Ayman’s Journey from Syria
Sometimes what we have to share is our story.
A story behind the numbers; from Syria to Greece, this is Ayman’s journey in his own words.
WARNING: Sensitive Content
PART 1/4
THE LAND WHERE THE WALLS HAVE EARS
I grew up in Damascus in a middle class family, we had a normal life: I have a younger brother and a little sister, my mother was a housewife and my father worked as a clothing designer. The political situation in Syria was never perfect but we managed to live relatively carefree, and within my family we were happy.
I remember growing up that we could never speak freely about politics or about our leader; the regime doesn’t care about the prosperity of its people, it is only concerned with more power and control for the Assads and their allies. In Syria we say the walls have ears: everyone we knew was against the regime but everyone was too afraid to even talk about it. For example if you would say something bad about Assad in school you knew your whole family would be in trouble. So as kids we just knew we had to keep our mouths shut.
When we first saw the Arab Spring awaken in Egypt, it sparked something inside of us, we knew there was something wrong with our country too. The revolution spread to Tunisia and Libya, and we knew it was time to stand up against the Assad regime. The town of Dara’a, close to the Jordanian border, was ruled by Assad’s cousin Najib. One of the kids in the local high school graffitied ‘It’s your turn Doctor’ on the wall, referring to Assad as a former ophthalmologist. The locals refused to clean it and so the regime started arresting schoolboys as young as 10 at random for this act of defiance. They were tortured for a month and had their fingernails pulled out. For many Syrians this was the moment to join the uprising, and the protests from Dara’a spread all across Syria, but it was met with a deadly response by the Syrian army.
I was 15 years old when the war broke out.
We thought that after a month of protests we would win and that we would finally get a new government, we all felt so hopeful for a new beginning. But Syria got military support from outside: from Iran, from Russia and heavy weaponry from its allies, and so our revolution didn’t stand a chance.
We lived in a place called Yarmouk Camp inside Damascus, which was a densely populated area with Palestinians and Syrians living together. At the beginning of 2012 our area came under siege and for the next year I lived in a war zone. I could no longer go to school and finish my studies. We had to move from one abandoned apartment to the next around the city, trying to flee the cluster bombs and snipers. Sometimes we would hide in gardens or parks to try and stay safe. It was so hard on my mom and my little brother and sister.
My father and I would spend our days looking for food for the family, leaves or fruit grown on trees, but we were very close to starvation as the area was cut off from all supplies. We would try to break into abandoned buildings to see what people had left behind that we could eat or use. It was like I was in an apocalyptic movie, except there were no zombies, just our own government that terrorised us everywhere we tried to hide. After two months my family decided to try and flee to a safer area through one of the humanitarian corridors that was set up by the UN. I was actually so happy when they left because I knew they were going to someplace safer so I didn’t have to feel so worried about them all the time. Even though I knew I might never see them again, I was at peace to think that they were able to get far away from all the suffering we had endured.
At 17 I had to stay behind by myself because I would never make it past the check point. I would be made to join the Assad army if I tried.
I stayed behind with some cousins and friends and we joined a group of about 200 men that were defending the area. We organised between ourselves that some people would search for food and then there were those with guns who tried to prevent the army from entering our area. We contacted each other through phones to try to protect and secure our area. Some of the men were part of the Free Syrian Army, they were the ones with the weapons, but mostly we were just ordinary people who got stuck in the siege and were trying to survive. Some of the older men couldn’t bear the lack of food. They gave up and they died from malnutrition.
About once a month I would be able to connect and speak with my family to tell them I was okay. I had a camera and filmed everything that happened to us and I vowed to share with the world what was happening here once I would be able to leave.
Art by Ayman | Follow him on Instagram and Facebook at world.a.art
PART 2/4
TAKEN THROUGH THE GATES OF HELL
In the summer of 2013, on the second day of Ramadan, our luck abandoned us. While we were sleeping, the Iranian army broke into our area in full force and we had to surrender ourselves to them. They were cruel and brutal.
