The following translated text narrates a Turkish refugee family’s escape over the border to Greece. It is a first-hand account provided by the mother, who details how she crossed the Meriç river (known as the Hebros in Greek) with her husband and 4-year-old son.
Content warning: Caution is advised as the narrative deals with the subject of death which readers may find distressing.
It all began on the evening of July 15th when we found out from a news bulletin that the Istanbul Bridge had been blocked by tanks. Even before we could fully grasp what was happening, we would later realise that somewhere, certain lists had already been drawn up, and those orchestrating this were playing their roles with perfect precision…
My life from here onwards would be comprised of days on which I woke up each time questioning whether it was all a joke. None of it was. They were truths I lived through, burning my heart and taking my life piece by piece.
Ultimately, we decided to part from our homeland where anyone deemed “other” was given no rights to exist. Yes, for we were now the “other”. This wasn’t easy for us to accept. There was such a witch hunt underway in my beautiful country, however, that it felt we were barred from the sky bestowed to us by God, and even from breathing…
Exactly two years after that inauspicious day, we made the decision to leave our country. This is such a weighty decision to make. You only take your body with you, while your “heart, mind, brain, life”…it all remains on the lands you leave behind.
We finally arrived in Istanbul. We were to wait for instructions from the guide. Then off we would be to Edirne…
Having arrived towards noon, we waited until exactly midnight. The news we awaited simply didn’t arrive. We were out of hope and beginning to think we wouldn’t be able to cross that night. As we waited, hearts pounding, my husband turned on his phone to a barrage of messages. They all said the same thing; “Are you all right, is there something wrong?” We were taken aback, of course, something was the matter but what? Everyone was looking at one another in confusion. All at once my eyes lighted on my husband’s phone screen. I only caught part of something about a boat sinking, a child falling into the water. My husband immediately turned the screen away and deleted the messages…
Please, I could only plead, tell me what happened, please. “Something’s happened and you’re hiding it from me,” I said, "please tell me what happened." My husband replied that there was no reliable information at the moment, that we shouldn’t get sidetracked by this. “A child fell into the water as the boat came near the shore, but hopefully he’s been saved, and I’m sure they have life vests anyway,” he said. The truth was nothing like we assumed, but we were only to find that out later in very painful circumstances.
My eyes met those of the woman we had set out with. We were both holding our sleeping children in our arms. We looked at each other, eyes brimming…”You know what? We’ll make it across. Keep your hearts at ease,” she addressed all of us. Keep your hearts at ease…
In the morning at four, we finally received news. We were to be picked up somewhere. The children asleep, we straggled onto the road. We arrived at the destination but there was nobody. Just imagine, it’s the middle of the night, the children asleep in our arms, our packs on our backs, it was like a joke…now and then you feel like saying, "dear God, what are we doing," but then remember that you have no other chance and keep your mouth shut.
Finally the guide came to pick us up so we breathed a sigh of relief, or thought we would. Maybe five minutes passed…the only thing I could make out from the vehicle, where I was sitting in the backseat, was a policeman waving at us to pull over to the side. My husband and I glanced at each other, our child asleep on our laps. “This is where it ends,” we said to each other. When he saw the policeman, the guide let out an involuntary curse as if to say, “this is as far as it goes.” We all thought that was it. The adventure ended here. Right then the policeman peered into the car, saw the children and the women…these few minutes seemed to us to stretch on forever…I can’t describe what went through our hearts and minds…we were practically in a thousand pieces.
Then the policeman indicated with his hand that we could pass. We were all in shock, staring at each other. The guide was so flustered he couldn’t even start the car. If he were caught, it meant prison for him. He managed to pull himself together and started the car, bursting into joyous praise when he had been spewing curses a minute ago, “Allah protected us, brother, I swear Allah protected us.” Allah really had protected us. With these thoughts, we also assumed we’d seen the worst that day and gotten through it. We had no idea of what was to come…
The guide had come to pick us up close to the break of day, but we thought we might still make it if we hurried. So we told him to hurry, but out of fear of a traffic ticket, he ignored us. Once out of the highway, he stepped on the gas as there would be no more inspections, but it was too late and the sky had started getting light. We told him that we were in no hurry, we could try another day, because it was too dangerous going there at that time of day…once again he ignored us and tossed us like prey into the midst of the fields. We couldn’t make a sound. You were a prisoner to him at that moment, there was nothing you could do.
