A NEW HORIZON
A young man trapped on the road to war, 21-year-old Ali dreamt of being a Syrian Jamie Oliver. But the journey to safety has changed how he sees the future.
PHOTOS/VIDEOS Kate Geraghty
The parcel
He took a small book of verse by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, his mother’s ring, his glasses and a hard drive containing family photographs, copies of his handwritten recipes and songs.
It wasn’t difficult for the 21-year-old Syrian to travel light – he has been on the move since he was 17, when he quietly disappeared from his hometown of Latakia just a couple of days before the papers that would force him to join the army arrived at his door.
Ali Deeb from Latakia, Syria, on the lowerdeck of the MY Phoenix, after being rescued off a wooden boat taking on water, 20km off the Libyan coast.
But even this modest, precious parcel - tied up in plastic to protect it from the water - did not make it onto the smuggler’s boat that took him out of Libya.
He dropped it into the sea as he and hundreds of others pushed through chest-deep water on the darkest of nights to get out to the cracked wooden boat.
As women and children struggled beside him, he picked up a little girl from Damascus, held her above the waves and let his possessions wash away.
The wooden boat
Thirteen days before, Ali had made the call to one of the people smugglers making his fortune sending desperate refugees into the Mediterranean on boats.
“Come now,” the smuggler had told him, “we have a boat going tonight.”
Ali travelled to the port city of Zuwara, 100 kilometres west of Tripoli, only to find the boat was already full.
“He took us to a house and in the beginning there was 40 of us there, then every day more people would come … we stayed 12 days and finally on day 13, we went.
“They put people from Africa, Bangladesh and Pakistan downstairs, we had good luck, when we got to the boat we were allowed to stay upstairs.”
As the boat left Zuwara, dangerously overcrowded with at least 565 on board, the pilot jumped off and one of the refugees was left to captain the boat.
“It was so dangerous, at times we thought we would die.”
Why make such a journey?
Leaving his home in Latakia to avoid being forced into the military, Ali passed through Jordan - currently hosting 629,300 Syrian refugees - and then Egypt, where the military-dominated government is hostile to fleeing Syrians. In war-torn Libya, he contacted people smugglers who put him and hundreds of others onto an overcrowded and unseaworthy boat and cast them into the Mediterranean. With migration facilities in Sicily overwhelmed, their rescuers on the MY Phoenix took them to the southern port of Taranto on the Italian mainland, from which they travelled by bus to Pisa and then by rail through Milan to Germany.
“I stayed in Libya for nearly two years and in that time anyone could have killed me ... it is so lawless there, so violent, that you forget the real meaning of living or dying – you can die at any time.”
He felt similarly trapped in Syria, where his only options were to be drafted into the Syrian army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad or join the rebel Free Syrian Army, the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front or the Islamic State.
“I could not do any of it … I cannot go into any army because I cannot kill anyone,” he says quietly but emphatically.
“You have only one life, either live it well or leave it – I thought it is worth taking the chance on the boat.”
The rescue
When the old, blue boat appeared in the distance, it was gently rocking to and fro. Hundreds of worried faces looked towards the MY Phoenix rescue ship and we looked back at them dismayed at how many precious lives had been entrusted to a vessel so unseaworthy.
Ali is on the top deck, sitting with his friend and neighbour from Latakia, Ahmed, and Ahmed’s pregnant sister and her husband. Next to them is a family from Damascus.
Fear and worry is etched into their faces after a long, dark night at sea.
An inflatable races towards them and a frantic few hours later they are safely aboard the Phoenix, by now carrying way above its capacity, refugees crushed next to each other on two open decks.
It will be three days' sailing before they reach land - days in which the terror of their journey and rescue will mix with the hope and anxiety at what they will soon face. Police, immigration officials, locals, medical checks, a bewildering maze of bureaucracy, new languages: a new horizon.
Landfall in Italy
When I first saw the coast of Italy I thought I was sleeping and dreaming at the same time, and finally that dream was coming true,” Ali says.
“We had been packed into the boat like sardines and finally we were free.”
Once Ali and the other 415 refugees left the boat at the port of Taranto in southern Italy, they waited for several hours on the dock as people went through medical checks and other official processes.
They boarded a bus and eight hours later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, they pulled into the central Italian city of Pisa.
From there they travelled by train to Milan and that night they slept on the floor of the art deco Central Station.
“The police were very kind to us, they allowed us to sleep inside and just asked that we keep our eyes on the children,” Ali says. “We caught the first train to Munich the next day.”
When he called his family to tell them he’d made it to safety, “they said ‘we thought you were dead!’
“I said, ‘no, I am alive and I am whole, I have all my fingers and toes,’” he says, grinning.
Arriving in Germany
In Munich, Ali and his friends went straight to the police centre near the train station to register as refugees, but it wasn’t to be. The police took their names and sent them on their way.
“We got on the next train to Hanover but we were so tired we were almost falling asleep … nodding off and trying to keep watch at the same time,” he says.
Finally they found a police station that would register their details - they were given train tickets to Braunschweig, about 40 minutes away, and from there, they caught a bus to a sports stadium that had been converted into a reception centre.
Once someone is fingerprinted, they are registered in the country as an asylum seeker and that is where their application for asylum must be processed.
For Syrians, Germany is a preferred destination following the government’s decision to open its doors to up to 800,000 refugees this year.
And what are Ali's first impressions of Germany, I ask, as we step off a tram in downtown Braunschweig less than a week after he was rescued at sea? “Beautiful, clean, cold, and like Italy, there are many good people here.”
The future
On the outskirts of Braunschweig, along an old cobblestone road lined with trees, in a refugee centre filled with hundreds of people fleeing desperate lives, Ali is planning his future.
“I want to study to be a chef, maybe one day I can be the next Jamie Oliver,” he says, laughing. “I have been cooking in restaurants and cafes since I was young, I was a chef in Libya before I came here and I love it.”
But since the boat trip, where Ali spent much of his time on the MY Phoenix as a volunteer translator helping the Medecins Sans Frontieres team, his focus has shifted.
“I might volunteer at MSF … when I was on the boat I see it is very easy to help people … if I stay and study to be a chef I am helping only myself, maybe my family, but if I volunteer I will help a lot of families, maybe hundreds.”
For now, like tens of thousands of others, he is waiting for a visa.
No one knows for how long - when you are a refugee time stretches out before you like the sea and patience is your only friend.
