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DISPLACEMENT
EDITORIAL GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 2
Seldom has the editorial team of Fikrun wa Fann / Art&Thought
had as much reason to take pride in its work as with the current edition. When the topic
of displacement was selected, a year in advance, for the summer of 2016, it was
already foreseeable that this would be the principal topic of our times.
DISPLACEMENT
However, it was not yet apparent how controversial the refugee crisis and the reactions to
it would become – and remain – over the months that followed. At the same time, choos-
ing a subject like this for a ‘slow’, biannual magazine like ours always entails the risk of
coming to it too late, when it is so topical that everyone has already been writing about it
for months. And indeed we had to ask ourselves whether perhaps everything there was
to say about the refugee crisis had already been said, whether there were any other, new
voices left to discover. Rather to our own surprise, we found that yes, there was still much
to be said – including from many people who have not yet received the public attention
they deserve concerning this subject. Have you, for example, heard of Bachtiar Ali? This
great Kurdish-Iraqi author, a star in his homeland, has been living in Cologne for many
years, unremarked by Germans. He can explain to us like no other what it means, both for
the refugees and for the societies who take them in, to be ‘displaced’ – to be a fugitive,
physically, mentally and emotionally.
We also learn from Bachtiar Ali that ‘refugee’ is an inner state – a state people continue
to carry within them long after they have ceased to be refugees. This, incidentally, is
something Germans could recognise from their own history, as illustrated in the article by
Barbara Lehmann . But do they still want to hear this lesson? German authors, some of
whom have foreign names like Steven Uhly, Rasha Khayat, Alem Grabovac , or Stanisław
Strasburger , are also in a position to tell us about the experience of a sense of foreign-
ness. These authors may feel German, but there’s always someone somewhere who
thinks, because of their names, that they’re foreign, and in doing so signals to them that
perhaps they are somehow different, after all. One may be justified in asking, as Steven
Uhly does in his article, whether this is just a precursor to racism, or whether it is racism
itself. In any case, it makes it clear how difficult it will be for the refugees now arriving to
be truly accepted in the future; for them not to continue to feel foreign despite doing their
very best to integrate. And in any case, if Bachtiar Ali is to be believed the goal should not
be integration at any price, as this can lead to a loss of memory and resilience.
The idea of Europe as paradise is an illusion with which the West, too, deceives itself, ob-
serves Bachtiar Ali. But for many people this illusion is also a hope to which they cling, un-
til they get to Europe at last and are confronted with the reality. Alfred Hackensberger
vividly describes how these hopes converge on the Moroccan coastal city of Tangier, and
how people try in vain for months to reach Europe from there by the dangerous sea route
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Fikrun wa Fann, June 2016
– a Europe that exists only in these people’s imaginations. Because although, as Jochen
Oltmer explains in his article, Europe has always been characterised by migration, now-
adays the ‘migration regime’ has fundamentally changed. This ‘migration regime’, meaning
attempts to steer migration both politically and militarily no matter what the cost, is de-
scribed for us by Bernard Schmid. The refugee crisis raises the question of whether West-
ern values are still worth anything at all, or whether their worth is purely rhetorical.
We trust you will find this timely edition of Fikrun wa Fann / Art&Thought an exciting one!
Stefan Weidner, editor-in-chief
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 3
It’s possible to be a foreigner even when you
are not foreign – namely, when you are always seen as
foreign by others. What happens, though, when
suddenly a lot of other, new, genuine foreigners arrive?
The person wrongly regarded by racists as foreign
may himself experience a sort of racism towards
foreigners. A look at the dialectic of racism in Germany,
a country of immigration.
ThE DISPLACED, DISPLACING GAzE
BECOMING A STRANGER TO ONESElF AND OTHERS
BY STEvEN UhLy
I’m one of those contrary Germans. Regardless of how many praise you for your excellent command of the language must just
times someone asks where I really come from, or – even more be shrugged off. Over the years there’s been less and less of
indiscreetly – where my parents are from, I always reply: from that, which is good news.
Cologne. Over the past five decades I’ve learned to respond to
comments along the lines of ‘You really don’t look like you’re Recently, though, there’s been a very sudden shift, and the worst
from Cologne’ with, at best, a smile. of it is that I can’t quite work out the direction things are going
in. During my childhood, the coordinates of the street were fixed.
PErSoNAL ExPErIENCE of rACISM There were the old Nazis who insulted me as they passed. They
were very careful to make sure there were no witnesses, and
This has served me pretty well so far. I’ve even overcome my they weren’t physically violent. There
reservations about associating publicly with other non-German- were the people my own age who were Syrian refugees
looking Germans. This idiosyncrasy, undoubtedly a kind of ra- naïve enough to repeat things they’d outside their
cism by avoidance rooted in negative experiences with racists, heard adults say. Ignoring them was diffi- accommodation in a
developed during my childhood in Cologne. Back then I was cult, if not impossible. And there was the Bavarian village.
usually assumed to be a child of guest workers, and that meant apprehensive general public, who never Photo: Achim Wagner
my status was extremely low. This © Goethe-Institut
outraged and insulted me, because I
wasn’t a child of guest workers: I was
from the place where I had come in-
to the world, and that has never
changed. Today I know that this is
called ius soli – the right of the soil.
It’s the only law that takes a child’s
birthplace as its starting point.
In my outrage, of course, lay the ker-
nel of my own racism: I didn’t want to
belong to the lowest caste, I wanted
to be a Brahmin. The reason why I
speak such emphatically correct Ger-
man is probably so that people are at
least disabused the minute I open my
mouth. It’s a strategy I’ve observed
in many people whose outward ap-
pearance is similarly different from
that of a ‘normal’ German. Usually it
works. The tactlessness of those who
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 4
quite knew how they ought to communicate with someone like PoSITIvE AND NEGATIvE rACISM
me in order not to be racist. This cotton-wool feeling of foreign-
ness that I encountered everywhere was perhaps the hardest to One important reason for this blindness was the taboo around
deal with, because for a long time I didn’t know what caused it: the racism that did actually exist in society. That which in the
did it emanate from me, or from them? GDR was completely blanked out provoked general uncertainty
in West Germany, with its guilty conscience. Many tended to feel
thE AftErShockS of world wAr two uncomfortable in the presence of foreign-looking people who
were nonetheless clearly German, because they didn’t know
Until unification in 1990, Germany was in a kind of quarantine. what would constitute non-racist behaviour. The majority
As a consequence of the Holocaust, and above all the resulting glossed over their embarrassment by simply paying me no at-
loss of face after the total defeat of World War Two, racism was tention. This often led to encounters in shops in which both
taboo in both East and West Germany. In East Germany the words and eye contact were generally avoided.
taboo was absolute: there was no contact to speak of with for-
eign workers, and the official version was that the Fascists lived Then, in the 1980s, there was a peculiar backlash. Thus it might
in West Germany whereas the Socialist GDR was already working happen that I would be sitting unsuspectingly outside a café in
on creating a new kind of human being. Because of this, there Bonn and someone would suddenly sit down beside me, unin-
was no useful examination and addressing of the past. vited, to rave about Turks and what wonderful people they are.
