Promised Land
Originally published: September 28, 2017
By Aryn Baker / Berlin
In the summer of 2015, a curious piece of
world news brought a flicker of hope to the wretched Syrian city of Palmyra.
Islamic State fighters had taken over the ancient town, toppling its monuments
and executing anyone who resisted their draconian rules. And yet at one of the
cityfs darkest moments, rumors of a sanctuary far away began to filter in,
generating dreams among a populace that had already lost everything. On Aug. 31
of that year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that her country was prepared
to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war in the Middle East.
gWe can do this,h she said in a speech in Berlin, calling it a gnational dutyh
to support those in danger. Across Syria, preoccupations with the civil war
gave way to fantasies of an unlikely new promised land: the Germany of Mama
Merkel.
The Chancellor suddenly became a positive
punch line to dark jokes about Syriansf futures, says Yehiya
Mohammad, a driver from Palmyra who at the time had just been released from one
of Syrian President Bashar Assadfs notorious prisons. gPeople would be talking
to each other c One would suggest, eJust go.f eGo where?f eGo to Mama
Merkel–shefs accepting everyone.'h
As the war eviscerated what was left of
Syriafs schools and hospitals, many Syrians like Mohammad realized that they
had no choice but to leave if they wanted their children to have a future. Taimaa Abazli, a 25-year-old
ethereal beauty from Idlib, had just found out she
was pregnant with her second child when she and her family decided to flee.
Facebook posts from friends who had already arrived in Germany boasted that
their children were enrolled in school and fluent in German. A former music
teacher, she was desperate to put her son in school, and she was encouraged by
stories of how Germans accepted veiled women. gBecause there are many Muslims there,
people donft mind the hijab,h she says. gThey donft look at it as something
strange.h
By early 2016, Taimaa
and her husband Mohannad had scraped together enough
money to pay a smuggler to get the family to Greece. From there, she figured,
they could travel by train and on foot to Germany, like hundreds of thousands
of Syrians before them.
In the past two years, more than 1 million refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany. About half, mostly from Syria, have been granted the right to stay and be resettled across the nation. They are trying to mix in a culture that is famously homogenized, orderly and keenly aware of its unwelcoming past. The Willkommenskultur (welcome culture) that led refugees to pawn wedding rings to pay for perilous Mediterranean crossings and families to become indebted to smugglers promising passage across closed borders hasnft always been matched by a genuine welcome upon arrival. Although the number of asylum seekers reaching Germany has declined by two-thirds since 2015, federal and state agencies tasked with processing their arrival are still swamped. As a result, most refugees now spend months languishing in temporary camps where they are denied the very elements–school enrollment, formal language courses, job training–that made Germanyfs integration program so successful at the start. gWe have become too much of an object on which migrants from all over the world pin their longings,h admits Joachim Stamp, minister for refugees and integration in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia. gThat is something that we can view positively, but it must also be clear that people donft automatically embark on a life of bliss the moment they touch German soil.h
Meanwhile, the arrival of all these
newcomers has had a powerful effect on German politics. And the court system is
so overwhelmed by appeals to asylum rejections that it is struggling to process
legitimate deportation orders. One who slipped through the net was Anis Amri, a 24-year-old rejected
asylum seeker from Tunisia, who plowed a stolen truck through a Berlin
Christmas market in December, killing 12.
Far-right parties in Germany seized on the
incident as a rallying cry against Merkelfs refugee policies, and in national
elections on Sept. 24, the anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic
party Alternative for Germany (AfD) did better than
anticipated, coming in third place with 12.6% of the vote. For the first time
since World War II, the shrill voices of far-right nationalism will be heard in
Parliament. Merkelfs Christian Democratic Union still came in first, with 32.9%
of the vote, but it was down from 41.5% in the previous election. Georg Pazderski, leader of the AfD
Berlin city chapter, credits his partyfs success with voter dissatisfaction
over Merkelfs refugee policies. gI think the refugee crisis is certainly one of
the reasons that our popularity rose,h he told TIME before the election. Merkel
may still be in charge, but the culture in Germany is becoming far less
welcoming.
The German dream of Taimaa
Abazli didnft turn out as she expected. By the time
her family reached Greece, in March 2016, the borders to northern Europe had
been closed under the pressure of so many would-be German asylum seekers. For
more than a year, the family was trapped in Greek refugee camps while European
leaders devised a plan to more fairly distribute the burden of asylum seekers
across the Continent.
