Balkans Transit

If you ever travel to Kos, the Greek Island where Hippocrates was born, you may navigate across its inlet to visit the nearby Turkish land. It would only cost you € 20. But Ahmad and his wife Jihan paid € 3000 to go across the other way, with their children. That was the price for migrants when they entered Europe in 2015.

The Syrian couple lived in Yarmuk, a Palestinian refugee camp turned-burstling city in the suburbs of Damascus. Ahmad had several small businesses, including a shoe shop, and Jihan was a translator. When the syrian regime bombed their neighborhood, the family ran away, and never came back. Ahmad refused to do the military service and decided to go into exile with his family. 

I was far from grasping that they would be among the first of about 600000 migrants to enter Europe in 2015. It took them a month to go across 4000 km, eight borders, and nine countries to reach Sweden. There, they got caught into the limbo of wait, where their painful memories interwinded with the incertainty of their future. Ahmad and Jihan are at the begenning of a life-long trip: a life to rebuild.

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Balkans Transit

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