Or I would be smiled at by total strangers in a very blatant fash-
In West Germany there was the same taboo, but the society used ion, as if they were trying to say: it’s good that you’re here
a different strategy to get back to normality. It was, to put it among us. This, incidentally, is happening to me more often again
crudely: learning from mistakes. What the Americans did immedi- these days. I never knew how I ought to respond to it. Most of
ately after the war – forcing people who lived near concentration the time I would just stare back, nonplussed, then fret that my
camps to see them from inside – gradually became the cultural reaction may have come across as unfriendly and turned a posi-
orientation of a whole society. Money was paid to Israel under tive racist into a negative one.
the heading ‘reparations’: a legal first. Reparations had never be-
fore been paid to a state that had not, as such, received any in- When the two Germanys united and, just a few years later, a
jury (because at the time the Holocaust took place it did not exist, wave of xenophobic attacks rolled across the country, Germans
and because the injured parties were private individuals). When were shocked. They had, after all, thought they had overcome
the gloomy 1950s finally came to an end, the increasingly uncom- racism. However, people like me felt great relief, because finally
promising examination of National Socialism began. that which had been denied had become visible. In the period
that followed I saw how people freed themselves of the suspi-
All the consciousness of guilt and the clarification and atonement cion that hung over them like a sword of Damocles – that all of
that subsequently occurred was driven by the urgent desire to them were xenophobes – with candlelit vigils and declarations of
be a fully-fledged member of the community of peoples again. solidarity. Public behaviour became more relaxed. On the one
For Germans, normality was the great meta-narrative, and re- hand, racism was socially acceptable again: racists gained seats
mains so to this day, especially since the fall of the Wall and Ger- in state parliaments and city halls, all of which was very dis-
man unification. The problem with the achievement of normality agreeable. But at the same time they constituted a visible em-
as a motivation was that Germans believed once they had ad- bodiment of racism, and for all those who would otherwise have
dressed and come to terms with the past they would be able to doubted their own perceptions (of this actual, existing racism, to
draw a line under the unpleasant Nazi era with its genocidal which others refused to admit), this was a good thing.
murderers. This attitude became apparent immediately after the
end of the war and hasn’t changed to this day. It is characteristic And so I really was integrated into society, after three decades in
of many Germans’ historical consciousness. my invisible niche. Saleswomen and cashiers looked at me;
people in general didn’t initially assume that I couldn’t speak the
This is why racism could never truly be overcome in West Ger- language. For a while I almost forgot that I’m not actually a real
many, either. It was already evident in the way guest workers German.
were treated. When they didn’t want to return to their home-
lands once the work was done, they were reluctantly accepted as Until now.
permanent guests: and that, initially, was how it remained. Right
into the twenty-first century prominent politicians were still in- While other Germans are anxiously watching the news and spe-
sisting that Germany was not a country of immigration, although cialising either in a fear of terrorists, rapists, cultural displacers,
de facto it had already been one for half a century. freeloaders, disease bringers, or in the collapse of the EU as a
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 5
result of the refugee crisis, I am constantly trying with one eye same Islamic cultural realm. Islam as the common denominator of
to gauge what this means for my and my children’s status in the evil: this alone converges so many prejudices that the distinc-
anonymous public sphere, i.e. on the street, in daily life. How tions between neo-Nazis, opponents of Islamification and ‘con-
safe are we from the mob? How strong is the civilising layer that cerned citizens’ are in danger of disappearing altogether.
keeps the violent, the radical simplifiers, the rabble-rousers, the
collective psychopaths in check while I go shopping or for a walk, One thing should not be forgotten: that the media presentation
drive my children to school, or just walk around outside with of these dramatic events played a significant part in the emer-
friends? gence of this traumatic racism. Meaning: the majority of us have
not personally experienced anything at all. Pathological racism,
I can’t answer this question, because nothing in my environment too, is known to be most virulent where there are fewest for-
appears to have changed. But I notice that my own behaviour is eigners.
no longer the same. Whereas in the past I was always alerted by
a kind of internal early-warning system to the sudden appear- The presentation in the media allows us to participate in events
ance of neo-Nazis, these days I also notice when Muslim-looking that are happening in our immediate environment – in our coun-
men arrive on the scene. Will they pull guns, throw bombs, grope try – but which remain, nonetheless, invisible to our eyes. I have
women? Amber alert! This usually only lasts a couple of seconds never yet seen an IS terrorist, was never present at a massacre,
before the new arrivals turn out to be entirely harmless. But the did not have to look on as North Africans sexually harassed Ger-
conditioned reflex is there. man women. But precisely this combination of media omnipres-
ence and invisibility in daily life fans my fears. At the moment,
What is infuriating is that I too, as a non-German-looking Ger- when I drive into town, my senses are constantly checking my
man, have again become the object of this particular attention surroundings for signs of danger; only when I spot a police pres-
from other people. And I can’t even hold it against them. I’d ence do I feel a moment of relief. This too is new for me.
probably mistrust myself, at first, if I were to cross my path as a
stranger. As a man who could, in the broadest sense, be taken for a Mus-
lim, I too, as I have said, am under observation. There is yet an-
This fear, which has arisen on the one hand because of the influx other fear, though, directly connected to this. I ask myself: won’t
of refugees, and because of the terrorist attacks by Islamist fun- the massive influx of southern-looking people give the patho-
damentalists in western European cities on the other, seems to logical racists a boost? Currently the answer has to be yes, be-
have nothing in common with the pathological racism in which cause there are concrete statistics about the right wing’s current
the xenophobes are trapped. What sets neo-Nazis apart is that, popularity.
fundamentally, their attitude is not based on common political
ideas but on a common psychological disorder. This is what IMMIGrANT ChILDrEN vErSUS rEfUGEES?
