Syrian Picnic
Last year, my husband and I walked from England to Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were travelling in the opposite direction.
Drinking coffee at a German café, we read in the newspaper that Hungary was erecting a fence to keep the refugees out, a four foot high barrier, over a hundred miles long, snarling with razor wire. These people trying to get in must be scary.
People talked about them all the time, these unwashed hordes rampaging through Europe, but we never saw them.
‘I’ve seen these people on TV,’ one man told us, ‘They carry Kalashnikovs; we don’t want them here.’
In Hungary, when locals talked about the refugees or they were mentioned on the news, it sounded to our ear as though they called them ‘migrash’, like a terrible skin condition. There were stories of refugees assaulting police officers, throwing their babies over that razor wire fence. The migrash is crawling over Europe, spreading, making it itch.
As we walked along a road in Croatia, we saw a long line of buses transporting people to a temporary refugee camp. All the drivers were wearing surgical masks. Poor drivers, forced to share a confined space with these disease-ridden, barbarous people.
Friends back home asked if we were really planning to continue our walk. These are dangerous times. You don’t know what these desperate people might do to you.
What would happen if we met any? Would we survive?
In Turkey, in the town of Yalova, we climbed up a hill to a park with a sweeping view of the Marmara Sea. We turned round after admiring the scene and saw an old woman dressed in black, her head covered, walking towards us. A refugee, coming for us, HELP!
‘Come’, she gestured, and we followed her helplessly towards a group gathered around a wooden picnic table, an old man, several young women wearing burkas and a few children, maybe her husband, daughters and grandchildren.
The group had made a small fire and were cooking something in a large saucepan. There were drinks, bread and fruit on the table. What are they going to do to us? Maybe we’re part of some ritual sacrifice.
One of the daughters took her mobile phone out and started typing something into Google Translate. When she had finished, she turned the screen towards us, and we approached with trepidation.
She had written, ‘We are from Syria. Would you like to eat with us?’
Writing a piece of fiction is an excellent way of making a political situation come alive. The Syrian refugee crisis is desperate, so 10/10 for writing this.
You could improve it in several ways, I think. Have the story tell us a little more about who you and your husband are and why you're walking to Turkey, so that you engage our sympathies and we want to know what happens to you. You would have experienced some difficulties and dangers yourselves I suspect, and you would be tough, self-reliant people. Unfortunately, that means that your meek acquiescence to the old lady's invitation doesn't ring true. And why would they wish to share their food with you anyway? One solution to this might be that you are suddenly in a vulnerable position - perhaps your husband has slipped and fallen and you need help. The group is the only potential help you can see. They rescue your husband and then share their food.
This is great, Hannah. I loved the reference to google translate :)