For the past year, TIME has been following Taimaa and her family as they navigate the bewildering maze
of the European asylum system in search of a home. When her daughter Heln was born, on Sept. 13, 2016, Taimaa
was still living in a tent. The only thing that got her through that
experience, she says, was the dream of going to Germany. She imagined that by
her daughterfs first birthday the family would be settled in a home there.
Instead, in April 2017, they were sent to Estonia, along with four other Syrian
families, including Yehiya Mohammadfs. Being sent to
Estonia, says Taimaa, was ga punch to the stomach.h
So they left after only a few weeks,
capitalizing on cheap bus fares and Europefs open borders to try their luck in
Germany. They were not alone. Yehiyafs family, along
with the three others, left too. In tearing up their Estonian residency papers,
the refugees gave up free housing, generous welfare benefits, language lessons,
schooling, job training and a fast track to citizenship–all that to go back to
square one in Germany. To Taimaa, the chance was
worth the risk. gI lived in a tent, I gave birth, and then I returned to the
tent,h she says. gIt was dirty and disgusting. I suffered all this in order to
get to Germany. That was my goal.h
Now the Abazli family is in Germany and once again in a refugee camp, this one about two hours from Frankfurt. Because they were granted refugee status in a European safe haven, Germany has denied their claims for asylum. So they spend their minuscule camp stipends on lawyersf fees to appeal the rejections, in the hope of finding a sympathetic judge and staving off deportation back to Estonia. Despite the discomfort of camp life and the constant uncertainty, Taimaa says she made the right decision, even if it meant giving up her baby daughterfs first chance to live in a real home.
It wasnft until I spent the Muslim holiday
of eId al-Adha with Nour Altallaa, another new Syrian mother whose story Ifd been
following as part of the Finding Home project, that I
began to understand that decision. Nour, like Taimaa, gave birth to her daughter while living in a Greek
refugee camp. But she and her husband Yousef Alarsan
were lucky enough to win the equivalent of the refugee lottery: relocation to
Germany. This year, for the first time since the Syrian war split them apart
nearly five years ago, the young couple was able to reunite with close family
members over an eId meal at a cousinfs apartment in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen.
It was a scene of familial chaos familiar
to anyone who has been to a big Thanksgiving dinner. Doting aunts passed babies
from lap to lap as a gaggle of toddlers tore through the crowded living room,
pausing only to swipe Syrian sweets from a coffee table. A popular Arabic music
video played on the large-screen TV. Nour surveyed
the scene with a wide smile. gThis is the reason why all the refugees want to
come to Germany,h she said over the din. gBecause so many of our people are
already here.h
But as the numbers of refugees have grown,
so has Germanyfs anti-immigrant sentiment. Some of Nourfs
relations say they are frequently harassed for wearing their headscarves in
public. There have been cases reported in the media of German doctors refusing
to treat refugees and of teachers who wonft accept Syrian children. Overall,
hate crimes against refugees have trebled since 2015, according to Anetta Kahane, chair of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a civil-society organization
that tracks hate crimes and intolerance in Germany.
In the run-up to the September elections,
far-right parties like the AfD used anti-Muslim
rhetoric to rally support. One campaign poster featured a pair of scantily clad
women with the slogan Burqas? We prefer bikinis. It was clear that the campaign
was designed to provoke a reaction as much as it was to gain votes: the posters
were most prevalent in heavily migrant neighborhoods, hardly the AfDfs target population.
Two weeks before the elections, a gathering
of neo-fascist and white-supremacist groups held a protest in Berlin. About 500
black-clad neo-Nazis, pierced and tattooed punks, flag-waving middle-aged white
men and older couples marched past Parliament. The eventfs theme was gMerkel
Must Go,h but the anti-immigrant subtext was clear. Speakers urged the crowd in
English to gmake Germany great againh by sending immigrants gback to where they
came from.h One man held a placard with a photo of a blond toddler surrounded
by black children, captioned Germany in 2030. He refused to be interviewed or
photographed, calling TIMEfs journalists gLügenpresse,h
a Nazi-era epithet used to denounce the media.