brings them together. The reversal of cause and effect – seeing
foreigners as the reason – is consistent with common self-pres- With this thought I am once again revealed to be a racist, be-
ervation mechanisms that apply to other disorders, too. I am cause my fear of racists is itself racist. With the left chamber of
sure that these people are in fact strangers to themselves. my heart I welcome the poor refugees, while with the right
chamber I fear the strengthening of racism precisely through the
nEw, trAumAtic rAciSm refugees’ presence. I would describe this as racism of the second
order, or oblique racism. There are people who feel antagonism
The new racism, to which I have also succumbed, operates differ- towards refugees precisely because they themselves are the
ently. It could be described as traumatic, because it has a lot to children of immigrants.
do with the events in Paris last year and on New Year’s Eve in
Cologne. In other words: this racism operates like the pathologic- As a racist anti-racist, I believe that ‘miscegenation’ of the Ger-
al one, via a person’s outward appearance, but it is based on man people could finish off the Aryan delusion once and for all.
actual events. And that makes far more people susceptible to in- And so: come on, all the little dark people! What I’d really like to
fection than was the case before, because it doesn’t even appear do is flood the whole of Germany with foreigners, so that even
to be racist. It’s a new variation of invisible racism, surfacing as people in the farthest-flung corner of the Republic will finally
valid concern. And who would want to contradict that? see sense and learn to live with people who look different to
them.
This is where, in a number of respects, the boundaries become
blurred. IS terrorists and rapist refugees both come from the However, at the same time, I was all too often the victim of ordi-
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 6
nary, stupid German racists, and I don’t want this group to get
any bigger. And when Muslim men rape German women, this STEvEN UhLy was born in Cologne in 1965, the child of
group does get bigger. a German mother and a Bengali father. He gained his degree
in Romance and German Studies and became a novelist.
Oh, how I hate them, these pathological haters! And things are His most successful book to date was the novel Glückskind
just getting worse and worse with me: now I will initially distrust [Lucky child], which was also made into a film. His most
anyone who seems to me too German. Because who knows recent is the novel Kingdom of Twilight, to be published in
whether a fearful person’s traumatic racism might not, at any English in the US and Britain this autumn. After living for a
time, turn into pathological hate racism? while in Brazil, Uhly now resides in Munich with his family.
How I would like just to see people as individuals! Each one dif- Translated by Charlotte Collins
ferent from the others – wouldn’t that be fantastic? But there are Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Fikrun wa Fann, June 2016
too many patterns in my head, too many habits of perception,
too many fears, and fears of fears. Author’s page: Steven Uhly
http://www.secession-verlag.com/content/steven-uhly
Oh dear – we are all racists. [en, de]
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 7
Astonishingly, a bicultural background still provokes
astonishment – though not quite as much as it used to.
Our author Rasha Khayat experienced this herself.
Initially surprised to find herself out of place, she finally
learned to love it, with the help of books and travel.
ChrISTMAS TrEES IN JEDDAh,
BAMIyA IN GErMANy
HOW BEING OUT OF PlACE CAN COME TO FEEl lIKE HOME
BY rAShA KhAyAT
Syrian refugees going
My mother missed parsley most of all. Not for a walk on a village That was in 1988, in the little town in the heart of the Ruhr, and
the parsley with the small, curly leaves, street in Bavaria. nowhere was there a bunch of flat parsley or a courgette to be
but the flat parsley you can buy in thick Photo: Achim Wagner found.
bunches at the market. She also missed © Goethe-Institut
fresh coriander and courgettes. We had hAPPy IN JEDDAh
just moved back to Germany with the whole family; we had lived
in Jeddah for eight years, and my mother had got used to cook- Perhaps I should explain that my mother is German by birth,
ing certain things. We too missed various dishes at the dinner whereas my father is from Saudi Arabia. The move to Germany,
table – my brother soon accepted that there would be no more to the homeland of my maternal grandparents, was primarily
bamiya, but my father and I mourned our beloved molokhiyya for due to the idea that school would be easier for us children – and
years. My mother, it must be said, really made an effort to cook above all for me, the girl – in Germany. It wasn’t easy for any of
us our favourite meals nonetheless. She faked, cheated and im- us, that was clear. My mother in particular, that blonde, capable
provised, and immediately made a beeline for every newly- woman, still says today with tremendous wistfulness how much
opened Turkish supermarket in the vicinity in the hope of find- she liked living in Jeddah back then, that even today she still
ing parsley after all. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult! thinks of it as a home and sometimes misses it.
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 8
I have now learned (though it took many years) that for most Ruhr, kept getting stronger. Displacement. We had no name for it.
people in our so-called Western world telling them something Just a diffuse inner voice that was constantly saying: ‘You’re
like this can disconcert them and prompt considerable need for doing something wrong if you don’t feel at home here. Everyone
explanation. A German woman, a mixed family – how can it be says you must feel at home here. It’s your fault, it must be.’
that they felt so at home there, in that distant country that in our
part of the world is known primarily through negative headlines? This feeling lasted for quite a long time. I could never really ex-
And where, as a woman, you really can’t do anything at all. Drive plain it to anyone; the shame was too great, and the fear that it
a car! Open a bank account! And then they miss parsley and red was a failure, a deficiency of my own. If I just try even harder, I
lentils?! Have they taken leave of their senses? thought when I was young; if I just fit in even better, make stupid
jokes about Arabs, refine my German language and shed my
As far as food was concerned, at some point we had come to Arabic language, if I myself keep asserting that I’m German, and
terms with our new home, for better or worse. Every holiday in distance myself more and more from my Arabness, then at some
Jeddah ended with a big shopping trip; we hauled tins of ful me- point the feeling will have to correspond with how everyone else
dammes, red lentils, various spices and fresh pomegranates back sees things.
to Germany in huge suitcases. Then when the smell of baked
aubergines with pomegranate seeds, garlic and coriander spread LIBErATIoN ThroUGh LITErATUrE
through our German house, it was always a bit like Christmas.