They made us kneel and, one by one, they blindfolded us, tied our hands behind our back and then started beating us. They took away my camera with all the footage on it. We were all injured and bleeding but they rounded us up and forced us into their trucks. We were taken to a grand house with gardens that used to be a filming location before the war, but the army had taken it over and turned it into a detention centre. We couldn’t see anything through the blindfolds, but we heard the soldiers speaking Farsi with each other. We were kept here for a month. I was in a room with 15 other people and they would abuse us every day. They would kick us, beat us, slap us and whip us. But at least they didn’t touch the women among the group. Our food portions were small but I suppose we were used to that anyway from being under siege.
After a month we were transferred to an official Syrian government prison and when I arrived I knew I was being taken through the gates of Hell. They took us into the basement and forced us into the dungeons. I was separated from my cousins who were arrested alongside me and I had no idea what happened to them.
We were four people to a cell that was so tiny that you couldn’t stand or lie down so we had to sleep sitting up. It smelled of death and the walls were still wet with blood. I was kept almost naked in total darkness and saw no daylight. I never knew when the day started and ended, the only sense of time we had was the prayer call that we could hear from the mosque five times a day. The prayer call that had always been a call to connect to my faith became the dreaded call of terror. Every time the Adhan sounded they would cover our faces, drag us out into the courtyard and begin their torturing games. Day in day out, without fail. I couldn’t see anything but I could hear the sounds of people screaming, crying or begging the soldiers to please just kill them.
Besides the ‘normal’ beatings, I endured every kind of torture they could think of. One of the most awful ones was being tied to a chair with a rope wrapped around my hands behind my back. Then they would pull the rope back until my shoulders would dislocate or my arms would break. Or they would kick me face down into the ground and slice my back and legs open, then somebody would come around and pour salt into our open wounds. Just when our cuts would start to heal they would do it again.
The worst torture was listening to the girls getting raped by the guards because they would be begging for help and we couldn’t do anything to help them. I would try to block out the sounds and think of something else but it was so dark and the walls so thin that the screams would penetrate right through my soul.
The only food we received was mouldy and rotting, the small amount of water they gave us was cloudy and infested, sometimes we would eat bugs or mice if we could find them. There was one day that I will never forgot because it was the day I convinced myself would be my last. A major from the Assad army came to visit our prison. A few days' before he had lost his arm in a car explosion and he took his full anger and hate out on us. He was so violent that even the soldiers were afraid of him. I didn’t really know what exactly was happening because of course I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the most blood curdling screams and beatings just outside my cell. After 10 minutes the voices ceased and I thought I would be next and that there is no power in the world that could save me now. Somehow I was spared from his torture, and what happened to his victims I will never know.
To try and survive we would make jokes about everything. When we’d hear the Adhan we would tell each other that our party is about to start. Or one day after a cellmate was tortured so badly and he said he would die tomorrow, I would say: ‘No, you’re not going to die tomorrow. Maybe the day after, but definitely not tomorrow’. Even in the darkest of moments we tried to make light of the situation. We were able to get through by controlling our own thoughts, and the humour was how we gave hope to each other.
We would sometimes daydream about getting out of the prison, though we were all certain that this would never actually happen and that we were going to die in there. I was a 17 year old boy and I had never imagined in my life that something like that would happen to me.
Somehow I managed to stay alive. I tried to keep my mind blank. I tried not to think about my family or the future or the past. I just tried to get through the moments as I lived them.
I lived like that for seven months.
One morning we woke up and the guards rounded us up as usual. But, for some reason, they put us onto trucks and they started driving out of the city. We were still blindfolded so we had no idea where we were going, but we were almost certain that they would take us somewhere and bury us alive. I thought that at last my final moments had come.
