The Yellow Brick Road to Hell
The former German chancellor Angela Merkel is known for her unshakeable enthusiasm related to the immigration question. Under the slogan “we can do this” she opened the door to people who couldn’t properly adjust to the new surroundings because in certain elements their cultural mindset was fundamentally incompactible with European values and principles. This was further exacerbated when I met a former Bosnian volonteer who took part in several initiatives related to the issue. Merkel’s heart may have been in the right place but her brain was all over the it.
Judging by the chaotic response of authorities to the endless influx of new immigrants who couldn’t speak the language or mistook social help for paychecks, there was little chance for the whole thing to succeed. What started the ball seriously rolling was a photo of Alan Kurdi, a 2-year old Syrian whose dead body was found on the shore near Bodrum in Turkey. He turned into a symbol of the hosts’ hostility that slammed their doors in the face of Syrians who turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard and its turquoise sea into a tearful, screaming mess. They were stuck in a trap: no way back, and what lay ahead must have felt like tap dancing in a minefield.
As if the heartbreaking tragedy wasn’t enough already, ISIL warned their immigrants they would be stigmatised as apostates whose souls were destined for hell after death. So either way, they were doomed and it’s incredible authorities with that kind of rulebook believe anyone would want to stay. Like a company with the world’s worst PR department, they don’t even try to show a more likeable face which leads you to believe they don’t have it in the first place. Now that they’re shutting down cosmetic parlors for women, the line they wouldn’t dare to cross seems to be more and more obsolete and that’s frightening. Unlike Ukrainian resources, we can do without Syrian children, which makes that brick easier to swallow.
Artists deal with the whole story in their own way too, drawing inspiration from it for powerful statements that make us question our own thoughts. I’d question the need for using of Alan Kurdi’s destiny in artistic expression. Ai Weiwei’s performance where he mimics the boy’s body looks more like a stranded whale than a comment on the cruelty children like him are subjected to. This tasteless hommage is beyond any reasonable point even if someone of Weiwei’s reputation stands behind it. In the German city of Frankfurt, a gigantic mural has been dedicated to Kurdi too, inspired by the famous photo. But above the gray river, with a dark wall behind, it seems to be out of place. Almost as his bretheren who were lucky to survive.
The problem at hand can’t be easily solved due to the endless hurdles put in the way of those in charge of the process. Sometimes the locals are either understaffed or lacking in proper infrastructure and sufficient resources. It drains the last drop of your humanitarian enthusiasm as it becomes too much to handle. The strain slowly leads to a burnout and that’s the moment when thugs decide to use vulnerable immigrants for their own goals, putting all the blame for daily difficulties into their unassuming hands.
There’s hay in every needlestack, so it’s inevitable to find those who clawed their way through mud, sand and water to get to Europe. They think it’s a giant charity where all of their woes will be solved by the freebies of the social welfare system. And they won’t shy away from violence to protect what they think they’re entitled to. In Calais, there was the notorious Jungle, an encampment filled to the brim with migrants. The place operated from January 2015 to October 2016, and it functioned almost as a parallel universe that included a church, a makeshift library, stores, a school and one of the restaurants was even praised by food critics.
At its peak, the population was over 8000 inhabitants after which the encampment was gradually closed and demolished in 2016. The people were relocated and some remain in the vicinity of Calais. Numerous international NGOs, celebrities and organisations like Human Rights Watch supported the efforts to create a functional environment that would include, aside from food, also arts and culture by the likes of Tom Stoppard, Jude Law, Lily Allen etc. Banksy created a mural depicting Steve Jobs called The Son of a Syrian Immigrant, alluding to the roots of Steve’s father in the city of Homs. The fact was never too emphasized.
I felt compelled to visit the Jungle myself. The resemblance to William Goulding’s island commune in The Lord of the Flies was remarkable: a self-sustainable place with its own internal logic and hierarchy, an almost hermetically sealed bubble on the safe distance from the local population. But eventually the French government decided to put an end to this story that was slowly growing into an impressive movement many people rooted for. Sometimes the inhabitants were treated like inmates by people who felt threatened by their presence so close to the community that wasn’t prepare to deal with so much in such a short period of time.
One thing is for sure: they went through hell to get to where they are without any guarantee they’d make it to Europe alive. No matter how we feel, we owe them the benefit of the doubt and a handshake. A helpless child can’t do any harm. Especially people who experienced it too, like myself. In the 1990s, we didn’t move out because our parents wanted to pursue a career somewhere else. We fled. Running away from what was about to crush our homes into dust, when we returned it was a new world we were unfamiliar with. Because our own was gone, buried in the ashes of streets where we used to play as children. Alan Kurdi must have had a playground as well, before it was all pulled underneath his feet.
I remember staying at a hotel in Berlin when the fire alarm turned on in the middle of the night. I only managed to grab my passport and cellphone before running downstairs to the reception. The staircase was full of people in their pajamas. Among them, my colleague was standing with her suitcase. How she managed to pull it off is beyond me. Maybe she learned it because she had to. The story of the Jungle and the drowned migrants shows two sides of this coin. We’re capable of both compassion and ignorance. The difference lies in which one of these two will prevail. Only those whose heart is in the right place will make the right choice.
In order for all of this to succeed, those who are working on the solution need to do their homework properly. Housing makes no sense if people don’t have an income, otherwise you’re throwing money into a pit just for the sake of paperwork. It’s a mistake that was frequent in 1990s Bosnia. The refugees returned, but there was nothing to return to apart from a roof over your head. This only perpetuates the problem without a strategic long-term plan. This is why bureaucrats can’t be trusted with this. Excel sheets are not enough and we know it. Crying over spilled blood won’t bring Alan back to life. But let it be the first step on the way to a happy ending. That’s the least he deserves: to be the last one to fall. I know it’s not true, but this time I need it to be. Something’s got to give.
