Weeping for a lost generation

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Muhammad knows he is one of the lucky ones. While desperate migrants in Calais fling themselves at lorries heading to the UK and risk death trying to walk along the Channel Tunnel, this young Syrian refugee is living in comfort in Saarbrucken, south-west Germany.

I received his phone call out of the blue earlier this year.

"I am Muhammad," he said, "Ramzi's youngest brother."

"I will come to see you," I told him simply.

Ramzi, my dearest Syrian friend - Ramzi the philosopher as I sometimes called him - had died of a brain tumour two weeks earlier in the port city of Lattakia, and after an emotional phone call offering his mother and sisters my deep condolences, I had feared my links to his family were over.

When the opportunity arose, I travelled to Saarbrucken.

It felt unreal to be sitting with Ramzi's youngest brother on the sunny towpath of the Saar river, disturbed only by the occasional dog-walker - light years away from the chaos of war that had caused this newly qualified lawyer to abandon his career and risk everything, even his life, to get away.

"On 1 August last year I was called up to Assad's army. I left immediately to Beirut, legally on my passport before they could stop me. Sunnis like me are sent to die on the frontline while Bashar and his clan sit safe at the back. I refused to fight against my own people," he said.

"Ramzi, my mother, my sisters, they all begged me not to do it. They told me: 'It is too dangerous. Those crooks will take your money and throw you overboard, the boat will sink, you will die alone at sea.'

"But how could I fight for the man who is destroying my country?"

Beirut is expensive for Syrians - it cost Muhammad $1,000 (£645) to stay there for a month - so as soon as he could he caught a boat to Mersin, southern Turkey, where he spent a further three months - and another $2,000 - researching how to make the crossing to Italy.

He eventually found a people smuggler he trusted, and at one hour's notice of departure, handed over $6,000. He was collected by minibus in the middle of the night and taken to a beach. There he was put in one of many inflatable boats, along with about 500 others, and transferred in the dark to a freighter waiting just outside Turkish territorial waters.

"We stayed in that ship for seven days," he told me. "It was like living in a giant metal box."

They were nearly all Syrian, mainly young men like him escaping the draft, some travelling with women and children.

"It was December and very cold. At first the sea was calm, but after Greece it was very rough. When we reached Italy the captain tried to land at Catania but was rejected. They told him they were not ready for him today. He went on another 12 hours north to the port of Crotone and was accepted. He turned off the engines and disappeared. We had never seen his face because he kept it covered. When the Italians came on board they asked us 'Who is the captain?' and no-one knew. He had become an asylum seeker like us except he did not have to pay! Now I know why it is so expensive - we had to buy the ship which stays in Italy!"

I did not have the heart to tell him the ship would have been worthless, except for scrap. Its name was Sandy, he told me.

It was clear, Muhammad said, that the Italians wanted to be rid of the new arrivals as quickly as possible. "They gave us a quick medical check, then transferred us to Milan - 17 hours on a bus. In Milan we had to give a single fingerprint, then we were free to go. They never asked to see our papers. They just waved us north.

"I knew Germany was the best place to get asylum, so four of us rented a taxi to Ulm. We paid the driver 500 euros (£354) each and he drove us through Austria into Germany. In Ulm they told us the fastest place to get German residence was Saarbrucken, so we rented another taxi for 200 euros each to take us from Ulm to Saarbrucken. In Saarbrucken they told us to catch a train to Lebach, the camp where asylum seekers are registered about 20km to the north. We were exhausted - all this travel and no sleep!"

The interviews at Lebach camp, he told me, had been surprisingly easy.

"As soon as they knew I was from Syria, they never even asked why I was claiming asylum. They just took all my details, then everything else followed. They understood. It was the same for my friends."

Just three weeks after arriving in Germany illegally, he was granted asylum, then given a German residence permit and a renewable three-year travel document valid anywhere inside the Schengen Area.

Courtesy of the German government he has been accommodated in a modern two-bedroom flat in central Saarbrucken sharing with three strangers. He benefits from free health cover and free German language lessons for four hours a day Monday to Friday. On top of that he receives 400 euros per month cash to cover food and utility bills and other essentials.

Muhammad telephoned home to tell his family the news. They wept and wept, with happiness for his safety and with sorrow for his distance from them.

Nine days later Ramzi died.

"I know I have been lucky," Muhammad told me. "I will do my best to repay Germany. I will work hard and study, to make Ramzi proud of me."

His young brown eyes filled with tears and together we sat by the river, weeping for the waste and the suffering of a lost generation.

On the drive back to England it started raining as I approached the port of Calais. Miserable-looking young men were hanging around at the roadside getting wet. Before long, I knew, some would be attempting to clamber on to lorries, or scale the fences guarding the Channel Tunnel.

My sailing was diverted to Dunkerque and as I watched the men grow smaller in my rear-view mirror, I thought of Muhammad's words:

"Of course I am lonely, and sad I may never see my family again. But after the chaos I left behind inside Syria, it is paradise here."

Diana Darke is author of My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution (2015)

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