Art by Ayman | Follow him on Instagram and Facebook at world.a.art
PART 3/4
MY MOTHER’S HANDS
I can’t remember how many we were, maybe 50 people or so, but the trucks stopped and they let us out into the middle of nowhere. They untied us and took off our blindfolds. We hadn’t seen daylight in seven months and it was so hard to see anything. But it was also the very first time I saw the faces of my fellow prisoners. I had only known their voices, their stories and cries up until that point. All of us were full of healed and unhealed scars, many of us were bleeding, wounded and weak. But I could finally feel the sun on my skin and breathe fresh air into my lungs. The soldiers gave us one phone and then they just drove off. I later found out that Bashar Al-Assad had won the rigged election earlier that month by a landslide and was ‘re-elected’. He issued a general pardon to some of the prisoners and so it came that we were released.
One guy knew someone with a big bus so he called them and this big bus came to pick us up to drive us back into the city. We got off the bus and everybody started finding a way home.
I had nothing except for some torn clothes. I was almost naked and I had to ask a random man in the street for some coins so I could call my family from a payphone. I could hear my own heartbeat whilst the phone was ringing. My mother, my sweet mother who I missed so much, who I knew would have suffered so much knowing I was in prison. Her soft hands, her perfume that I imagined whilst I was in prison.
When she picked up the phone and said ‘hello’ I couldn’t say anything back. All the emotions I had suppressed all these months came pouring out and I could only cry. When I could speak again I was scared of the answer, but I asked her if everyone is okay. Thank God they were all still alive, and they were all ok.
I stayed where I was and my father and little brother came to pick me up with the car, they drove for five hours from their new home to get me. Seeing my family again felt like the purest happiness. I showered for the first time in a year, my mother cooked me some food and we all sat together as a family. I started my recovery process. We had a basement room so I stayed there because my eyes were hurting so much from seeing the daylight. At first I could hardly eat because my stomach had shrunk so much. It took two months before I was able to leave the basement, and before I could speak again. My mother stayed by my side the whole time.
It took a whole year before I even dared to go outside of the house. I was frightened by everything. If I would see the Syrian flag I would start to shake uncontrollably. Even now, so many years later, if I see people in a uniform I get scared. I could sleep no more than three hours a day and I had intense night terrors every time I slept: my body and soul were completely exhausted. I wanted to make my memories disappear.
It was very difficult for me in the beginning to hear the prayer call again. It triggered something inside me. But I started praying again, and once I left the house again I started visiting the mosque. It took me a long time to associate the call with something beautiful and good again. I tried to get over my experiences for the sake of my family because I knew how much it was hurting them to see me like that. So I tried to be brave and strong in front of them. I kept myself busy by reading and exercising. Slowly my body and mind started healing.
At first I refused to see my friends but one day some of my friends who had been living in Turkey came over to see me and they tried to persuade me to join them in Turkey. My father also agreed and wanted me to continue my studies. I started thinking about the future again. I also was worried that I might be arrested again if I ventured outside, and I knew that there was very little left for me in Syria. My friends sent me money to travel to Turkey. My uncle lived close the Turkish border so he drove me all the way to Istanbul. For my entire life I had never even left Damascus and now I was leaving Syria for good.
Back then it was much easier to cross than it is now, I basically just bribed all the soldiers on the checkpoints we went past to let us through. I stayed with my friends in the capital for a while. I enjoyed life in Turkey. Back then everyone was so welcoming and generous, there were no guns or bombs around and life just seemed to be easy going and good. I felt really happy there. I took Turkish classes and started working at a clothing company. After one year I enrolled in school for Turkish and English lessons to set myself up for the future. I brought over my little brother from Syria and we worked together, he was 15 by then and I did my best to look after him. I had several jobs, I was working for a tourist company, but I had always loved drawing and art so I also learned how to do graphic design. I was earning extra money with it on the side to try and bring my parents and my sister over to Turkey as well. I had sent over enough money and my father had applied for a passport for all three of them.