Ultimately, though, it didn’t assuage the longing for this former Then came the one sentence that, back then, when I was about
home; perhaps it even made it a little more powerful. seventeen or eighteen – shortly before I graduated from high
school, anyway – described to me for the first time a feeling that
Other things were even harder to understand. Why, for example, to some extent I recognised: ‘My name is Karim Amir, and I am
were we constantly being told – in school, among other places – an Englishman born and bred, almost.’ It is the first sentence of
that we must be very happy to be living in Germany now be- Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia. This ‘almost’; this
cause we were German, after all. Our otherness, particularly that little word, this afterthought, so simple, so understated – and it
of us children, was not particularly obvious – we spoke fluent, contained all my doubts, all my malaise with myself and the
accent-free German, neither our skin nor our hair was particular- world around me. Here was someone who was English, but at the
ly dark. Our strange names, which we were always having to same time somehow not. Here was someone who was a different
spell out, were the only things that, on second glance, revealed person to the one his name was giving him out as. The novel tells
that we didn’t quite fit in, there in that little town in the Ruhr. of Karim’s British mother, who is forced to listen to her neigh-
People were friendly to us, well-meaning, you might say. So why bours’ racist remarks; it tells of Karim’s Indian father who, al-
did we still feel so foreign? Such outsiders? And at the same time though socialised as a Muslim, suddenly, in this lower-middle-
so involuntarily appropriated? Was it the cold weather? The class neighbourhood, starts portraying himself as a Buddhist
strange children? The lack of Arab food? guru, giving yoga workshops and esoteric lectures, reinventing
himself with a new identity.
ATTEMPTS To fIT IN
With every single character the novel plays the full register, loud
When I think back on these first years in Germany, on all the and soft, subtle and aggressive, and always with the question in
questions I asked myself and others asked me (or didn’t), it the background: what’s it like to live with foreign names, a for-
sometimes makes me feel quite dizzy. Our lives had been eign appearance, in a small, parochial suburb?
switched; the erstwhile holiday with our German grandparents
had become home; our former home was suddenly just a holiday long before this I had started to read incessantly, even taking
destination. And in spite of this we did not have the right to be a part-time job in a bookshop in the hope of finding an explan-
foreign, thanks to the language, thanks to our German family ation somewhere for this nebulous fissure within myself.
members. Yet this longing, this homesickness was always pre- Kureishi’s novel explained to me, and to a whole generation of
sent, for all of us. migrant children, perhaps for the first time, that it wasn’t our
fault, this strange feeling of displacement; that it came from out-
This, however, didn’t sit well at all with all the people who were side. That the others, our fellow pupils, our colleagues, our neigh-
constantly insisting that life was so much better for us now, in bours, were the ones who, with their well-intentioned remarks
Germany. Much freer. Much nicer. I began to feel ashamed, and on the one hand or with open hostility on the other, were con-
the feeling that there must be something wrong with me, be- stantly exposing us, putting us in the position of the ‘other’. To
cause I couldn’t see it like that at all, couldn’t see what exactly this day The Buddha remains, for me, one of the most important
was supposed to be better here, now, in the little town in the books of my life.
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 9
I felt inspired, understood. The same way others my age had felt reclaimed my old, my first, my own language, read Arabic news-
understood by Hesse’s Steppenwolf or by the beatniks. I began papers and books, got hold of Arabic films and series. I opened
to write. I wrote and wrote, filling diary after diary; tried, like the door again, let in the Arabic language. Reunion after a long
Kureishi, to find words and images for the feeling of being for- time. I began to travel. For three, four years I travelled for
eign on the outside. I read and I wrote, wrote myself out of the months each year in all the Arab countries. Usually alone, some-
little town, out of the internal conflicts and the external ones, times not. I blanked out all the questions about what I was
with my parents, my family, my fellow pupils. I wrote myself out actually doing, what all this was for; I simply didn’t answer.
of isolation and into a new, other, wonderful form of isolation:
that of the writing reader. On these travels I read and wrote. Wrote letters, articles, copious
stories in brightly-coloured notebooks; wrote about the encoun-
I left the little town in the Ruhr and moved to a medium-sized ters we had, dangers and delights, all the things that happen
town on the Rhine. It had very green meadows, brightly-painted when you travel. Suddenly I was writing trilingually in my note-
old buildings with lots of stucco, and an old palace, yellow as the books, my mind was completely unfettered, the pages filled
sun, that housed the university, to which I then went. There, themselves with German, English and Arabic words and senten-
there were more books, more literature; there were new people ces. In a strange way I felt free for the first time. Free of other
who became very dear to me, who showed me foreign films, in- people’s evaluating, judgmental looks.
troduced me to modern art and put Michel Houellebecq’s What-
ever under my pillow. The world seemed to be opening up, fresh I felt old longings, but suddenly I missed my German bed, too; I
air made its way into a life stifled by small-town constraints. As finally ate freshly-prepared falafel from the street vendor and
with Karim; as in The Buddha, when it takes him to london, was happy each time I returned to Germany that my German
where he becomes an actor. For the first time I felt truly at home grandmother put sauerbraten, red cabbage and dumplings on
– in art, in the language, which I had in all its aspects so pain- the table. But the lacuna started to close. Slowly and gradually.
stakingly made my own. And it was a healing process.
And at the same time – though I only realised it much later – I All of this did not happen smoothly, without casualties. People
was growing further and further apart from the family with fell by the wayside, as always happens when you shed your skin,
whom I shared this sense of foreignness, the longing for things when you believe you have to keep moving. Others grew along
left behind, for parsley and fresh coriander. with me, stayed, or went back. Helped me to keep being present
in the Here, or the There. I established a world for myself be-
trAvElling to thE iSlAmic world tween many lands and languages, and with many people every-
where who were dear to my heart. I had finally shed the con-
It was only an advanced seminar on Orientalism that roused straints of the little town in the Ruhr. And begun to write a book.
these things again, the background I had finally left so far be-
hind me. Edward Said roused them, the nineteenth-century INTEGrATIoN IS NoT ASSIMILATIoN
travellers to the Orient roused them, Nerval’s The Women of
Cairo roused them. There they were again, all the images, the A while ago, the British author Taiye Selasi gave a lecture en-
sounds, the smells, described here from a Western perspective, titled ‘Don’t ask me where I’m from, ask me where I’m local’. A
with this ‘Orientalist gaze’, we students learned. And again and lecture that is perfect for the twenty-first century: it observes
again I wanted to shout, ‘Yes, but it is a bit like that! You don’t that something like ‘origin’ can now no longer be established
know, but I do, I know it! Believe me, I recognise it, I know what with any certainty, that identities are fluid and that today we, as
I’m talking about!’ There it was again: this lacuna, this peculiar, the younger generation of a globalised society, are ‘locals’ in
painful lacuna. many places. In her speech Selasi writes that she is ‘local’ in var-
ious cultures, that she doesn’t necessarily feel British, Ghanaian
After Orientalism I also read Edward Said’s autobiography, Out of or American. Every experience has its origin in one or the other
Place. A story that was so absurd, so full of dichotomies, full particular culture. Every identity is the sum total of experiences.
of love, grief, questions and attempted answers about his own
origins and his own place in the world. It was a new Kureishi Biographies like these, like that of Taiye Selasi, like my own, have
moment. And this time it resulted in not erratic but systematic long since become normal. People with parents from different
reading. I read my way right across colonial literature, especially countries, cultures, religions, who settle in entirely different
British and French, took inspiration from Susan Sontag and Joan parts of the world. It’s only in praxis and in daily perception that
Didion, wrote, as Didion said, ‘to find out what I really think’, there still seem to be problems. This feeling of not really belong-
GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 10
ing, of being an outsider, is and remains a component of all these the freedom to ride a bicycle to school, without a school uniform,
biographies. We are looking for a new home, in the world, in art. or by the fact that my mother was now allowed to sit behind the
A place where the gaze can be free of judgement. wheel again, too.