I don’t even remember how we got our bags out of the car. Our son had relieved himself in his nappy while in the car and was very agitated. I told him, “Have patience, sweetheart, I’ll change you when we get out of the car,” but I was barely able to get our bags, let alone change his nappy. That was how hurriedly they dumped us out. As it was, it was now really getting light, villagers heading to their fields, tons of cars on the road. We couldn’t go back, it was too late. We would either be caught or make a break towards freedom.
We decided to try our luck. We hit the ground running down a path in between the fields leading down to the river, two guides by our side…we’d only taken two steps when they started shouting “down down down down!” and pulled us into a field of sunflowers. There was one- year-old baby with us that started screaming with fear. My son was in shock, all I could tell him was, “Sweetheart, please lie down and be quiet, I’ll tell you everything.” But he was obviously terrified. Our companion was trying to nurse her baby to get it to be quiet, to no success…meanwhile we were staring out at the road, waiting for a decrease in traffic. But there was a constant stream of cars. We were forced to crawl out of the fields and onto the path and start running. Waiting would change nothing.
Our fears came true…a motorbike started heading towards where we were. Seeing this, the guides immediately ran and hid in the fields. Everyone was out for themselves, scattering in every direction like frightened chicks. My husband grabbed me and our son and pulled us towards the middle of a sunflower field. The sunflowers were tall, disguising us completely, but their prickly stalks had hurt my son as my husband was hurriedly pulling us through. “Darling, please be quiet, everything will be just fine, we’re here with you,” was all I could keep saying.
Just then, my husband began straining to hear who exactly it was that had arrived. A voice from afar was calling, “Don’t be afraid, I haven’t called anyone, help me out, help me out [indicating the need for a bribe] and I won’t call the military!”
Yes, “help me out…” I feel like I’ll never forget those words. It was the euphemism, “People treat others as they have been treated” personified for me. On this journey we’d set off with untold struggles and our families in tow, what we were hearing were the dishonest calls of a man whose only concern was money. We were so afraid, so disconcerted…my husband later told me that my face was chalk white and my teeth chattering as we stepped out of that field.
My husband and his friend went to the man’s side and, spurred on by the fright he’d given us, gave him a piece of their minds. We had run from a thief just to run straight into another. Certainly, these people who would not plead with the top thief and were willing to pay the heaviest price for it, weren’t about to submit to a highway robber. As for the so-called hero who was burning with the desire to report “terrorists” but wasn’t above going after the meagre money at our disposal, he was trembling at my husband’s hands the last I saw of him. It was all over now, we were braced for anything. We set aside the fear of being sighted and began to consider how we could cross to the other side of the river.
In spite of all the setbacks, we weren’t giving up. My husband and his friend checked the guy’s phone to see whether or not he had alerted the military, and were forced to confiscate it against the possibility of him doing that later. What’s interesting is that these people marked as “terrorists”, despite the inconvenience of what had transpired and their race against time, paid the guy in excess for his phone as otherwise it would be unseemly.
Here’s the difference between the people this country has lost and those who have “sprung up like mushrooms”… It really doesn’t get any clearer than this… Who’s lost is painfully obvious…
As all this was happening, my son was like a broken record, asking, “Mummy, why was the motorcycle man chasing us, why did he chase us mummy, what did we do to him?” As I was running, out of breath, I could only repeat, “Don’t worry sweetie, I’m with you, please be quiet now, I’ll explain everything once we cross the river…”
My husband and I had one pack each and our four-year-old son with us. But the boy was unable to run any longer. As for me, my knees were shaking, I couldn’t feel my lower half. “I can’t run anymore,” I told my husband. Our companion from the other family was also weak. She and her husband were also each carrying a bag, as well as a baby. They kept telling us to run, please don’t stop, and finally my husband also took the pack from me and our son onto his back…two packs and our son on his shoulders, he set off running. Us women, on the other hand, could barely carry ourselves. We were breathless. My heart was beating inside my mouth. But everyone was fighting to the last drop of their strength, so to speak. When we talk about it now, my husband also wonders at how he could have run like that…
Seeing us in that situation, the guides also left the fields and resumed showing us the way. But they were also very shaken. Finally we were on the river’s edge…but it still felt like our hearts would fly right our of our chests…I seemed to have lost all sense of myself, my eyes drifting blankly all around me, all I could do was tell my little one, “Everything is going to be all right, sweetheart.”
