Wednesday, 14 September 2022. I awake earlier than usual and feel a biting chill. Even though it’s been quite warm the last few days. I look towards the window: the path is completely covered with leaves that scatter in the light breeze. Morning is already breaking. The sun will rise soon. It’s five o’clock in the morning in Berlin, near the metro stop Karl- Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik on the U8 line. The refugee centre where I will be spending the next few days is located in a small wood or park.
I turn my head to the left, then the right, to relieve the neck pain caused by this pillow, which looks more like a chunk of marble, and this bed with its steel coils that can be folded up and placed in the corner during the day.
Now I have been sitting here for five days already haven’t slept well once. Of course, it’s better than sleeping upright on the deck of a rusty ship, especially on high seas, with constant anxiety and dark forebodings.
And yet, sometimes I catch myself yearning for those days. Despite the hardships, they also had nice sides, even if these were only ones I invented to escape into my imagined world.
My name is Ahmad and I want to share some special moments of my life with you here.
My name is Ahmad
I have to laugh when I think back to how this journey began, when my brother told me to pack my things because it was time to leave for Germany. To me, it seemed like an absurd joke. Why does he want to take me to Germany, after I’d gotten used to things in Turkey? I had grown up here, I’d spent my whole childhood here. That’s my I would never had considered moving away. But my brother was dead serious and informed me we would be spending a week traveling by sea. I only realised how serious he was when I saw the supplies he collected: tins of mortadella, broad beans and all sorts of things that keep well.
My mother immediately started sorting clothes for us while I went to my little library to pick a book to accompany me on my journey. One by one, I went through the novels. It should be over 400 pages long, big enough for the whole trip, because I knew we would be cut off from the internet for days.
I ended up with a book by Ayman Otoom, “My name is Ahmad”. I really don’t know why it would be this one! It might be because my name is in the title, or because it’s over 500 pages long. Then I went out to buy as many sachets of instant coffee as possible.
We were scheduled to meet around 50 other people at the ship the next day.
Darkness
Mersin, Sunday, 28 August 2022, midnight.
We were waiting for the arrival of the ship that the smugglers had assured us would take us to Italy. Then the ship finally anchored near the stone quay. The area was off the beaten path and deserted. The vessel was actually just a boat and too small for all of us. It was pitch black. Embarking with so many people made the boat rock until everyone was finally seated. We were sitting rather uncomfortably and close together.
Then we embarked from Merin, Turkey towards an unspecified mainland, somewhere in Italy.
The adventures of a bold seafarer
On the first night, I could still see the lights on the coast of Mersin. I had spent over eight years in this city, but I was still happy to leave it behind although my friends lived there, my children, basically my life was tied to it. I felt none of the sadness that supposedly comes over you when you leave your city or home. Perhaps because I basically hated its streets, its neighbourhoods, schools and inhabitants. Perhaps I no longer liked it because I had just failed the school year and that was only a month ago. I had deserved to fail because my school books were practically untouched. I hadn’t even bothered to doodle in them. Most days, I’d just left them at home and usually skipped school. This year, I was totally lost and couldn’t be bothered to do anything.
It pulled out my book at the first light of day so I could fulfil my resolution for the journey: reading a novel in peace and quiet, just for me, without being distracted by the internet, over a cup of coffee, with a fantastic view of the sea. The reality was, of course, not to my liking: the constant roar of the ship’s motor and the children screaming their heads off kept me from doing so, though I tried many times.
Everyone prays to God that we will reach Italy safely and the boat does not go under over 200 kilometres from the closest Greek island. Of course no one can swim that far. Time seems to stretch out. I would have liked to meet someone in my age. But there were only little children accompanied by their relatives. Everyone else was at least five years older than me. I decided to attach myself to the elders to appear as old as them – even if I didn’t enjoy crouching with them. This is how I became a member of a group of five that always sat together. We wished someone would have brought playing cards along. As it was, we killed time together by telling each other our favourite stories.
Then something happened that caused a commotion: the ship’s motor caught fire, as if in answer to my cursing about its noise. Now it was spraying sparks everywhere. The men in charge rushed over to put out the fire, but we were afraid. It took hours to get it repaired. It was our fifth night at sea, which now lay before us as bleak as the previous nights after the sun had set. And I only had one coffee sachet left. It was set aside for true emergencies, but I decided to make myself a coffee now – having this last coffee was important if I had to die!