No one displaces him- or herself. It is not a decision, an autono- I dream of a time when all of that will be allowed to exist side by
mous act, to feel displaced. Its origins must, therefore, be exter- side. When people will no longer see if someone has darker skin
nal. Something that is displayed towards the one who feels dis- or a name that sounds different. And when no one has to be
placed, that prevents him from feeling himself to be in the right ashamed any more because people look down on them, because
place. of their foreignness. When it is permitted, even taken for grant-
ed that one can play and switch freely between all the worlds we
Arriving as a migrant or emigrant or refugee or third culture kid carry within ourselves.
in a place where you settle, for the time being or for good, you
inevitably start to assimilate. You learn the language, if you don’t My biggest inspiration in this – and I don’t think they’re even
already know it, as we did back then; you pick up local dialects, aware of it – are my own parents, who made a home for us in
perhaps a certain body language, habits that belong to the en- which there was a Christmas tree every year but also, several
vironment. You observe your fellow man very closely, become a times a month, Arab lentil soup with fresh sambusak.
quick-change artist in the crowd, try not to stick out, are almost
pleased when you are told more and more often how well inte- And you can buy parsley and courgettes everywhere in Germany
grated you are. You become a chameleon; every form of percep- nowadays.
tible otherness suddenly seems burdened with shame.
At the same time, what is all too often forgotten, or not taken wrAShA KhAyAT, born in Dortmund in 1978,
into consideration, or overlooked, is that successful integration is grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Her family moved back
not the same as annexation or assimilation. Because then a part to Germany when she was eleven. She studied
of your Self disappears, is given up, pushed or taken away. Comparative literature, German Studies and Philosophy in
Bonn, and has lived in Hamburg since 2005.
ArAB fooD UNDEr ThE ChrISTMAS TrEE She works as a freelance author, translator and editor.
Her first novel, Weil wir längst woanders sind
We felt foreign in Germany, because we missed familiar things – [Because we’re already somewhere else],
our big family, with whom we spent a lot of time in Jeddah. The was published in 2016.
warm weather, the sun, the regular weekends by the sea. The
loud adhan five times a day. The language, which suddenly felt Translated by Charlotte Collins
foreign, because it was only ever used, mixed in with German, by Copyright: Goethe-Institut e.V., Fikrun wa Fann, June 2016
our little core family in our kitchen; it no longer blared out of
televisions, radios or telephones, was no longer omnipresent. Author’s page: rasha Khayat
And last but not least, familiar smells and tastes: courgette and http://www.dumont-buchverlag.de/autor/rasha-khayat/
parsley. All that could not be overwritten or even replaced by [en, de]GOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 11
The city of Tangier in northern Morocco
is one big waiting room for people wanting to reach
Europe from Africa. Alfred Hackensberger spoke
to migrants there and asked them how they imagine life in
Europe, how they pass the time in Morocco, and
how they try – generally without success – to get to Europe.
dEAth AS A wEApon
MIGRANTS AND THEIR DREAMS
BY ALfrED hACKENSBErGEr
Every day, I drive past them in my
car on my way to school, the shops,
the city centre, or the beach. Every
time I stop at a red light, they are
there, knocking on my window:
young men with sad faces, pointing
to their mouths, telling me they are
hungry; young mothers pointing to
the babies on their backs, telling me
they need milk. They come from
Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, or Chad,
but also from Syria and Pakistan,
and are now swelling the ranks of
the army of professional beggars
on the streets of this port city. Most
migrants openly admit that they
want to get to Spain from Tangier.
The few who claim to be looking for
work in Morocco are afraid. This is
understandable. After all, the trip
they are planning across the Straits
of Gibraltar is illegal, and they are Streetart in
afraid of getting into trouble with the police, who don’t as a rule from libya will only be open temporarily, just Berlin-Friedrichshain.
handle them with kid gloves and can unexpectedly bundle them as it was in Mauritania and Senegal. When Foto: Achim Wagner
off to Rabat, Casablanca, or Marrakesh without batting an eye. Europe piles on the pressure, local security © Goethe-Institut
But there is little point in making such false claims in Tangier. forces will at some point batten down the hatch-
People just react with a weary smile. Everyone knows why these es and the flood of migrants will gradually become a trickle.
foreigners are here.
The situation in Tangier is different. From here, Europe is not
For more than twenty years now, this Mediterranean city of hundreds of nautical miles away; here, only fourteen kilometres
more than one million inhabitants on the northernmost tip of the separate the two continents. Although Morocco’s police and mili-
African continent has been a springboard for migrants heading tary prevent virtually all refugee boats from reaching the open
for Europe. Although it is the most reliable route, it has largely seas, the short trip is so attractive that migrants just keep on
been forgotten in recent times. libya is the current magnet: from coming here, regardless of how big or small the chances are of
here, thousands of migrants take their lives in their hands and reaching the northern shore of the Mediterranean. According to
set off across the sea for Italy. Hundreds of them will never see the Tangier office of the Catholic aid agency Caritas, about
land again. How long libya will remain a transit country depends 20,000 people have hunkered down in the northern part of the
on how the civil war there progresses. In any case, the gateway country, waiting for the chance to make their European dreamGOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 12
come true. But the true figure is probably higher. After all, this is The yearnings of the Germans, the British, or the French have a
only the number of people who have registered with Caritas, different focus, namely the ‘South’: Spain, Morocco, Thailand, or
something that not all migrants do. Also, for the residents of the Caribbean. The South stands not only for sun, sea, and
Tangier, of whom I am one, there seem to be more migrants here strand, it also stands for vivacity, pleasure, sensuality, eroticism,
now than ever before. Ten or fifteen years ago they lived in friendliness, openness, relaxation and all manner of other things.
cheap guesthouses in the city’s old quarter; there were also a These are seen as the ingredients that make for a better, more
few camps outside the city. Today, they are forced to live on the beautiful life. It is certainly the polar opposite of overcrowded
outskirts of Tangier, where there are countless open-air camps. underground trains and congested roads on an early-morning
One reason for the increase in numbers is the fact that the route commute, bad-tempered bosses, traffic wardens scribbling park-
to Europe via Tangier is by far the least dangerous one. libya is ing tickets, the mad dash around the supermarket after work,
in the grip of civil war, and any attempt to cross the full breadth the incessant stress, and the barely affordable mortgage repay-
of the Mediterranean in rickety, overcrowded boats is nothing ments.
short of suicide.