We were at the river’s edge, but the guides who were supposed to be helping us had vanished again and the trouble was that they had the boat. Then our companion started yelling, “Come out wherever you are, we’re here waiting!” and searching for the guides. Meanwhile my husband was making sure we had our life vests no matter what, telling us to put them on quick. Both myself and our female companion were shaking so hard that we couldn’t put the vests on the children. My husband helped right away, and shortly my husband’s friend reappeared along with the guides. We were so relieved, our hopes replenished. They set the boat down by the river, starting to inflate it.
The riverbank was a swamp. It was so slippery that it was impossible to walk straight. I can’t even remember how many times we fell and got back up. Just then there was a loud cracking sound. As we were trying to figure it out, the guides tossed the half-inflated boat into the river, jumped into it, and took off. We froze in place in the spot we’d struggled to through the mud, thinking we would be helped onto the boat. Our husbands were shouting, “come this way, this way, we’re waiting…”
I took my son’s hand and tried to move along the edge, but it was impossible. My son was wearing blue trainers, one of which suddenly stuck in the mud. Meanwhile the cracking sounds were getting louder. I kept telling my son to please be quiet. Struggling to free himself, he said something I’d never forget: “Mummy, I only want to ask one question, I won’t ask you anything else…” At that moment, his face was pale and his lips trembling as he continued, “ARE THESE GUN SHOTS?”
The question sank into my heart like a knife. "What are we doing, by God," asked my inner voice, "what are we putting this child through?" But it wasn’t really us. Those inflicting this suffering on us and must answer for it, even though they would deny it, were the tyrant and his applauding supporters!
I pulled myself together, put a smile on my face and answered, “No, my love, of course not, those are fireworks, don’t worry…”
The guides had made off with the boat, but we still had our sights on them as we followed them down the river. Our companion yelled, “come this way and get us too, hurry!” For a while we lost sight of them. This is it, I thought. It seemed impossible now that we would make it across the river. How were we supposed to, without the boat? Our hearts were pounding so hard. I began praying inwardly, “My God, please let us get through this without any one of us getting hurt, I don’t even care about getting caught, just get us out of here unhurt…” We had been running without pause and the stress and apprehension had been relentless. I wasn’t just exhausted physically, but also from all the emotions. I was giving up.
But my husband and his friend didn’t want to. They continued to struggle. They tried to get to the guides even though it was impossible to walk on the riverbank. Then the guides returned to get us, but the boats weren’t fully inflated as they attempted to get us on. Although we were racing against time, we refused, demanding that they inflate the boat completely. Meanwhile we were ready with our life vests on. As for me, I was transfixed, clutching a pack, my son’s muddy shoe, and my husband’s cardigan. I came to my senses when our companion shouted at me to get in the boat. They told me later that I held up the belongings, asking, “What am I supposed to do with these?” “Put them down, sister, we have no time, just get in the boat…”
Finally we were in the boat, but the sounds never stopped. “What if those are gunshots, what if they’re heading to the riverbank, what if they see us on the river and start shooting?” There were a million questions on my mind. But my husband was saying, “All right, it’s all over now, we’ve made it, we’re free, calm down”. I didn’t want to believe this at all, I thought he was just saying it…
Oh, Meriç! If you only knew how many you hurt, how many you estranged… Just then it struck me once more what a dangerous journey we’d undertaken, because there were tree roots in the river and they were scraping against the underside of the boat. Since it was daytime, they were visible to us and we were trying to push them aside with our hands. If it had been nighttime…we had been furious at the guide for exposing us in the fields in broad daylight, but there seemed to be an upside to that after all…
We finally made it across. As we disembarked, the husbands must have been sure that we were finally safe, because they handed the motorcyclist’s phone to the guides. “You can have it,” they said, “we don’t want anything of belonging to him.”
Oh freedom, oh liberty! Once across, everyone began embracing each other out of elation. I, on the other hand, kept staring at my husband and asking, “Is it really over, are we really free now?” Yes, we were free now. I was no longer in my homeland where we’d been given no right to exist or breathe, yet now I could smell freedom, and it burned my lungs and made my eyes water. Once on this soil we were no longer the ‘Other’.
