Decisions

Yesterday, long after the 20,000-strong march through Thessaloniki had ended, and chants were replaced by car horns, and the tear gas had dissolved over the sea, and the rock I warmed in my pocket had long since taken flight, I found myself sitting at the train station. No buying tickets to Skopje: the railway employees were on strike. (Greek newspapers put strike participation around 90%. Pretty impressive.)

As I sat, I saw a Greek taxi driver trying to understand a man who was pleading for help in Arabic. Two young kids approached me, greeting me with "salaam aleikum". They were Afghanis. Gesturing for my phone, they said "Missed call!" The smallest of the two had a fresh pink scar under his right eye, but seemed to be always smiling.

As they made their missed call (93 country code IS Afghanistan, right?), the Syrian man approaches me and asks if I speak Arabic. Imagine my surprise when he showers me with kisses when I understand him. The story: they have all - there are more immigrants inside the station - been let of out jail yesterday night after spending over a month in prison. When they were arrested at the Turkish border, the police, claiming they were 'mafiosos', confiscated all their money, and took the batteries out of their cell phones. They released them at the Thessaloniki train station. I thought about Amadeu Casellas, the Spanish anarchist jailed for robbing banks to fund workers' struggles, who was released around the same time.

There were also some Algerians and Syrians who later came up to me. We talked about Palestine. I remembered 14-year old Ehab who lays in a coma after the Israelis shot him in the head in An-Nabi Salih. They had traveled far, only to be stuck in the 'doorway to Europe' and they hated Greece.

The story quickly dissolved into attempts to get 'a brother' to send money from Germany via Western Union through my name. Phone calls. Missed calls. Food. Taking pictures. I talked to young Sarah on the other line who was supposed to be the niece of the Syrian man, but didn't know him and was terrified that he was yelling at her to get her father. I tried to talk to her. "Spricken Deutsch?" I wasn't sure why I asked that, because I don't speak any German myself. But she responded in Arabic, "my father isn't home." The Syrian was getting hysterical and I was starting to get annoyed with him. What else COULD he be? What else could I do?

The Greek taxi driver came up to me after awhile and asked why I was doing all of this. I replied that wherever I had been, people had helped me, so why shouldn't I help them? He told me about how he once helped some Afghan immigrants and they jumped out of his car without paying, after he had driven them down from Thessaloniki. Yes, I said, anything can happen.

I said goodnight to Europe's newest economic and political refugees, and promised to return this morning to see if we would have any success with Western Union. I asked a Palestinian kid who had a few euros on him if he would leave to Athens, where he had a contact. He said that he would wait until everyone was ok. Solidarity?

In the morning, the Afghans were gone. Their missed call to Afghanistan had called back with contacts for Athens. The Athens friend had contacted and had somehow helped them. I was happy. At least one good story. A young Algerian was ecstatic that the card I bought him allowed him to talk to his sick mother. The Palestinian was still there.

And the Syrian was passing between bouts of depression and anger. He frustration at times turned on me when I couldn't understand everything he was saying. We walked to Western Union, followed by a North African - presumably Algerian - who claimed to be Syrian. Algeria asked me:

"Are you Muslim?"

I winced at the question, because I hated getting it, but I knew how to respond, and everyone who had ever asked me didn't mind my reply.

"No."

His smile faded. "Fi muskila?" I asked if there was a problem.

"Yes. Fi mushkila."

I looked away as the Syrian man yelled at him. His defense of me didn't prevent me from wanting to smash the Algerian. The Algerian quietly said he was joking and patted me on the back, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want religion and their anger at the West to be played out on me, but could I help it? Could he help zealously being proud of the last thing that gave him a shred of dignity over the sleepless nights, the jail, the hunger and the dirt? The Palestinian had asked me if lying to an Orthodox priest - they told him that they were Christian Arabs in order for him to give them food - was bad. I had told them that he may have given it even if he knew they were Muslim. He disagreed. Inside, I questioned myself: had the priest known, would he have helped?

The Algerian played his hand at asking for cigarettes. I refused. I could imagine the anti-immigrant debaters laughing at me. You sucker, they are taking advantage of you! They are all the same!

I wanted to run, to leave them and never come back. To not care about what happened with them. There were thousands of people rotting all over the world, trying to survive, why the hell should I take care of these people? I still don't know. Maybe another day I would have seen them in the train station and not paid attention. Maybe I would be in a rush. Maybe I would be that person walking with his girlfriend, too in love to see the misery of the world. Maybe I would be that traveler in two days passing by them with my bags on my way to Skopje, passport in hand, ready to have a new adventure.

In about 40 minutes, I leave to go back and find out if we can do the Western Union deal again. I'm nervous. What else can I feel?

http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org