Desires usually develop diametrically to reality. People desire
ThE DrEAM of PArADISE what they do not have. The things that seem to be missing are
raised above the everyday routine, indeed they are hyposta-
On a clear, sunny day, you can see the coast of the Iberian penin- tised and charged with clichés and stereotypes: to put it simply,
sula from Boulevard Pasteur in the centre of Tangier. It seems so the South is seen as the place where the winds of freedom blow
close, just a short hop away. And that’s not far from the truth: and life is still worth living. But anyone who takes the plunge
the high-speed ferry across the strait takes just half an hour. But and moves to sunnier climes quickly realises that the oh-so-
in order to get a ticket for the ferry, passengers need a Western friendly ‘natives’ don’t actually smile from dawn till dusk and
passport or a valid Schengen visa. Naturally, the migrants have that they too have to get up at seven o’clock to go to work.
neither. Many of them applied for visas for Germany, France, or Moreover, bureaucracy here is so dogged by corruption that
Britain before they left their home countries, but got nothing. many a German immigrant yearns for the once so despised civil
This is why they have come to Tangier to row across the straits servants back home. life abroad is at least as easy or as difficult
to Spain in inflatable dinghies. The crossing is not without its as it is at home.
dangers, but they don’t care: ‘After all, that’s where everything
good is; that’s where a different, better life begins,’ they say. I have been living outside Germany (lebanon, Morocco, Spain)
‘That’s where there is lots of work, good training. Anyone who is for more than fifteen years now, and travel a lot for work. After
willing to work hard can get rich and marry a beautiful woman or such a length of time, you put the déjà-vu of initial disillusion-
a wealthy man.’ That is their dream of paradise, the dream of the ment behind you. You know what you have let yourself in for,
North as a place of unlimited opportunity, that demands disci- you plan in advance, and would never take an uncalculated risk
pline but guarantees stability and prosperity. They have heard of as the migrants do. living in different cultural contexts means
a crisis in Europe, but, as 21-year-old Kerdal from Cameroon that many things are no longer as important as they used to be.
says, ‘It’s only the lazy who don’t find work.’ This view is un- There is no such thing as a dream country. Foreign parts, as exot-
animously shared by the other migrants. ic as they might sound, are just different from back home.
Whether you feel at home there or not depends entirely on your
These are sobering dreams, at least for us Europeans. We have a personal preferences. But it is easy for us Europeans to say ‘per-
much less paradisaical view of ‘our North’. We moan about our sonal preferences’. It is easy for us to go to our chosen paradise.
achievement-oriented society and long to flee its constraints and We can travel to paradise, and if we don’t like it there we can
obligations. We want to get out of this sterile world, where turn our backs on it or even replace it with another. The passport
everything has become replaceable, nothing is authentic any of an EU citizen makes it all possible.
more, and even our private lives are dictated by the laws of the
market. Not everyone would put it like that, but it is there: that whEn drEAmS collApSE
feeling of unease that stimulates our yearning for distant shores.
The crisis might have changed the situation in Greece, Portugal, Things are completely different for the migrants in Tangier. Their
or Spain. There, the unemployed are happy to find any kind of a journey is usually a one-off; their whole livelihood depends on it.
job, to feed their families, and get medical care for them. For The migrants are risking their lives and the assets of their fam-
that, people are once again willing to accept without complaint ilies. The success of their mission to emigrate always hangs by a
the ‘capitalist estrangement’ they may have complained about in thread; it can come to an abrupt end at any minute. They can be
years gone by. robbed or murdered on their trek through the desert. Once inGOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 13
Morocco, their entire belongings can quite easily be stolen. The that his father died a long time ago and he no longer has any
journey is particularly grim for women: they are exposed to in- brothers or sisters. His mother now lives alone on the family
cessant harassment, and many are raped. And at the end of it all farm in Cameroon. Every day since he said his last goodbyes six
comes the last major step: the Mediterranean crossing that can months ago she has been waiting for him to call her from Europe.
cost them their lives. Even if they do overcome all these hurdles ‘This day will soon dawn,’ says a confident Kerdal, who wants to
– something that can take years – what awaits them on the other be a professional footballer and play for Real Madrid in Spain.
side, in Europe? ‘I’m a great right-back,’ he tells me. Kerdal is not the only man in
the refugee camp near Tangier Airport who dreams of being a
The awakening is a rude one. After all, the dreams that the mi- professional soccer player. About fifty men and women from
grants take with them have nothing in common with the Euro- Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast
pean reality into which they are plunged. What follows are long sleep out here in the open air. A bonfire has been lit beneath a
months in detention facilities or residences where they are con- group of trees. Beside it are large plastic containers full of water
demned to inactivity, at the end of which they could be deport- that have been laboriously carried here from a nearby well. Very
ed. Even if they are allowed to stay, the threat of unemployment few of the migrants here have a mattress. ‘That’s not a problem
looms large. With a bit of luck, they can keep their heads above in the summer,’ says Kerdal. ‘But we need a roof over our heads
water doing odd jobs here and there. They might end up selling for the winter, whatever happens.’
