Interviewers: Ahmed Salat Birik, Trinity ’21 and Natali Rey, Trinity ’18.
Jan is a Syrian refugee who currently lives in Greece. He was born and raised in Qamishli, a city in northern Syria, where his father owned an ice cream factory. He then went to university in Aleppo where he was an engineering student, but his education was cut short when the Syrian war broke out. After the university was closed after an attack, Jan went back home where he stayed for a while before his father sent him to Turkey for safety. He went back to Syria eventually and stayed there until he lost all his family, apart from his younger brother, in an airstrike: their house was bombed to the ground. He then went back to Turkey where lived and worked for five months but he had to leave: one day, while coming back from his job, he was attacked by some Turks accusing him of being one of the many Syrians taking away their jobs. Robbed, beaten and bruised, Jan went back to Qamishli. He stayed there for three months before finally managing to cross the border to Greece, after several failed attempts.
Jan tells a story of endless difficulties, as a refugee, including police harassment, poor services in the refugee camps, and racism from the Greek people. His attempt at asylum wasn’t successful and now he’s waiting to hear about a last attempt in which if denied again, as he says, his future is uncertain, and he will most likely be thrown in a detention camp–which in his words is just like a prison. Jan’s story is one of resilience and hope. Despite all the troubles he has been through, he tries to be positive about life and influence people around him however little he can. He has volunteered with several NGOs such as Samos Volunteers, MSF, and Advocates Abroad as a translator for the refugees. He also teaches Arab and Greek in the camp. Jan has big dreams that hopefully one day, things will get better and he will have a chance to resume his studies and maybe even become a professional teacher and keep changing lives!
Listen to Jan’s story:
https://soundcloud.com/nancy-kalow/interview-with-jan-zedin
Transcript:
“End of 2016, we actually lost our family…one of the times we were at work, me and my younger brother…well, you know, came back at home one day and there was an airstrike in our area and our house got damaged. The whole building actually collapsed down and everyone in it died so, (sighs) you know, it was a bit hard for a couple of months. To be honest, my brother got some kind of a condition, like depression, and they were tired of the whole situation in Syria, the whole danger, the whole… you know like every time we are on the road, there was, you know like checking points and then we had to run away then there was bombings and my sister-in-law was pregnant again, so they told me, you know, we should leave. So we did. Still had some friends, you know like, “you should come to Greece, Greece is a nice place and they like refugees” and bla bla bla all those shit that was not true (laughs) yeah. And that’s how I, we got to Greece.
Now it’s pretty bad, it’s not really ideal, I don’t know, we were definitely not expecting that, most people weren’t and a lot of them would say you know like, “if we knew it would be like this, we would rather stayed in Turkey.” Like in this cold weather, well I’m lucky that I’m in a container because I have been here for 6 months now. But there’s a lot of people who is outside, staying in tents and there’s a lot of rain who’s coming and it’s windy and it’s cold. And then there’s the food-lines, there’s a police paper lines and then there’s every time you get out of the camp lines, you know like police keep stopping you, asking you for papers. You know like, we feel angry how they treat us, sometimes you feel like sheep, they just keep us inside here and feed us whatever they want and then stay in here. What are we? Pets? “You are a refugee!” And then there’s that thing that you stay here for two years and then they send you back. That’s the worst thing, you know, like if you bear it, you know like you lived all what you lived in your country, despite the war, despite the conditions of the travelling, of the trips, of smuggling and all what you went through, to come here, stay here in a camp, in a shitty place, with shitty food with shitty people, and then after two years they tell you, “I’m sorry, we don’t want you, we don’t think you are good enough to get an asylum.” Couldn’t you say that two years ago so that we could find somewhere else to go? Sorry I’m not supposed to use swear words. It just happens you know sometimes. I never use swear words in Arabic but in English it’s kind of, you know, I have learnt from the movies, and they use it a lot, so it comes automatically. Anyway, I don’t know what to say about all this.
My future is probably prison: “detention,” they would say, but it’s prison, pretty much prison, yeah. I have hopes, you know, I have dreams, of course. Aston Martin, (laughs). Just kidding — not kidding — it’s a dream. But, yeah, I want to get out of this place and go somewhere and maybe finish my studies. Maybe study something else. Pretty mysterious future waiting for me. There’s hopes!”
