I am Fateme, 13 years old from Afghanistan. My story begins in Kunduz, a city in Afghanistan. We had a lot of problems there. Women in my country are denied many basic rights such as the right to study or work. Women often suffer indignity and abuse. It is customary for girls to get married at the age of 15 or 16, and they are forced to have their children very young. Boys are not much better off because only the wealthy can afford to go to school. The rest have to take up arms and go to war. It is well known that the armed groups are some of our most dangerous enemies. If they like a girl, they abduct her or take her by force from her family.
The wars in Afghanistan started many decades ago. They are both external and internal, and they have forced many people to emigrate. For the same reason, we too left our country to go to Europe. We first went from our city to Kabul and then to Pakistan via Nimroz. The border with Pakistan was very dangerous; they held us hostage in a warehouse without food and water for thirteen days until we paid them money. We did not even have the right to go to the toilet. When we paid them and they let us go, we went to the border with Iran.
The border guards were firing in the air for a whole hour and we were all lying down until the shooting stopped. We then walked for hours in a dark forest until we reached a river. We crossed it and after more hours of endless walking, we reached Iran. To begin with, we stayed in a town there. The Iranians did not treat us well. We left that town and went to the capital in order to head to the border with Turkey. To reach the Iranian border, we passed through the city of Gazvin. We managed to evade a police check because our driver hid us in a safe place until darkness fell and then he left us in the city of Oroomiyeh near the Turkish border. We crossed the mountains of Makou on foot. They were dangerous and covered in snow, and we saw corpses that had been frozen from the cold. Those images were appalling and terrifying. After fourteen hours of walking, we arrived at the border and from there we were transported by car to a place where we had to stay until we left Turkey. Apart from us, there were others, families, young girls, children. I asked a girl why they were being kept there. She told me they had not paid to continue the journey which is why they were being kept for months in those hard and unpleasant conditions. We then continued our journey to Ankara where we stayed for 15 days. From there, we went to Smyrna where the smugglers put us in a big inflatable boat along with 70 other people. The sea had high waves and it looked very frightening in the night. We did not manage to get to Greece because the Turkish Police caught us and turned us back. We tried another 4 times. In the middle of the sea, everyone was asking for God’s help to cross safely and I was always worried about my family and my two little brothers who were very afraid.
Finally, we reached Samos where we would get the papers that would allow us to travel legally to Europe. We spent fifteen days there in a closed camp for refugees. For the Syrians, the process was easier and they had more support. We did not manage to arrive at the open borders in time, before entry was forbidden to Afghans. I do not know why there is a difference between Afghans, Syrians and Arabs, since we have been at war for years, while in Syria the war only began four years ago. Many traveled illegally to the rest of Europe, but we have been living in the accommodation centre of Elliniko for a year and four months now. I hope to see my brothers in Lebanon one day and be reunited with my entire family.
Finally, thank you for taking the time to read the story of a traveler.
*This article has been published in issue #2 of “Migratory Birds” newspaper, which was released as an annex with “Efimerida ton Syntakton” newspaper (Newspaper of the Editors) on July 22nd – 23rd 2017.
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