Then, in March of 2017, I received a phone call from a friend whilst I was at work. Before I even picked up the phone I knew something was wrong. My heart was beating so fast, and I could hear my friend trying to find the right words. “Who died?” I asked him. A week from then, my parents and little sister were supposed to come to Turkey. My dad and my sister had gone to sign the papers, and whilst they were out to collect their new passports, our house was bombed and my mother was alone inside. When they came back there was nothing left and the house was bombed to the ground.
My mother, my sweet mother with her soft hands who had looked after me her whole life. She was gone from me, gone from us, and I had to find a way to tell my little brother. When I told him I held him until he stopped weeping, I tried to be a big strong brother for him. But we were both so sad and we didn’t eat for days.
Back in Syria my father and my sister buried my mother without us. All I wanted to do was bring them to Turkey and keep them safe. I found a nice house in Istanbul and prepared everything for their arrival. They waited for their visas to come through so they could come. When they finally arrived I was so happy, but my mothers absence was hard to swallow. Our reunion as a family was bittersweet. I was trying to stay positive but I could see my father falling into a deep depression and I was worried that I would lose him too.
Art by Ayman | Follow him on Instagram and Facebook at world.a.art
PART 4/4
EUROPE
After the 2018 attempted military coup I felt things were changing for the worse inside Turkey. Anti-refugee sentiment gained the upper hand in politics and harsh laws and requirements were suddenly introduced. By this point there were so many refugees living inside Turkey that the people starting turning against us. I started hearing racist remarks on the street and some people would refuse to sell me things when they realised I was Syrian. We kept being evicted out of the homes we were living in because they would raise the rent to ridiculous prices. And, worst of all, the new restrictions meant I was no longer allowed to work. In the news they would speak about deporting refugees back to their own countries and everyday life became more of a struggle for us. I could feel the stability and safety I had built in Turkey crumbling. I had no other choice but to leave again. My family stayed behind and I left to find a better future.
It took many attempts for me to cross to Greece and each time the Turkish coast guards would stop us and take us back to a camp and keep us there for about a week or so before they would release us again. I remember that one of the camps we were taken to was underground, which brought back many horrible memories.
In the summer I finally managed to cross and I arrived to the island of Chios. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the camp. I had heard that Europe was a good place, but the deprivation of the camp made me feel like I was back in Syria. The smuggler had told me it’s ‘the land of God’, but the realities of the refugee camp were quite different.
I wanted to go to Germany and I couldn’t live in this horrible camp. I felt nothing, nothing at all, it was as if the world was turning around me while I stood still in the same place. After three days I had enough and I decided I would try to leave. I went to the port to try and buy a ferry ticket. You can usually only buy this ticket as a refugee once you have received your asylum decision, which can take many many years.
When I arrived it was August 2019, and my first asylum interview was set for 2022, I couldn’t bear to wait in limbo for that long. I shaved my head and my beard, put earrings in, and applied fake tattoos on my arms. I went to the port and spoke to the woman at the ticket counter and I pretended to be Spanish. She bought my story and she sold me the ticket. I snuck into the embarkation area and managed to get onto the ferry very easily just by showing my ticket, nobody stopped me and nobody asked to see my ID. I was so confident in my behaviour that nobody even thought to question me.
When I arrived to Athens I had no idea what to do or where to go. I had joined a Facebook group for expats in Greece to try and make connections, but for the first five months I lived on the streets. I thought I would be able to find a job because in Turkey you can always find a cash job even without papers. But in Greece there are all kinds of rules and you need many different kind of documents to be able to work.
I thought that Europe was the best place on earth for human rights, but I learned these human rights only come in the form of ink on paper. I stayed by myself and under the radar, it was just me and my backpack. I avoided the squats or other places where refugees stay because I was scared that the police would catch me and send me back to the islands. It was summer, so it was not too hard for me, I had endured so much in my life already that I just accepted this as part of my journey. I find it hard to trust people, so I just lived each day as it came and tried to stay in touch with my family in Turkey.
