July 3, 2017 - The Syrian

The Syrian

Sometimes a chance meeting can change you.  Today I met someone that changed my opinion on an issue that I thought was closed in my mind.  I met a young Syrian refugee.  My view on the Syrian refugee crisis has done a complete 180.

Yesterday, if you had asked me, I would have told you that we should do everything in our power to shut off the flow of refugees from Syria to the West.  It is too dangerous.  Just who is crossing that border?  So let’s close our borders to them.

Today, I say that answer is not so simple.  

Mejd is a young Syrian who has been traveling in Peru and Bolivia the last few months, something five years ago he never imagined he could ever do.  He was on the boat with me on the Mamore River, a tributary of the Amazon.  When he said his name, I could see the look on his face that said I’d be another American who either hates him or is afraid of him.  If you know me, you know I am neither.

As we floated down the river, I watched his amazement as we encountered monkeys, birds, and dolphins.  He was enjoying it more than me.

After a few hours, I got the nerve to ask him to tell me his story.  Then almost immediately, I apologized, saying his story was none of my business.  He assured me that he was happy to tell me.

In 2013, he and part of his family made the decision to flee Syria.  At his age, he feared that one side or the other would force him into its army.  He told me there is no black or white with them.  Neither side is good and both are evil.  He said I might have heard differently, but both sides are an evil gray mass.  If he were to serve in either military, he would be forced to commit atrocities and kill innocent lives.  Eventually he would have died, because both sides expect their soldiers to fight to the death.

So he fled his country, managing to cross the border into Turkey, where he and his family were not accepted.  One thinks that they are all the same because they are all Muslim.  But that is not true of them any more than it is of Christian nations.  White Americans are afraid of our brown neighbors to the south, though we are both Christian.  Turks don't trust Syrians.  His family kept going, eventually crossing the Aegean with 30 other people, all terrified that they would die at sea.  They made it to Greece, but were forced across the border into Macedonia.  There they applied for refugee status.

He is a refugee in the Netherlands.  He has to work and has worked hard to make his own money.  He can study, something denied him in Syria, because there he doesn’t know the right people.  He met a Dutch girl and they fell in love.  If you see them together, you’d know they love each other.

One of Mejd’s dreams was to see the Amazon, so he worked and saved his money.  He and Lieka, his girlfriend, are traveling from place to place, working to pay room and board.  They have already been at Chuchini for three weeks.  

I don’t know what the future will hold for this young man, but today I understood what being a refugee means, and what freedom looks like.

I probably didn't do justice to his story, but I wanted to share it with you.