A cry for help after five days of 'terror'

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Last month a group of 210 Syrian refugees were rescued in the Mediterranean by the Belgian Navy. They were glad to be alive, but how do you decide what to do next on a continent you know almost nothing about? They called a 26-year-old local woman for advice.

From the deck of the Belgian warship that had rescued him from the Mediterranean, a nine-year-old refugee took his first look at Europe. Oil refineries. Ambulances. Medics in face masks and latex gloves.

And then, at the edge of the dock, Hadi saw the journalists. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and held it, shyly at first, in our direction. Three or four long lenses swung towards the boy. Emboldened, Hadi stood up, took the sign in both hands, and raised it above his head. On the paper, in red pencil, was a child's drawing of a boat.

That boat had sailed six days earlier from the Turkish port of Mersin, carrying 210 Syrians who had been rescued along with Hadi and who now sat in silence on the deck of the warship.

It was so dilapidated that the refugees had been reluctant to get on board, and the smuggler had fallen back on a cynical and well-rehearsed lie: this was not the real boat. The real boat, the one that would take them to Italy, was waiting offshore. That one was safe.

Desperate to get out of Turkey, and having already handed over more than $5,000 (£3,200) each, the Syrians got on.

First light found them cold and frightened, the men bailing water from a leaking hull, the women struggling to comfort the children as the boat rolled and pitched in high seas. They would spend another five nights on deck - dehydrated, hungry, weakened by vomiting and fear.

"We saw death in all its colours," an older man said as he sat on the docks waiting to be registered. "After the first day there was nothing to eat or drink. There was only terror, wind, and waves."

Hadi, the boy with the sign, was one of about 70 children who had made the journey. Many of their parents had hesitated before lifting those children on to the boat. But in the end they had all reached the same conclusion: it is better to risk my children's lives at sea than to watch them die in Syria.

Yusuf and Amal had brought five children on board, including their first daughter, Fateh. The girl's face had been burned by a bomb dropped on Aleppo a year earlier and had healed into a mask of raw and pitted scar tissue.

She was 13 years old. A month after Fateh's injury, with her wounds still covered in bandages, the family had fled across the Turkish border. There, Yusuf had given $20,000 (£13,000) - everything he'd managed to save and borrow - to the smuggler, gambling that he could get his family to Europe. "Do you think," he asked me, "there'll be a doctor in Germany who can help my girl?"

A little further along the dock I met the boat's youngest passenger. Baby Layan was just eight months old and asleep in her father's arms. "She had an older sister, Hala," he told me. "But she was born premature and needed oxygen. We were under siege in Yarmouk, in Damascus. There was no way to get her to a hospital. She died at six weeks."

Among the last to disembark was Hania, her face clouded with concern and her hands clinging on to her five-year-old son, Ibrahim, and his little sister, Sima. The children's father had disappeared from their home town, Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast. Unable to reach him and unsure if he were even alive, Hania had paid a smuggler to take the family by car into Turkey.

"In Syria we are frightened for our children, day and night," she said. "I just want to drop my kids off at school and pick them up at the end of the day without worrying that they might have been blown to bits."

Two days later, having passed through one of Sicily's official refugee reception centres, the Syrians were resting on the floor of a mosque in Catania. The elation of the rescue had subsided and the ground had at last stopped swaying beneath their feet. Dry land, though, brought a new set of worries.

None wanted to stay in Italy. Many were hoping to join family in Germany or Sweden. All were heading north.

Since European law requires refugees to leave their fingerprints and claim asylum in the first country in which they arrive, the journey out of Italy has become an exercise in anxiety and evasion. Hiding from the police in train toilets. Hoping you can afford the tickets. Praying that no-one stops you, or speaks to you in a language you don't understand, or asks for papers that you do not have.

Bewildered by Europe's laws and by the tangle of train lines heading north, the Syrians called Nawal Soufi to ask for advice.

Soufi is a 26-year-old activist who was born in Morocco and raised in Sicily. Although she has no official position and represents no aid organisation, Soufi has spent the past three years helping refugees find shelter in Sicily and, when they are ready, to move north.

As her reputation spread, Nawal's number was given to Syrians still stranded in Libya and Turkey. Before long they were calling her from boats in the Mediterranean, asking to be rescued. She has become adept at handling these calls, taking down the GPS co-ordinates from satellite phones and passing them to the Italian coastguard.

Now, though, the refugees didn't need saving. They needed information. How can I get from Milan to Munich? Will my kids have a better chance in the Netherlands or Sweden? What will happen if the police catch us?

Speaking through a tour guide's microphone, Soufi mapped out the minefield of legal obstacles, police hostility, and criminal exploitation that the Syrians would now have to cross.

"When you arrive in a strange place, without knowing anyone, people can see that you're lost. Be careful. Someone might approach you with an offer of help. They might say they know a place where your family can sleep. They might claim to work for an organisation that helps refugees. Don't trust them. If you go with them, they'll lock you in a house and keep you there until you pay to get out…

"The Italian police might force you to give a fingerprint in Milan… I know one guy, a Syrian, who got to Hamburg, but they'd already taken his prints in Italy. The German police dragged him from his house, from his bathroom, and sent him back here. Yesterday he was in Venice. Today he's in Milan, sleeping in the street…

"If someone gives you coffee on the train, don't drink it. There are people who spike the coffee to make you sleep and then steal your money. Every train has a story like that. If you want to drink coffee, go to the bar and buy it yourself."

Soufi spoke for 20 minutes. When she had finished the men sat on the grass to smoke, confer, and weigh the dangers of the journey ahead. Some called cousins in Hamburg. Others opened Google Maps on their phones, panning across Europe as if they might find a clue to their family's future.

Germany is good if you want to study, Soufi had said. The Netherlands is best for reuniting your family. In Sweden the government will give you a house and a passport - but it is cold. They had three hours before the train left for Milan.

At Catania station I caught up with a man I'd met on the docks two days earlier. Abu Amar had sold his house and car in Syria and used the money to bring his children and grandchildren to safety. Make a plan, Soufi had told him. Don't just set off without a destination in mind.

Abu Amar, though, had nothing to go on. Munich. Vienna. Stockholm. These were names that carried no associations, no criteria by which they might be assessed. "I've got 700 euros," he said. "Wherever we are when that runs out, that's where we'll end up."

Abu Amar set his suitcase down on the floor of the station, took his granddaughter in his arms, and leaned back against a billboard. It was an ad for Ray-Ban sunglasses. The slogan: Never Hide.

Some of the names of the people interviewed have been changed in order to protect their identities.

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