Ruqiya hugs her son in the offices of NGO Iliaktida on Lesvos. February 2021. © UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis
Ruqiya checks her mobile phone every five minutes. Her children promised to send her photos of the Sunday lunch that their grandmother would prepare. A salad with carrots and yoghurt, and mackerel with hot paprika – Ruqiya’s favourite meal.
But she cannot sit around the table with them.
For the past two years, the 40-year-old refugee from Somalia has been in Greece, mainly on Lesvos, thousands of miles away from her homeland. She only has one of her nine children next to her, 12-year-old Abdirahman, who is restless, constantly tracing circles and rectangles with his fingers on the wooden table.
“My son suffers from a severe form of epilepsy. We have no money and in Somalia my child had no hope. I hope that the doctors in Germany will help him. He may not be cured, but his condition can improve and he can have a better quality of life” said Ruqiya, who with her son is preparing to depart for Germany as part of the relocation programme for vulnerable asylum-seekers and refugees from Greece to other European countries.
“Poverty and lack of perspective are one side of the coin,” she says of her homeland. “The other, even darker side is terrorism and fear.” she adds.
Ruqiya’s family experienced this exact fear in mid-2018 when extremists started threatening the family.
“I was afraid for our own safety. I didn’t know what to do. My husband took one of our sons and they hid themselves. As time passed, I was afraid that they would knock on our door again and ask me to give them some of my children”, the 40-year-old mother recalls. “It was then I decided to take my son and leave. I chose the most vulnerable child, my sick boy. Of course, it hurt me a lot because I left eight children and my husband behind.”
Ruqiya asked her mother to take care of her other seven children, believing that they would be safe with her.
“It is very hard to live far from home, away from the people you love. Text messages, photos and phone calls do not fill the void. I miss them very much.” says Ruqiya.
She hasn’t seen her husband, her mother, and her other children since the end of 2018. The mother and her son arrived in Lesvos in September 2019 and lived in the Moria reception centre for about six months. Their stay in the crowded camp was anything but easy. In addition to the challenging conditions in terms of safety, hygiene, and services, they also had to share a tent with another family of four.
Although the families got along well, living together at close quarters was not easy because Abdirahman had a hard time adapting to the shared small space, and would often wake up in the middle of the night and make noise to wake the other two children in the tent and play.
As a single-parent family and due to vulnerability, Ruqiya and her son were eventually transferred to an apartment in Mytilene as part of the ESTIA programme, implemented by the civil society actor “Iliaktida”.
As their relocation to Germany approaches, Ruqiya is aware of the adjustment difficulties she and her son will face, but she is determined to get on her feet quickly.
“I will need help in the beginning. But I am not used to sitting around doing nothing and I don’t want to live on benefits. I am used to work and supporting my family. That’s what I am going to do in Germany as well. I will find a job once I am able to leave my son with someone who will take care of him,” says Ruqiya.
The sound of the mobile phone takes Ruqiya by surprise but brings a smile to her lips. She receives photos from Mogadishu of her seven children and their grandmother enjoying lunch. Four girls and three boys on a distant continent enjoying delicious food, laughing, hugging each other, sending lots of kisses to their mother and brother and wishes for their imminent relocation.
* Ruqiya and her 12-year-old son Abdirahman arrived in Germany on 30 June 2021 through the relocation programme coordinated by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, with European Union funding and support from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). They were the most recent of 4,026 vulnerable asylum-seekers and refugees, including unaccompanied children, who relocated from Greece to other European countries since the beginning of programme in April 2020.
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