My name is Ahmad, I am Kurdish and I come from Aleppo in Syria. I left my home country on the 27th August with my wife, our one-month-old baby daughter Naya and another family who are close friends of ours. We left via the Lebanese border and travelled through Turkey to Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and we are now at the border with Hungary trying to pass through. We tried to cross over the border last night when everyone started rushing because someone said it had reopened. But it wasn’t true, the border was still closed and we got hit by the tear gas and water cannons. Naya cannot breathe properly today. Here, give me your hand and feel her chest. You can feel how her little lungs are struggling to work. I don’t know what to do.
Before the war I worked in an industrial factory. It was a good job but after the war started, armed groups came and took it over. So I’ve not been able to work for two years now. We’ve not had proper water or electricity for two years either. Sometimes people were allowed into our area to give us some support, sometimes not. There were days when nobody would come.
We’re just so tired and it’s so difficult to think straight in this heat. The only thought we have is getting through that border over there and into Hungary. We’re walking some kind of Death March.
'Dead bodies everywhere'
When we were in the boat, we saw so many dead bodies in the sea around us. Dead bodies everywhere. Any time I thought I saw a child’s body I held Naya closer to me and just wept at the thought that the worst could happen to her. We spent nine hours in an eight metre-long rubber boat that held 60 of us. We had to go incredibly slowly so that the boat didn’t capsize. The smugglers told us that we would only have to wait for three hours before the boat came so we waited in the forest. We waited for three days there, sleeping in the open. Some of them treated us ok, but most of them treated us like animals. They don’t act with any kind of rules or laws; they just do what they want. Some of my friends were beaten badly on their legs. They couldn’t fight back, they had weapons. We had nothing. We had to pay $1200 per person. That’s everything we had. Some have been able to pay for buses or taxis over land but we have had to walk. We have been walking for ten days now.
Some of my other friends were in a boat that capsized. Not one person helped them. A lot of the children had problems from inhaling too much water but thank god none of these ones died.
Chaos and desperation
Last night, when we all rushed to get through the border, I saw a father holding a baby not much older than Naya, maybe six months. In the chaos and the desperation, he dropped his son who was trampled by the crowd. He was not able to save him. We were treated like animals. You see, this is the death march.
Where will we go now? We will stay at this border until it opens. We can’t go back, there is nothing for us back in Syria. We didn’t want to leave. We stayed until we had no choice, until we couldn’t endure it any longer. How can I bring up Naya with no water let alone schools or any hope for the future? Also if we go back, we fear that we will be killed. They’ve said that anyone who has fled is not welcome anymore. Forget going back to Syria, it’s gone. I want to find a life for Naya where she is free to become a doctor or an engineer.