I looked up at the sky, the gift bestowed to us by Allah, and said, “You wouldn’t let us breathe on that land, and here were are, breathing.” I thought of the Koran verse, “The angels will respond, ‘Was Allah's earth not spacious enough for you to emigrate?’” (Surah An-Nisa - 98). It was, Allah, it was spacious enough…but it were the pitiful creatures who forgot they were merely the earth’s custodians and imagined themselves to be its owners, that made it a place of torment… What a tough trial this was…
I looked at my son, he was also calmer, but he said, “I can’t walk mummy, the rocks are hurting my feet, why did you leave my shoes, why didn’t you take them with us?” I recalled then that I’d had to leave my little one’s shoes on the riverbank so he was wearing only socks, and he would have to walk the rest of the way in stocking feet…I promised him, “I’ll get you the very best ones, sweetheart, blue ones even, the loveliest colour,” but couldn’t calm him. He was covered in mud, we’d fallen down who knows how many times. He’d had to trudge at length through all that sludge in socks. His father quickly picked him up, “I’ll carry you, my sweet son, don’t you worry,” he said. And so we walked quite a while, with him alternately on his father’s and our emigre companion’s shoulders.
After a while it occurred to me that my son had relieved himself in his nappy when in the car on our way from Edirne and that he’d worn it throughout all that had happened because I hadn’t had time to change him. He was so scared and anxious, at any rate, maybe he wasn’t even aware…we stopped somewhere on the road and I quickly changed him, gave him the lollipop I’d been saving for after the crossing and told him, “Thank you dearest, you’ve been very brave today, our adventure is over and we’re free of anyone who can harm us, including the motorbike man. You’re our hero!” And I added, with words coming from the very bottom of my heart, “BELIEVE ME, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE JUST WONDERFUL!”
And we were free, we were happy, full of hope as though our broken wings had been regenerated. We turned ourselves in to the Greek police, who held us briefly before taking us to a police station to process us. We were held at the entrance for some procedure or other, the physical conditions of the place were far from ideal. Our clothes and shoes were in a terrible state…as we waited, my eyes fell upon a woman whom I warmed to immediately. She had obviously fled from persecution, as we had. They had arrived and begun to be processed before us. Later they put us in custody next to them. We hadn’t slept a wink and had been through an adventure that weighed on us like a brutal beating. What we were about to hear, however, would make us ashamed of our troubles…
Once in custody, we all started chatting, but the woman I saw waiting at the entrance was somewhat quiet. Then my husband remembered: “Brother, we got some news last night just before setting off but couldn’t get the full details — was it that a boat sank? Did you hear about it?” What we heard then hurt us so deeply…the rumour had been true and our sister who was sitting there before me in shock was one of the survivors on that boat. The wife and three children of a man who had been with that group were missing…he was also there…
"How," I said, "how could such a thing happen? My God, what pain this is, how can a person’s heart bear such a thing," I sobbed. It wasn’t just me who was sobbing, but everyone. The ground, the sky, the mountains, rocks and the soil sobbed and wept for shame. Three tiny bodies, along with their mother, had been taken captive by the raging waves in the pitch-black night…
And what of the father? His wails shook the walls of the holding cell…he wailed, we wailed with him… "Allah," we cried, "please give his heart relief, give him strength to endure"…we saw in the harshest of ways how the enormous globe called the world can become a pinhole and crush a man. Yes, that fine-faced brother’s heart had been crushed, all our hearts were crushed. We knew then the meaning of the term “fire in the heart”…
So that was the incident that my husband had kept from me that night. Perhaps, if we’d known the full extent of it, we wouldn’t have agreed to set out. The waters we had crossed in the small hours of the morning had claimed a mother and her three angels that very night. And many more, known and unknown to us…
Oh, Meriç…who can know when setting out whether they’ll be the ones you let pass or bury in your bosom? As for you, Meriç, do you know of the pain of losing a child? Do you know of the pain of losing a loved one? Tell me, did you feel the agony of those screams… Oh, Meriç… If only you had a tongue to speak, to tell what you saw, to cry out the tiny bodies you hold hidden in your chest…
Or are you silent too, have you lost hope for this insensate mass? Perhaps that’s for the best — to be silent and “WAIT FOR THE TESTIMONY YOU’LL BEAR IN THE BEYOND…”