The events described below occurred on the 8th of July, but we were asked not to publish them at the moment in order to protect some of those involved.
July 8th
The day started in a most intense way as our guide Amir told us that he had spent the whole previous night taking care of a family of 10 Somali refugees that he and his girlfriend, Leila, had found wandering lost in the streets of the Old Town. After convincing them that they were not from the Police or meant them no harm, they brought all 10 of them to their apartment and offered them a home-cooked meal, probably the first one they had in many weeks and a place to spend the night. It turns out that this family – a father, mother, some children, and other relatives – had left Somalia, traveled hidden in a freighter via the Suez Canal to Alexandria, Egypt, and then somehow made their way across the Mediterranean to be dropped in the Croatian coast. They had made their way – BY FOOT – from the coast to Sarajevo, an exhausting journey that involves crossing arid rocky high mountains while evading the police – all in the hopes of contacting a Bosnian guy who for the amount of 5000 Euros was going to smuggle them into Germany. We were deeply moved by this story, and by being brought so close to the tragic reality that we often only know from the news, and to which, from our hectic New York lives can only pay scant attention. We couldn’t help but find it somehow fated that we should come across this event, as it was a poem about refugees by Wislawa Szymborska that in many ways sent us off on this journey, and we found ourselves in this particular moment in history where those who had been forced to become refugees only 15 years ago were now helping those who were fleeing from civil war and strife in their homeland. We were so awed by Amir and Leila’s generosity and openness of spirit, which they saw only as the natural and human thing to do, having known themselves what it means to be powerless and in need of help. We read in some travel guide that a visit to Sarajevo was a humbling experience, where one is reminded of how much we take for granted in our comfortable lives where we don’t encounter any privations. Little did we know that this lesson would come not only from the still-felt effects from the horrible experience of the recent war, but also from a close encounter with a distant but no less awful war in Africa that is still taking place and which is showing once again the utmost cruelty that man can bring upon man. After debating between ourselves whether or not it would be the right thing to do, we respectfully asked Amir if he would arrange for us to meet the Somalis and record their story on tape. The father of the clan, quite understandably, refused to do it for fear of being found out.
In an update from Amir that we received two weeks after this episode, he informed us that the family had reached the German border but had been turned away. We have for the moment no further news of their fate.
