(en) wsm.ie: At the unofficial border crossing between Serbia
and Croatia
Few kilometres away from the small Serbian border town of Sid, a dirt track through corn
and turnip fields serves as passage to tens of thousands of women, men and children
seeking refuge and lives of more possibility. ---- The unofficial border crossing between
Serbia and Croatia is surrounded by sun-lit verdant fields, apple orchards in the distance
and a calm that brings temporary respite to those who have been on the road for weeks or
months. The threat of militarised borders and recent memory of dehumanising conditions
along the way is temporarily kept at bay as those walking stop to drink freshly pressed
apple cider handed out by a local farmer, chat and rest before they continue on. ----
Small children are carried in the arms of parents, toddlers on hips, rucksacks with what
has been salvaged from lives interrupted, on backs. Narin, a teacher from Mosul, hesitates
as her group of survivors, Iraqi Yazidis and Kurds, approach the lone border police car
stationed as a corn field in Serbia a few metres onwards becomes a corn field in Croatia.
"Every step away from Iraq, from the massacres of our people and those we left behind, has
been so difficult" she says. "This seems too easy- we've forgotten what it is like to feel
safe".
Fatima, pregnant with her third child, arrives exhausted but despite the heat, dust and
distance, reminisces about family excursions to her parents village in Syria. Mohammed
Ali, her three year old son, runs ahead in flip-flops, shorts and an over-sized vest,
dragging behind him a blue over-stuffed unicorn given to him by volunteers at another
border crossing. "He never lets go of that unicorn" Fatima comments "he feeds it and
sleeps next to it and tells it stories about our journey".
Mahmoud, a Palestinian student from Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, holds the hand of a
young nephew and states "this is our fate- we are experiencing what our grandparents and
parents experienced. But with each generation, each exile, we are being scattered further
away from home". Later, during the seven hours spent waiting in the heat for their names
to be registered by comparatively engaging Croatian border police, he sings songs of loss,
struggle and love to those sitting around him.
From sunrise onwards the buses arrive, bringing an ongoing flow of resilient survivors
and travellers from a multitude of contexts of war, persecution and precarity. A constant
amongst all, however, is the sense of dislocation and often vulnerability expressed in
words and questions and sought reassurances, in the tensing of shoulders and tightly
inhaled breath as painful memories of the past, and present, are recalled.
Kamaal and Sabiha, a middle-aged Kurdish couple from Mosul are accompanied by their
cousin, the dignified Jamaal, who struggles down the dirt road on crutches. Kamaal had
been in hospital recovering from a heart attack when Mosul was taken over by ISIS/Daesh
over a year ago. He, Sabiha and their eldest son rushed home to find their home ransacked
and their four teenage children gone, including their thirteen year old daughter. They
stayed on in Iraq searching for them for almost a year before leaving in the hopes that
perhaps they will be more effective in their search from outside. As we walk, Sabiha
begins to cry and her husband puts his arms around her, his own shoulders heaving. They
cross the border later, arms linked, Jamaal limping beside them.
The young, the much older, those in wheelchairs carried by friends and family, the
wounded, families and those on their own, young couples holding hands disembark buses in
one quiet border town in Serbia and walk the kilometres ahead into another in Croatia.
From there, in the weather-exposed, degrading and exhausting chaos of the Tovarnik train
station, the more effectively-organised and welcoming solidarity volunteer-run rest-camp
next to it and in a recently established government-run processing camp, they will wait
difficult days for transport that will hopefully take them a step closer to their final
destinations- and the extended family, friends or support networks that await some of them
there.
Later, as night begins to fall, apprehensions and doubts are voiced. The path unmarked
except for the presence of a handful of volunteers, those arriving now seek reassurance
that the path and surroundings really have been de-mined, that they will not be detained,
that they will not face the possibility of police violence, accounts of which have
filtered back from those who were stranded in Horgos and Roszke at the Hungarian border.
Beneath a star-filled, striking night sky, Khalid - a 77-year old Circassian
great-grandfather from Quneitra- is accompanied by his extended family. He walks with a
walking stick and politely refuses our offers of help with the large bag he carries on his
back. "Continue to trust yourselves and each other" he advises fellow travellers "we are
strong and will face whatever difficulties lie ahead of us as we have faced everything
else on this journey".
A group of Eritrean women students and a lone traveller from Congo share a bag of oranges
between them. Mariam, a 22-year old nursing student, says "we have travelled from further
away and are more used to the hardships of travelling and to walking long distances. We
are young and strong but it is so difficult to see how all these children suffer".
As we speak a young Iraqi boy pleads with his father- already carrying his younger brother
and luggage- to carry him. His feet, like those of many others, are blistered and raw,
every step painful. He sobs and begs and then cries silently as his father apologetically
pulls him onwards, worried that the border might close, leaving them stranded. We take him
to the medical tent and hurriedly dress and bandage his feet before they continue on into
the night.
Zaynab and Mustafa, two children who are both wheelchair-users, are ferried through the
fields with their families in the van of volunteers. Mustafa's mother speaks of the
difficulties they've faced over the past weeks. She had to convince others in the
over-crowded rubber dinghy they travelled in across the Aegean sea to Lesvos, not to throw
Mustafa's heavy wheel-chair overboard. The over-weighted dinghy had begun to sink and
those on board tried to keep it afloat for the final hundreds of metres to shore by
getting rid of whatever excess weight they could. Sleeping on the streets and in
temporary, degrading camps makes keeping him bathed and clean impossible. "I feel like I
am failing him- I cannot change or bathe him regularly- and he feels very embarrassed when
I have to do so without privacy" she says.
Rima, a young law student from Aleppo and a mother herself, accompanies 8-year old Hiba,
recently orphaned. Hiba's remaining family live in Sweden and are awaiting her. She looks
around, wide-eyed, at the hundreds of people walking with them through the fields. The
stars above and thin crescent moon are insufficient to light up the path and those walking
rely on the lights of mobile phones to stay together when family member slow down,
exhausted by the journey behind them and the hundreds of kilometres many of them have
already covered on foot.
The journeys of many of those making the crossing are far from over, and there is acute
awareness of the increasingly securitised borders to be crossed, and the humiliating
conditions still to endure. The resilience, courage and strength of those walking through
the fields, down the roads and through the borders that will take them to hoped-for
possibilities of re-building lives of dignity, however, cannot be over-emphasised. It is a
journey, and struggle, that all of us need to more urgently- and effectively- accompany,
learn from and amplify.
WORDS: Caoimhe Butterly ( www.facebook.com/caoimhe.butterly )
Subject: Fortress Europe, Border rebellion, Asylum
Topics: Migration / racism
Geography: International
Source: Opinion
Type: News
Author: Caoimhe Butterly
http://www.wsm.ie/c/unofficial-border-crossing-serbia-croatia