One day I made a post in the Facebook Expats group and an English lady called Wendi sent me a message. She said to me: ‘I don’t know how but I really want to help you’. She was living just north of Athens and she invited me to come stay with her whilst she would try to help me find a long term solution. I was so surprised that she would just trust me like that to stay at her house, but she said I was the same age as her son and that I reminded her of him. I stayed with them for three weeks and they were so kind, they bought me clothes, cooked for me and we shared many conversations together. In the meantime she was trying to help me find a place to stay. She really was an angel and I still keep in touch with her and visit them sometimes.
She got in touch with Rando who organises housing for refugees here in Athens. I moved into the flat shortly after. There are 14 guys here in the flat from Syria, Iraq and Palestine. This place is very social, we take turns in the cleaning and sometimes we cook for each other.
However, I have entered the new phase of torture in my life which is waiting on the long long asylum process in Greece. Rando is helping me to enter the fast track system in Greece which is especially for Syrians. My aunt back in Syria is trying to secure a passport for me to send over so that I can finally get my papers in order. It’s costing a lot of money and a lot of time but I’ve been so lucky that there are many people who are helping me with my case. Hopefully I will finally get my papers in a few months time. I fill my days by working on my English and on my artwork. Rando is challenging me to write essays and to keep improving my language. His friend Nuil teaches us English at the flat and he has helped me to practice, he’s an amazing and supportive person. I love languages, and I’m trying to pick up Spanish and Japanese as well. I’m also trying to learn Greek though something inside me is finding it hard to commit to it because my future here is still so uncertain until I definitely get my papers. But I love the Greeks and I have met so many amazing people here. Total strangers who have helped me out all along. Like Michael, an Egyptian man living in Greece who bought me a laptop so I can continue to do my artwork and graphic design, he also gave me money when I had absolutely nothing, he did all that after only speaking to me once. And also Anastasia, a Greek/English journalist who trusted me to stay in her flat while she was out of the country, even though we only met briefly in a coffee shop. Whilst she was away her friends looked after me and they were so generous, and they wanted to know everything about me. One thing that has helped me a lot has been to talk about my story with volunteers and friends that I met here. Like the Greek/English artist Angela, who has supported and guided me mentally to not give up and keep going. Or my amazing lawyer Vasiliki who has done everything in her power to help me with my asylum claim, she is very knowledgeable in the Greek law, and I can literally call upon her day and night for anything. There have been many more people along the way who have supported me, people who have donated to Rando so we can get my passport organised: there was even one lady who donated a really large sum but wanted to remain anonymous. All these people have made a huge and positive impact on my life in many different ways. They really care about what I went through, and their compassion gives me a lot of strength to keep going despite all the difficulties.
My family in Turkey are doing okay, though Covid has made things a lot worse because there is no work. But my father remarried a Syrian-Turkish lady, and they are happy together. My brother is working and my sister is studying with a small job on the side. I try to send them money whenever I can: we all help each other and somehow we try to make it work. As soon as I get my papers the first thing I will do is visit them and hold them again.
What’s hard is that I still don’t know what happened to my cousins or the other men I was arrested alongside. And thinking about my mother still gives me so much pain. My body is still covered in scars, but I am so used to my story now, they are just bad memories that do stay with me but, at some point, you just have to move on. I can even talk about the worst moments of my life: the things that have happened to me I have accepted them, and they are a part of the person I’ve become. I have hope, my art, an enormous endurance and there will be many more things, both good and bad, awaiting me in the future.
I’m still here. Still alive. And I wait for better times to come.
Art by Ayman | Follow him on Instagram and Facebook at world.a.art
This is Ayman’s journey to May 2021.
He is still only 26 years’ old.
To be continued.
you’ve read. Now act.
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