take buses, not trains, to Austria.
“The refugees couldn’t even sit in the [train station] reception halls,” explains Zsuzsanna Zsohar, volunteer spokesperson for Migration Aid, which provides information, food, water, medical attention, clean clothing and entertainment for children at Keleti and Nyugati train stations.
“People with different skin are not welcome,” she says. “If we didn’t do this, the system would have collapsed in this city.”
Psychologist Eva Borsi, another volunteer, laments what she describes as state-sanctioned racism in Hungary. Just three months ago, the government led an anti-immigrant campaign, with posters put up in Hungarian that said, "If you come to Hungary, you cannot take away Hungarians' jobs."
“I looked around and saw what’s going on and started to look where I could help,” Borsi explains. “My personal problems are nothing. When they say thank you, it’s heart-lifting. But it’s hard. I don’t sleep. I have their looks in my heart and head.”
Soon, it’s time for Dlava and Azadeen to board the train to Vienna. It’s time to blend in.
Dlava removes a colorful wrap tied around her hair that could be mistaken for a headscarf. She also takes off her sweater to reveal what she thought looked like more "Western” clothing -- blue jeans, a striped shirt, plus a red leather jacket. Azadeen changes out of his black tracksuit into a T-shirt and slacks.
“I can’t eat anything,” Dlava says. “I’m too terrified.”
Blending In
Budapest, Hungary
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Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
Left: Dlava and Azadeen pose for a photograph taken back in Iraq before they left on their dangerous journey to Europe. Young and in love, they found out Dlava was pregnant just before leaving for the trip. The news only amplified their desire to make it to Western Europe.
Right: Dlava and Azadeen stand in Budapest's bustling Keleti train station before boarding a passenger train to Austria on Aug. 25, 2015. The couple has to blend in and pose as tourists, not refugees. Even though they've purchased train tickets, they aren't legally allowed to take the train to Austria.
Aboard the train, other nervous refugees and migrants standing nearby are trying to blend in, too. Some don dark sunglasses, hats and headphones.
Azadeen cracks a tiny smile of relief as the train pulls out of the humming train station, but just for a moment. Then, terror. Police swarm aboard at nearly every stop, searching for people who look “out of place.” On the second stop from Keleti, several brawny policemen walk through the car, just missing Dlava and Azadeen.
They stop one solo traveler -- a quiet man with darker skin than most -- to demand his ID papers, and then boom: “Pakistan? Problem!” They force him off the locomotive.
The police page through another man’s passport, then escort him off as he throws his hands in the air, defeated, his train fare wasted.
“You would try the same thing, no?” a Hungarian woman says quietly, referencing when Nazis encircled her own city of Budapest in 1944, killing and starving tens of thousands.
“They’re fleeing war!” she says, exasperated.
When the train finally pulls into Vienna hours later, Azadeen can’t help but laugh. “The girl sitting across from us asked us where we were from so we said from Serbia,” he recalls. “I was so afraid that she'd ask us something about Serbia that I pretended to be asleep!”
Their journey is almost over; just one more train to go until they’re across the border.
"God forbid [the Austrian police] catch us,” Dlava says, holding two train tickets that together cost 350 euro. “We won't be reimbursed for these.”
The pool of money they need to get to Germany, where Dlava’s brother now lives, has been depleted. They’re constantly texting him via WhatsApp for advice, using his own experience smuggling himself to Germany as their guide.
Dlava shows her and Azadeen's identification cards on Aug. 25, 2015 -- they are some of the few belongings the young couple were able to bring with them. The smuggler forced them to dump out many of their belongings before boarding the inflatable rubber dinghies to Greece. They left valuables back home, knowing they would likely be lost or stolen before arriving in Western Europe.
Dlava shows her and Azadeen's identification cards on Aug. 25, 2015 -- they are some of the few belongings the young couple were able to bring with them. The smuggler forced them to dump out many of their belongings before boarding the inflatable rubber dinghies to Greece. They left valuables back home, knowing they would likely be lost or stolen before arriving in Western Europe.
Dlava and Azadeen are traveling light. They left valuables with family back home, knowing they would likely lose them along the way. Sure enough, before boarding the dinghies in Turkey, a smuggler forced them to empty their bags of most clothing and toiletries. What’s left: a single change of clothes each, prescription medication for Dlava’s pregnancy, plus identification cards and papers stuffed for safekeeping down her shirt.
Yet there’s one precious treasure still tucked inside Dlava’s small backpack: ultrasound photos taken hours after landing on Lesvos.
“It was the first time we heard the baby’s heart beat,” Azadeen remembers, shaking his head as if he still can’t believe it. “I felt happiness.”
“Love makes the life shine,” Dlava whispers, grinning at her husband.
Every minute, it seems, they check their phone map, as the dot showing their GPS location moves closer and closer to the German border.
And then, just like that, they’re in. A few faces in the train car light up simultaneously realizing they, too, have finally made it safely to Western Europe.
“I feel completely different,” Dlava beams. “Hungary completely destroyed our hope. Now we're in Germany!”
"It's so beautiful," she says, using her phone to record video of the sprawling landscape whizzing past. Azadeen sits quietly next to her, beaming in silence.
Dlava immediately updates her Facebook status. “Finally, we made it to Germany after we passed the seas, the cruelty of the mountains and the hardship of roads,” she writes. “Let us hope it is a good step in our life journey ahead of us.”
In Munich, they disembark in search of the train that will take them to Saarbrucken, their journey’s end. Their brave quest from northern Iraq to their new world was met with no fanfare, not like the cheering volunteers welcoming refugees to Germany who are now often seen at train stations across the country.
“I hope you have a good life,” Dlava says sweetly to her fellow train passengers, waving goodbye from the platform. And with that, she and Azadeen board the night train west, on to find what they hope is exactly that -- a good life.