imitation designer handbags, music CDs and films, or they turn
to begging again, like they used to do in Tangier. The migrants Wael also plays defence on the football pitch. ‘But on the left,’
are not interested in hearing about poor future prospects. As far emphasises the 19-year-old, who also hails from Cameroon. He
as they are concerned, these are only stories about ‘losers’. wants to go not to Real Madrid but to Belgium, to play for FC An-
Every one of them believes that they will do things much better derlecht. ‘I don’t know why, but that has always been my dream
and have much better luck than everyone else. For more than club,’ he says. Then there is Mohammed from Mali, who wants to
fifteen years I have been hearing the same thing from migrants, try out for FC Barcelona. As soon as he arrives in Spain, the
over and over again. I never cease to be amazed, not so much by 17-year-old assures me, he will get on a train to Barcelona. And
their dream of Europe, but more by the vehemence with which there’s no question about it: Mohammed will immediately sign
they block out reality. But maybe that’s the way it has to be if on the dotted line for lionel Messi’s club. ‘These are not dreams,’
you want to withstand all the hardships. says Mohammed emphatically. Kerdal and Wael agree. They
seem slightly annoyed; I was foolish enough to say how difficult
‘Europe needs immigration, but only highly skilled workers. Most it is to get a contract with Barcelona. ‘We are all good enough to
of the people coming primarily from Africa are not highly skilled,’ make it as professionals.’ It is plain to see that their enthusiasm
says Carmen González Enríquez, a migration researcher at the for the European dream – for the talented and hard-working,
Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, who has worked on research everything is possible – is profound and absolutely unshakeable.
projects on immigration commissioned by the EU. Even at their But I try nonetheless, asking whether a career as a professional
unskilled level, very few migrants find jobs. They don’t meet the soccer player is worth risking their lives and their families’ sav-
current requirements of the labour market. ‘Europe does have a ings. ‘What kind of stupid question is that?’ an irritated Moham-
demographic problem,’ she adds, ‘but this problem cannot be med replies. ‘Of course it is. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’
solved by the refugees and migrants who have been landing in They would do anything for success, adds Kerdal. After a while, it
Italy and elsewhere for several months now.’ becomes clear what they mean by success: they’re thinking of
fast cars, a big apartment, good food, and lots of fans. And they
But the migrants are not thinking about demographics and freely admit this. They are thinking of the life of a football star.
labour market opportunities. Their view of Europe is shaped by ‘With lot of girls, of course,’ adds Wael. These young men are no
what they have seen on the Internet and on television. ‘What different from young men in Berlin, Dortmund or Munich.
you see in the documentaries and series is great. I was im-
pressed by that,’ says Kerdal with a broad grin. He can hardly We are surrounded by Johnny, Ammadou, Sidi, Moses, and Fer-
contain his excitement about the promised land. He is grinning nando. None of them is older than twenty-five. Once in Europe,
like a Cheshire cat, beaming like a child on Christmas Eve. About they want to become engineers, doctors, artists, or work as elec-
two years ago, he says, he decided to go to Europe. In this re- tricians or bricklayers on construction sites. They want to go to
spect, he is not that different from a German man who is so France, Germany, Holland or Sweden, depending on where they
taken by films about nature and the outdoors life in Canada that have friends and family, where their favourite football club is, or
he decides to travel there. The 21-year-old Cameroonian tells me where their favourite television programme is set. Their goalsGOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 14
are rather arbitrary. All that matters is that they are in Europe! talking about professional boats fit for the high seas, but leisure
There, university is better and free of charge. There, there are boats that you can buy in every major supermarket in Tangier.
plenty of well-paid jobs on construction sites, and self-employed They cost about €80. But for people from sub-Saharan Africa,
electricians can earn an absolute fortune in next to no time. they are very difficult to come by. Everyone knows that they
Johnny and Fernando spent years saving for the journey, as did want to use them to cross the straits. Sometimes the police are
Jeffrey, an English teacher from Nigeria, who joins the group. ‘Do called. The maximum weight for passengers in these dinghies is
you know how hard that is?’ says Jeffrey. ‘Here, the money you 250 kg. But on the crossing to the paradise that is Europe, no one
scrimped and saved just slips through your fingers.’ Just a month pays any attention to details like that: instead, up to seven
ago, he wanted to have his wife and her baby smuggled over the people cram into a dinghy. Once at sea, the migrants hope to be
border to Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclaves on Moroccan terri- able to use the trick on which all those making the crossing rely:
tory, along with Melilla. But they were caught. People traffickers ‘You call the Spanish Red Cross and ask for help for a boat in dis-
generally demand between €1,500 and €2,500 per person. Prior tress,’ explains Kerdal. ‘It’s as easy as that.’ The only thing is that
to this, Jeffrey and his family had tried to reach Ceuta by motor- the ‘trick’ doesn’t always work. The Red Cross only has one ship
boat. But a patrol ship of the Guardia Civil, the Spanish police, patrolling the coast, and is rarely nearby. Instead, the Moroccan
discovered them and towed them back into Moroccan waters. Navy fishes the migrants out of the water and brings them back
Jeffrey doesn’t want to say how much all of this cost, but it must to dry land. A bit of good fortune in an unfortunate situation,
be several thousand euros. The three others – Ammadou, Sidi you might say. After all, if no one comes to their aid, they can
and Moses – got the money for their journey from thei father, easily drift out into the Atlantic and that will be the end of them.
brother, and uncle. All of them had to sell something – a herd or But they don’t care about that. ‘Death or Europe’ is their motto,
a house – to raise the money. Moses’ father took out a mortgage as all of them say. The Red Cross ship is and will remain the great
on his land. ‘Everything is expensive,’ says Sidi. ‘The journey to hope for everyone willing to attempt the reckless Mediterranean
Tangier alone cost more than €300. Then there is the cost of crossing.
living here, and if you have to pay a smuggler, things get really
expensive.’ A hUMAN TrAGEDy
They are all spending a lot of money on their dream: some All the migrants in Tangier believe it is only a question of time
€3,000, others €10,000. Enough, in any case, to establish a new and personal fate until they slip through the eye of the needle
livelihood for themselves in their native countries. It is not the into paradise. The reality, however, is very different indeed.
poorest of the poor, as many would like to think, who are making ‘They have reached a dead end and can move neither forward
their way to Europe. ‘That has never been the case,’ says the nor back,’ says Archbishop Santiago Agrelo Martínez, in a sun-
Spanish migration specialist González Enríquez. ‘The poorest of drenched courtyard of the Archdiocese of Tangier. He is all too
the poor couldn’t afford the expensive trip.’ Nor is it the case – familiar with the fate of the migrants, from the work of Caritas,
as people in Europe or the West assume – that there is a direct which is headquartered in the basement of the cathedral and has
link between poverty and migration, and that most migrants been taking care of migrants for decades. ‘There’s hardly any
come from the poorest regions. The opposite is in fact the case. way to get to the Iberian peninsula any more,’ he assures me.
