Palestine , Syria , Cross-border Uncategorized 4 Smiles “A Palestinian Snowman in Müllheim” Photos of drawings were taken by Sue Gregory, Hamada’s teacher. by Reeman Bustami 12/10/2015 A story by: Samira Jamil* My name is Mohamed Al Rosan, but everyone calls me Hamada. I was born on 1st January 2003, at the Al Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria.
My grandparents were among the first Palestinians to settle in the camp when they had to leave their homeland of Palestine. Mama’s name is Lina and Baba is Iyad. I have two older brothers, Yamen and Mulham.
Yamen was in his 3 rd year at university studying English Literature and Mulham was training as a medical equipment technician. I was in Junior 4 at the Al Yarmouk School. I loved school and had many friends.
Our life was happy and peaceful. My family’s ‘journey of hope’ started in Damascus in October 2012. Timeline of ‘My Journey of Hope’ from Syria to Germany Al Yarmouk Junior School, Damascus The camp was our home and more than 400,000 other Palestinians lived there too.
There were no tents at Al Yarmouk, but proper buildings; houses, schools, shops, clinics, supermarkets and barber shops. Baba had a shop selling mobile phones, computers and satellite dishes. It was called Al-Rayed.
There were 3 other people working for Baba and they were always busy fixing satellite dishes all over the camp. Baba really enjoyed his work. When I didn’t have school, I used to go and help him in the shop.
Life at Al Yarmouk was perfect but then the war started. Everything changed then. Our living room at our home in Al Yarmouk My bedroom when we left Al Yarmouk Our peaceful home became a terrifying place.
To escape the missiles, we hid in the bathroom, all five of us huddled together, shaking with fear. The fighting became worse with every passing day. It continued in the streets even during the day.
I couldn’t go to school anymore. My brothers couldn’t go to university either. Baba had to close his shop.
We were terrified to walk in the street. Snipers were on the roofs of most of the buildings, ready to shoot at any moment. All day long we heard the noise of gunfire and rockets.
Every time we stepped out of our home, we didn’t know if we would come back home alive or die like thousands of others in Syria. For days and nights we had no electricity and had to use candles. There was no water in the taps and we couldn’t wash.
Baba couldn’t use his car anymore because there was no petrol. Children didn’t play outside like before and no one walked in the street. I used to love it when our relatives came to visit us at home.
I missed playing with my favourite cousin, Bayan. No one came to our house anymore. Every time I looked at Mama she was crying.
Whenever I looked at Baba, he would try to smile but his smile was different now. He looked worried and afraid and didn’t say much. I could tell that he was thinking about something but I didn’t ask.
That was the beginning. Our happy lives were gone. Baba told us that we had to leave our home.
Leaving Al Yarmouk First we went to my grandparents’ (Baba’s parents) home. For a few days it was safe there but the fighting got worse. There was always a bad smell in the streets.
Mama told me it was from gunfire. Every day we saw aircraft firing missiles and dropping bombs. It was like a film but it was real.
We couldn’t sleep anymore. We didn’t feel like eating Mama’s delicious cooking either. We were so afraid all the time and didn’t know what was going to happen next.
I remember one night I had a bad stomachache but because of the fighting my parents couldn’t take me to the hospital. They gave me medicine and my tummy got better but I still felt sick with fear. We had to move again, this time to my other grandparent’s home.
A few days later the fighting reached that part of Damascus too. It was then that Baba said we must leave Syria. Some of our friends had stayed on at Al Yarmouk.
They told us that Baba’s shop was hit by a rocket and the next day, our home was too. I kept thinking of my room and my toys and all the fun I’d had playing with them. Baba said we should only pack a few small bags.
I had to leave all my toys, my games and my new computer. Mama wanted to take all our photographs but there were too many. She picked up a few but left the others where they were.
Maybe she was hoping we would come back one day and find them all there waiting for us? Our beautiful camp became a war zone. We saw photographs of houses full of bullet holes and burnt buildings.
Losing everything was a big shock to my family. Baba kept reminding us that we are luckier than other families. We were still all together.
Some of my brothers’ friends who used to visit us at home had been kidnapped, others were in prison. Even as a nine year old, I knew that they would probably never come back to their families. I used to listen to the grown ups talking.
We spent most of the time in one room and I heard things I didn’t want to hear. I became so afraid of many things. The thought of Yamen and Mulham never coming back was one of them.
I tried to block these fears out of my mind, but I couldn’t. Like many of our relatives and friends, we had to leave. Life had died in Syria.
Our hearts were so heavy as we said goodbye to our beloved Syria. It was October. Our home was hit by a missile Our Journey Carrying a few small bags, we started our journey of hope out of Syria.
Baba told us the plan was to go to Lebanon, then Egypt and then onto Libya. He heard that he could find work in Libya and that my brothers and I could continue our studies there. We travelled from Syria to Lebanon by road and then onto Egypt.
We entered Egypt without any problems. The problem was when we wanted to leave Egypt to go to Libya. The Egyptians didn’t let us leave.
I asked Baba why and he told me it was because we were Palestinian. I looked around and noticed that all the other Syrian families travelling with us had left to go to Libya. We were the only family that remained at the border.
It was night time. I remember seeing Mama, crying and telling the officer; “is it not enough that we had rockets fired at our home and had to run to save our lives, yet you still discriminate against us? We were born in Syria and lived there all our lives and these travel documents were issued by Syria.” But there was no use.
There were a few hotels in the area but there were no rooms. We had to sleep on the pavement by the sea. We were hungry, cold and tired.
We used our bags as pillows, but had nothing to cover ourselves with. The ground was hard and the air was damp. In the morning, a man that Baba got to know offered to drive us to Libya.
He was a people smuggler. Baba paid him and we got into the back of his truck. He told us to lie down, covered us with blankets and drove off with us.
When we arrived at the border, the officer told us that we didn’t have an exit stamp and we had to go back to Egypt to get our travel documents stamped. We went back to Egypt where my parents decided to stay. Baba started looking for work.
But there were no jobs. Baba went to the local school to ask if I could join but they said no. After spending a month in Egypt, we left to Benghazi to try to start our life again.
