(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My friend died trying to get to England. Now I know why [1] [] Date: 2024-02 A few months after our shared cigarette at the bus stop, Zagros called me from Trieste, Italy. He was ecstatic. Finally, 12 years after the authorities had deported him to Iran, he would soon be back in Germany. He got there, but within a week he had packed his bag again and continued onto Calais. “I realised I don’t want to go to Germany,” he told me over Whatsapp. “I have too much pain there.” A sudden change of plans, to put it mildly. My guess is that, now that he’d completed the incredible task he’d set for himself, he felt an intolerable emptiness – just as the familiar landscape forced long-repressed memories back into his mind. Together they created a crisis so deep that within days he’d abandoned what he’d gained and joined some guys on their way to the UK. “Maybe England will have more heart for me,” he wrote. Zagros’ last Whatsapp message to me was optimistic: “Let’s meet in London.” Next to this invitation he’d placed a white heart and an emoji of a hand making a victory sign. On Valentine’s Day 2023 his phone went quiet. No more double ticks. Now, thanks to openDemocracy’s new series, I think I know why. The hardship of arrival Arrival is often thought of as the prize after the odyssey. As a moment of catharsis. But, in Europe, whatever relief is felt is usually short lived. Part of the problem is that physical barriers don’t go away once somebody travelling irregularly makes it inside a territory. The threat of immigration detention, jail, and deportation is always present. At the same time, bureaucratic nets spring up to restrict and debilitate any attempt at self-care or self-determination. Asylum regulations, status determinations, status-linked access to rights and support, lengthy and unintelligible bureaucratic processes: these are the poisons states have mixed into the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Zagros knew this. I think it’s another reason why he decided to head for the UK after arriving in Germany. Another friend, Fawz, didn’t. We met in 2018 in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He had escaped the war in Syria, I was a relief worker. We were neighbours for a few years. After football on Sunday nights, we would smoke shisha and drink tea under the generator-powered, neon lights of the camp. On other evenings his wife, Nura, patiently withstood my broken Arabic to teach me how to prepare the dishes she liked to cook. Fawz was 22 years old when he had his third son. The birth happened in a car because they couldn't afford the hospital. Nura was exhausted by the ordeal, he was incensed. They couldn’t go on living like that, he insisted. He had an uncle in the Netherlands. “If we won’t get help from the UNHCR resettlement programme I will go by sea,” he said. I hadn’t taken him seriously. Two years later, in June 2022, Fawz called me from a smuggler’s house on the Libyan coast. He had taken a loan from some Lebanese families to get to Egypt, and from there to Libya. Now he was waiting for a boat to cross to Italy. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/my-friend-died-trying-to-get-to-england-now-i-know-why/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/