The more a poor country develops, the more people emigrate, Years ago, he says, the situation was very different. Martínez is
not the other way around. ‘You see,’ says González Enríquez, ‘the talking here about the time when there was organised human
more highly developed the state, the more “capital” people get trafficking involving an extensive network of criminals and
to use in another country. This includes skills such as a trade or a police officers. However, following greater investment on both
craft, the ability to speak foreign languages, or a degree. There is sides of the Straits of Gibraltar and a fight against corruption,
more education, more information, more networking, and above those days are gone.
all, more money to pay for the trip. Those who do not have any-
thing cannot travel. It’s as simple as that.’ In the last five years alone, Spain has spent about €250 million
on securing its borders, and Morocco has been given money by
In the camp close to the airport, there is a discussion about in- the EU to seal its borders – €68 million between 2007 and 2010
flatable dinghies, which are seen as the key to success. ‘I need a alone. Today, Moroccan Navy ships patrol the Mediterranean
dinghy! A dinghy!’ shouts a euphoric Kerdal, as if he’s had one coastline. Military staff are positioned in even the tiniest of
too many. ‘Then I’ll be over there like a shot, and everything will coves to prevent boats from setting sail. These measures are
be fine!’ Fernando, Mohammed, Sidi, and all the others nod having an effect. Between January and June of this year, the UN
eagerly and murmur, ‘Yeah, man, that’s how to do it.’ They’re not Refugee Agency registered only 920 immigrants arriving inGOETHE-INSTITUT ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN 105 15
Spain. This figure applies to the whole country. By way of com- isn’t easy, but that with strength and a will to work hard, you can
parison, in the same period, Italy and Greece recorded 54,000 achieve anything,’ Ammadou assures me several times over. ‘I
and 48,000 migrants respectively. In libya, there is hardly any- will work till I drop, even if that means 24 hours a day.’ Nobody,
one to stop the migrants’ boats setting off for Italy. In Greece, he says, can stop him. He tells me he is certain that the people in
most of the migrants come from Turkey. The many Greek islands Europe will help him and that he will find happiness there.
are difficult to patrol and a large number of them are very close
to the Turkish coast. So far, the authorities in Turkey have been What is this? Naïvety, stupidity, a lack of information? It’s cer-
doing very little to control the human trafficking. tainly not the last. Everyone has access to the Internet and tele-
vision, just like the rest of the world. But what is it that moti-
Every day, new migrants reach Morocco, even though the vates Ammadou, Kerdal, and all the others to leave their entire
chances of moving even a small step closer to their dream are nil. lives behind them? They all had work, a family, a house or a flat.
Those with magnificent dreams have no interest in reality. ‘Some They may not have been rich, but they had enough to eat, a roof
stay for ten years,’ says Archbishop Martínez. ‘They try again over their heads, and the children could go to school. But sud-
and again.’ Going back home is not an option for them. ‘No one denly, none of this matters any more. They turn their backs on it
wants the shame of being labelled a loser,’ he adds. ‘The social all and set off on a journey of several thousand kilometres.
pressure is just too great when the family had to sell its herd of Among those who make this journey are pregnant women, ba-
sheep or borrow money.’ And anyway, those who really do want bies and growing children. Some are threatened and robbed;
to go home generally don’t have enough money for the journey. women are raped. And they know before they set out that all of
‘It’s a tragic situation,’ he concludes. ‘These people undertake the this can happen. Once in Tangier, they live in cramped rooms
most incredible ordeals and risk their lives.’ with four or more people in conditions of questionable hygiene.
Those who are not so lucky end up sleeping in the open air. Day
The situation in libya is very different. There, at least, there is a after day, they beg on the streets. They can be picked up by the
real chance of reaching Italy. That said, the risk of dying at sea is Moroccan police at any time. They never know whether they will
also much, much greater, as are the ordeal and the suffering. reach Europe. And still they hold on tight to their dreams.
Those who pay the fee of between €1,000 and €2,000 are holed
up with the other passengers before the journey. Depending González Enríquez, the migration expert, calls them ‘economic
on the capacity of the ship, this can mean between 100 and migrants who want to come to Europe to work and to earn more
500 people. They are locked into abandoned buildings or ware- money than they do at home.’ This may be true, and may even
houses: men, women, and children, all crammed in together, apply to the Syrians here in Tangier. ‘We fled the civil war to Tur-
waiting for departure. This can take days or even weeks, de- key,’ says Yussef from Aleppo on the promenade in Tangier. But
pending on the weather and the coastal patrols. There is a tele- they didn’t like it in Turkey. ‘Being safe from the war is all very
vision and, if they’re lucky, more than one toilet, which doubles well,’ says the 35-year-old father, ‘but we want more. I want my
as a bathroom. Food is brought to them three times a day. children to get a good education; I want a decent salary so I can
offer my family a good future. No matter what the cost!’ Yussef
‘After one week, I only opened the door with a Doberman at my is living neither in a camp beneath the trees nor in one of the
side,’ says a smuggler, who has sent dozens of boats to Italy over tiny apartments without electricity and water, like the people
the years. ‘As time passed, they all went nuts and just wanted to who have come from sub-Saharan Africa. He’s living in a hotel
get out, out, out. But of course that wasn’t possible.’ The smug- and hopes to be in Ceuta with his family very soon. ‘The smug-
gler who told me all this has since retired from this work. Radical gler is very expensive, but he’s good. Once we’re in Ceuta, our
Islamists began interfering in ‘his business’, creaming off 50% of new life will begin.’ Yussef knows that a Syrian family will get
the profits. asylum in Spain, something that is not possible for those from
sub-Saharan Africa. They have the same dream as Yussef, but
Everyone in the camp near Tangier Airport believes that he or the wrong passport. Yussef felt that the libyan route was just
she has special skills that are in demand in Europe. Starting with too dangerous, which is why he, like thousands of his com-
the ‘excellent’ footballers and the students who believe they are patriots, came to Morocco. ‘A flight from Turkey to Algeria,’ ex-
of ‘above-average intelligence’ to the workmen who believe that plains Yussef. ‘That’s the usual route.’
no one works as well as they do. Television is their point of ref-
erence: they all saw on television that Europe needs them, that GIvING UP EvEryThING
everyone gets a big chance there. ‘That’s the way it is in Europe,’
says Ammadou. ‘I’ve chatted with German people, French people, There is no doubt about it: they can all be described as economic
and a guy from Norway on the Internet. They all told me that it migrants. But this explanation falls short of the truth. Of courseYou can also read