Although the AfD
tries to distance itself from such groups, the partyfs appearance on the
national stage is likely to embolden similar demonstrations, now that these
groups feel their causes have an ear in Parliament. Political analysts caution
that while they may be loud, their numbers are still small–especially when
compared with the 9 million Germans involved in donation, volunteer or NGO
efforts to help refugees, according to a report from the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development. Still, a pro-refugee counterrally held the same day in Berlin saw a far smaller
turnout, and there are other indications that the country as a whole is
shifting its opinion on the newcomers. In one recent survey, more than half the
respondents said refugee children should not immediately receive the same
opportunities as German children.
The opportunities for refugees are not as commonplace as the far right–or the refugees themselves–might assume. Employers in the health care, transport and hospitality industries are desperate for workers to take the jobs that few Germans want, but stringent language requirements mean that most refugees must spend up to a year studying before they can even start looking for employment. According to the Federal Employment Agency, only 9% of the newly arrived refugees have found jobs.
It wasnft until I spent the Muslim holiday
of eId al-Adha with Nour Altallaa, another new Syrian mother whose story Ifd been
following as part of the Finding Home project, that I
began to understand that decision. Nour, like Taimaa, gave birth to her daughter while living in a Greek
refugee camp. But she and her husband Yousef Alarsan
were lucky enough to win the equivalent of the refugee lottery: relocation to
Germany. This year, for the first time since the Syrian war split them apart
nearly five years ago, the young couple was able to reunite with close family
members over an eId meal at a cousinfs apartment in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen.
It was a scene of familial chaos familiar
to anyone who has been to a big Thanksgiving dinner. Doting aunts passed babies
from lap to lap as a gaggle of toddlers tore through the crowded living room,
pausing only to swipe Syrian sweets from a coffee table. A popular Arabic music
video played on the large-screen TV. Nour surveyed
the scene with a wide smile. gThis is the reason why all the refugees want to
come to Germany,h she said over the din. gBecause so many of our people are
already here.h
But as the numbers of refugees have grown,
so has Germanyfs anti-immigrant sentiment. Some of Nourfs
relations say they are frequently harassed for wearing their headscarves in
public. There have been cases reported in the media of German doctors refusing
to treat refugees and of teachers who wonft accept Syrian children. Overall,
hate crimes against refugees have trebled since 2015, according to Anetta Kahane, chair of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a civil-society organization
that tracks hate crimes and intolerance in Germany.
In the run-up to the September elections,
far-right parties like the AfD used anti-Muslim
rhetoric to rally support. One campaign poster featured a pair of scantily clad
women with the slogan Burqas? We prefer bikinis. It was clear that the campaign
was designed to provoke a reaction as much as it was to gain votes: the posters
were most prevalent in heavily migrant neighborhoods, hardly the AfDfs target population.
Two weeks before the elections, a gathering
of neo-fascist and white-supremacist groups held a protest in Berlin. About 500
black-clad neo-Nazis, pierced and tattooed punks, flag-waving middle-aged white
men and older couples marched past Parliament. The eventfs theme was gMerkel
Must Go,h but the anti-immigrant subtext was clear. Speakers urged the crowd in
English to gmake Germany great againh by sending immigrants gback to where they
came from.h One man held a placard with a photo of a blond toddler surrounded
by black children, captioned Germany in 2030. He refused to be interviewed or
photographed, calling TIMEfs journalists gLügenpresse,h
a Nazi-era epithet used to denounce the media.
Although the AfD
tries to distance itself from such groups, the partyfs appearance on the
national stage is likely to embolden similar demonstrations, now that these
groups feel their causes have an ear in Parliament. Political analysts caution
that while they may be loud, their numbers are still small–especially when
compared with the 9 million Germans involved in donation, volunteer or NGO
efforts to help refugees, according to a report from the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development. Still, a pro-refugee counterrally held the same day in Berlin saw a far smaller
turnout, and there are other indications that the country as a whole is
shifting its opinion on the newcomers. In one recent survey, more than half the
respondents said refugee children should not immediately receive the same
opportunities as German children.
The opportunities for refugees are not as commonplace as the far right–or the refugees themselves–might assume. Employers in the health care, transport and hospitality industries are desperate for workers to take the jobs that few Germans want, but stringent language requirements mean that most refugees must spend up to a year studying before they can even start looking for employment. According to the Federal Employment Agency, only 9% of the newly arrived refugees have found jobs.