Hanaa, a refugee from Syria, is looking up at a mural, showing exhausted figures weighed down by heavy burdens tramping across a bleak landscape. “That’s exactly what it feels like,” she says, “when you have to move on and find a country where you can be safe.”
“Zagreb Stands with Refugees” is the message of the mural, painted on the side of a house in the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts by street artist Boris Bare. The mural is a joint project by Croatia’s capital city, UNHCR and the Festival of Tolerance (FOT) to promote Zagreb’s welcoming culture.
The Festival of Tolerance is UNHCR’s long-standing partner. “The mural is a large public intervention in the centre of the city,” said Nika Bobić, Head of Development of Cultural Activities and International Cooperation at the festival. “It sends a message of welcome to refugees and is a good way of catching people’s attention.”
The FOT runs a renowned annual film festival, which in past years has been held in the spring. This year’s festival will be held in the autumn. But there was no need to wait with the mural, which was ready to be unveiled at a ceremony on 10 March.
Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Mayor Luka Korlaet said: “Zagreb is an open city, and we want all people to feel safe and welcome here.” The Ombudsperson for Children, Helenca Pirnat Dragičević, and the Deputy Ombudsperson for Human Rights, Tatjana Vlašić, also joined the unveiling.
UNHCR’s Representative in Croatia, Anna Rich, thanked the people of Zagreb for welcoming refugees “whether from Afghanistan, Ukraine, in between or further afield, and making all the difference to their inclusion”. She paid tribute to the city authorities for their “leadership in responding to the specific needs of refugees and asylum seekers”.
“This mural celebrates refugees’ creativity, strength and resilience as well as the hope that refugees carry with them that they will be able to find a home where they can rebuild their lives in safety and dignity,” she said.
Zagreb hosts the largest and most diverse refugee population in Croatia. In January 2022, it adopted an action plan for the integration of refugees that was expanded to include refugees from Ukraine under temporary protection. Zagreb’s integration plan is the first of its kind in Croatia. It supports numerous associations that help refugees with translation, Croatian language classes, educational workshops and other services. The mural is an example of the city’s public awareness campaigns.
If you look closely at the mural, you can see the heavy, rock-like loads the figures are carrying are in fact letters, spelling out “Nada”, the Croatian word for hope.
“The path of refugees is hard and they carry all they have on their backs, so I imagined that instead of them carrying their bags, they carried hard words of ‘hope’ “, said the artist, Boris Bare. “Hope of a better tomorrow is hard to find in normal life, let alone in their situations.”
Boris was born in Osijek, a city that suffered during Croatia’s War of Independence from 1991-1995. “I had to flee because of the war, so I was a refugee myself and this heavy topic was not incomprehensible to me,” he said. “I am happy and honoured if, by painting this mural, I could help in any way.”
Boris made the initial sketch at the airport in Prague, where he was waiting for a flight after having taken part in painting the John Lennon Wall with 28 artists from around Europe. “The Zagreb mural was done in harsh, cold and bad conditions,” he said. “I painted the mural myself but I had some help from a colleague to prep the wall, as it was in bad condition after the Zagreb earthquake (in 2020).”
Hanaa, 25, has been invited to the unveiling ceremony and she is impressed by the mural. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s not exactly like my experience but it’s like the experience of a lot of refugees.”
Hanaa has been living in Croatia for six years, with her mother Sawsan, sister Aya, 21, and brother Subhi, 17. They fled the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor and spent a year living in Greece before they were allotted places in Croatia under the EU relocation scheme.
The family was in fact more extended and mother Sawsan had hoped to start a new life with her brother and sister. “But my uncle went to Austria and my aunt went to Sweden and we were separated,” says Hanaa.
She is happy now in Zagreb and describes Croatian people as “lovely and warm” but the first years after leaving Syria were nevertheless very difficult. “Being a refugee is not easy at all,” she says. “I think it is the hardest thing you can ever do in your life.”
Quite apart from the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, when the family did not know “will we survive, will we die?”, there were the inevitable hardships and disappointments that come with forced displacement.
Hanaa, who had just finished high school when she left Syria, had had dreams of going to university and becoming a journalist. Instead, she and Aya are grateful to have work in retail while Subhi is studying landscape gardening. The family rent a flat in Zagreb and Hanaa is proud to be the breadwinner.
Hanaa is optimistic that the hopes of the family may still be fulfilled to some extent. Sawsan could one day visit her brother and sister in Europe and Hanaa might pick up the threads of her education later, online. “But hopes don’t happen immediately,” she says. “Especially when you are a refugee, hope takes time.”
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