July• 2019 | 123we didn’t understand, and be-
sides, to leave behind all you
knew in your own country to
make this dangerous journey,
you knew it must be bad.
As morning broke, we
watched the first boat go out.
The boats didn’t have pilots.
Instead, the smugglers let one
refugee travel for half price or
for free if he drove the boat.
My Uncle Ahmed was going
to drive our boat. His old job
was running a mobile-phone
shop. But he assured us he
knew how.
Around 9am, Uncle Ahmed
called the smuggler. What was the
hold-up? He was told that we must
wait for the Turkish coast guard to
move.
The day got hotter, and as the
afternoon wore on the waves got
higher. Finally, around 5pm, they
said the coast guard was leaving.
So we should go. A mist was coming
down, and the cry of the seagulls no
longer seemed so romantic.
Some call this crossing rihlat
al-moot, or the route of death. It would
either deliver us to Europe or swallow
us up in the ocean.NO FRIENDS BUT IN
THE MOUNTAINS
I hate the word refugee. What it really
means is a second-class citizen with a
number scrawled on your hand, who
everyone wishes would somehow goaway. But we are not numbers, we
are human beings, just the same as
everyone else except we have lost our
homes. Some of the refugees were
lawyers, doctors or important people
in their communities back home, but
standing exhausted with their few
belongings in rucksacks and shop-
ping bags, everyone looked grim and
beaten down.
My name is Nujeen, which means
new life, and I guess you could say I
was unexpected. When I came along
on New Year’s Day in 1999, my oldest
brother Shiar was 26 and my young-
est sibling Nasrine was nine. My fam-
ily lived in a dusty, neglected desert
town called Manbij in northern Syria,
not far from the border with Turkey.
We were one of five Kurdish families
on a street in a town that was mostly
MAP: SHUTTERSTOCK Arab. We had to speak their language
Aleppo,
SyriaWesseling, GermanyThe route to safety that the sisters
planned to travel