Bearing the scars of war, a young Syrian refugee escapes to Europe

Bearing the scars of an attack on his hometown, Mohammed, 18, is one of thousands of refugees from Syria's civil war who have arrived on the shores of Europe. He is waiting on the Greek island of Lesbos for paperwork that will allow him to travel further into Europe, where he hopes to attend university. Photo: Tyler Jump/IRC

Standing under Greece’s baking sun in a sea of makeshift refugee tents, one of my International Rescue Committee emergency team colleagues asked a young man named Mohammed* why he left Syria.

In answer, the 18-year-old pulled out his cell phone and showed it to her. “Look at this,” she said, pulling me over to join them as they watched a harrowing video playing on the phone.

“That’s me,” Mohammed said, pointing to a figure sprawled across a hospital hallway, his back barely propped up against the wall. Men, young and old, run frantically across the frame bearing dark red wounds and bounding over smeared pools of blood on the white tiled floor.

The video shows the aftermath of an attack on Mohammed’s hometown, Idlib, a city where air raids are commonplace and deaths are tallied daily. Mohammed’s war wounds are a testament to the scale of suffering endured by millions of people trapped inside Syria’s brutal conflict.

More than 4 million Syrians have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. But the burden on these countries is immense, and refugees who are struggling to make ends meet don’t often see their futures there. They have bigger dreams, to move on and start again in a country with true peace and prosperity as the reward of hard work and determination.

Nearly 100,000 refugees from countries wracked by conflict, violence and poverty have fled to Greece through Turkey since January, with two thirds arriving on the island of Lesbos, an idyllic tourist spot for Europeans.

The number of refugees making the risky 6-mile sea journey to the Greek island has surged in the last seven months to some 40,000. With more families arriving every day, it is estimated that another 200,000 refugees could be here before the end of the year.

A risk worth taking

“There is no life in Syria,” Mohammed told us, sitting next to a crowd of other refugees he’s traveling with. “There is no water, no power. People are killed every day. We want to go to a life in another country.”

Despite the constant rumbling of bombs, Mohammed wanted to wait until he finished high school before leaving Syria. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to step into a classroom again.

“It’s not safe to go to university in Syria,” he told me, “The police would take or kill me. They send students to jail for months or years.”

That fear, and his resolute determination to build a prosperous life, has set Mohammed on to find refuge in Europe, aware of the dangerous path ahead.

Mohammed and his cousins hiked through Syria’s steep mountains for days in order to cross into Turkey, dodging bullets as they edged closer to the border. After twenty days in Turkey, they met a smuggler and paid more than $1,000 each to board an overcrowded dinghy headed for Europe.

“We were very afraid,” Mohammed said, recalling in particular his fear for the children among them who couldn’t swim. After landing safely ashore on Greek soil, the group began the arduous process to enter Europe.

Mohammed and the other refugees had to walk 40 miles to register with the local police in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. At the time, there were no buses available to carry them. They were asked to wait in the crowded Kara Tepe transit camp just outside Mytilene, for papers to allow them to continue their journey to mainland Greece and other countries to the north. Many refugees spend days waiting. 

The camp has housed as many as 2,500 refugees a day, but was originally built for only 500. It has no working toilets and is flooded with filthy water and trash. The IRC is working to improve living conditions by providing clean water and constructing showers. To make their wait in Kara Tepe a little more bearable, Mohammed and his group decided to purchase tents with the little money they had.

“We just want to go, we don’t want to stay like this,” said Mohammed, who hopes to continue his studies at a university in Germany. It’s a sentiment I hear echoed by every refugee I talk to. Everyone here in Kara Tepe knows the journey they have in front of them will be long — but anything is better than the misery they’ve left behind.