Motaz Omarien
When I submitted the application for asylum and protection to the Finnish government, that was in the north of the country, on the seashore, where there are many trees, marshes, and train stations at which one or two people wait, with the name of the city written in blue, and many of the elderly and people who neither laugh nor frown, like autumn and the long winter tied to a darkness that never ends.
I submitted the asylum application in the summer, at a small police station where there is not a single person. When I read what was on the door, I was asked to wait. When I entered, they took only my date of birth. From that moment I knew that the date of birth is more important than the name. For the name you can quite simply change every six months, but your date of birth is tied to the solid government records that no one can change, like the black granite on the Finnish coasts.
Then the car came — and it was a half-transport — and they put me in it, put me like any thing in relation to an employee carrying out his duty. We went further north, to a city whose name I could not spell or pronounce, because of the many vowels it contains, and my inability to distinguish between the letter W and the O. Something strange: how can this city be tied to two things I can never distinguish. It was something strange to me; and its name was at once very short and hard to understand.
In the end I arrived in that city, and in truth I arrived in that camp, or reception centre, or the big prison, whatever you want to call it. For it was, for us, a roof sheltering us from the rain, the cold, and the winds that bend the trees and bend our heads downward, despite the caps and shawls we put around our necks, and the thickness of the gloves we wear.
That journey began with the distribution of a little rice and potatoes and some things they considered a substitute for the money that must be spent according to the rules and regulations in force. I entered the kitchen; the place of the kitchen is in the hall, and everyone cooks with everyone. Everyone wakes after three or four in the afternoon. I still remember the word «animal» in Kurdish, where he who would later become my friend said it, because of my way of preparing food.
Everything spoke about you, and everything watched you, like the beasts in the cages. Yes, and quite simply, plainly, and directly: we are beasts in cages. Some of us steal bicycles, and in this city there were many bicycles, so much so that if one of them lost his bicycle he came to the reception centre and searched for it, and usually found it.
Despite that, these beasts — or the newcomers — had various talents, and we admired the others. My God, what is this talent that makes a person who takes a very little money into that wonderful house? He has the talent of stealing, that talent that defied all locks and all the security systems protecting those bicycles. They could quite simply open them, take them, sell them, and take the money. He was truly rich, and we admired him in one way or another.
In this society, you, as a beast — pardon me, as a new migrant —, women are to you like any thing you can take, and money is on the trees: you must pluck it, store it, and send it to your country. In this way you can be, in the eyes of your peers, successful, persevering, understanding what goes on around you.
My life went on in a routine: I go out every day and come back every day. Usually I like libraries, and on that day I met that girl in whom I saw her body for the first time: I talk with her and go with her. But the religious and moral barrier was wide and broad and long, and it prevented me. And after several years it disappeared, and nothing remained of it but the ruins of the city, but the ruins of the walls that say, with a touch of irony: it was here great, wide, mighty.