After stirring it with cold water, I realised my power bank was dead. My phone also just had five per cent left. I took my earbuds out of my pocket, put them in my ears, looked for a song by Assala Nasri that was saved on my phone. I put the bag between my head and the wooden railing like a pillow, watching the stars above me, letting my legs hang overboard, almost touching the water, while Assala’s voice rang out:
“This is Damascus .... and this is the cup and the wine
I love .... and sometimes love is like a piece of meat
I am from Damascus .... and when you cut me open
Apples and grapes flow forth
Here are my roots ... my heart ... my language
How can explain it? Are there explanations for being in love?”
Then a little wave splashed over my feet. I feel the cool water, sipped a little at my coffee, savouring it for as long as possible, and start looking at the stars: There are big ones and small, bright ones and dull. And Assala carried on in her loving voice:
“I loaded my poems on my back, but they weary me.
But what kind of poems find peace?”
Finally, I nod off and listen to the song on repeat.
Companions
When I awoke, I heard a strange noise that had to be coming from the sea. The darkness had already given way to the day. But I still couldn’t see what was making the sound. I was keeping an eye out for anything, however inconspicuous and distant, even checking the brownish jellyfish that I encounter here for the first time in my life. Minutes later, still hearing this noise, saw something jumping in the distance, again and again. At first I thought it was a whale, but it was too small for that.
It was coming closer, but only very gradually. For an entire hour I could hear it, tried to see it, but couldn’t find it. Yet at some point it was so close to the boat that I could recognise it: it was a dolphin. And it hadn’t come alone, accompanied by two more, which were keeping some distance away. I got the impression that the two of them were circling the boat at a large distance while following the path of the boat, then growing slower to swim along with the boat. The dolphin looked at me. I sensed how it was laughing, putting its impressive elegance on display. As it came even closer, I realised beautiful it was. I had never before felt such joy. I looked it in the eye and suddenly felt as if it had a message for me: “what has brought you here? Are you looking for a new homeland? Or you only coming as a tourist? Why are you sitting there so sad and alone? Or do you prefer being by yourself, just like me, instead of amusing yourself with the others?”
I would have liked to tell it how much I would have liked to live where I was born, because I mostly felt isolated since I left there. Enjoy yourself in your homeland, my friend, because the sea is a big and beautiful home that you don’t have to share with criminals. But I knew he didn’t understand my language, so we were satisfied glancing at each other until he joined his companions a few minutes later and disappeared with them into the distance.
Drinking water
And as if the dolphins had brought us good news, the Italian coastguard arrived a few hours later after they left. We were about three kilometres from the nearest Italian port. They handed out bottles of water to everyone. We hadn’t been able to really drink our fill since embarking, and our supply of drinking water was almost exhausted by the time the seventh night fell.
We finally reached the Italian mainland. From that point on, everything went very quickly. We only stayed in Italy for two days, then travelled on to Switzerland, where we also only stayed for two days before reaching Germany.
My friends are envious of me having visited Italy. What else would you expect. After all, there is no country in the world more beautiful than this! But they don’t realise that those were some of the worst days of my life. I was constantly sleeping rough in parks and one time I had to sleep in the rain when it was only 3 degrees Celsius. Those were not the best conditions for discovering the most beautiful country in Europe.
Berlin
Our train arrived at Berlin Central Station at nine in the morning on 8 September. We disembarked and a friend of my brother welcomed us with two cups of very hot coffee. I would have preferred it a little colder, but it served its purpose. We travelled to Charlottenburg to relax a little in the friend’s flat. I looked at the buildings and parks from the S7, whose name I didn’t know at the time, until we got off near his flat. Then we walked to his place together.
Aunt Umm ʿAbd ar-Raḥman had cooked molokhia with rice for us. It tasted indescribably good. After the meal, I was exhausted and slept until midnight. Was it a nap or more of a coma? In any case, it was a real rest.
The next day we went to register at the immigration office. We were given a small room for accommodation, but we were happy with it. From then on, a new life began that bore no resemblance to the old one.
Berlin will be the city where I live from now on. So I have to settle in here, find new friends and a new life.
It is 29 March 2024.
I am writing these lines and I am still searching.
