The answer lies in where you’re coming from.
In recent days, we have unravelled our memories, some publicly and others privately. Among other things, we recalled our experiences in refugee camps, living in tents.
What is it like to live on barren ground under a canvas tarp, wading through mud in the rainy winter, baking in the summer heat, trying to block out the sounds from the neighbouring tent, enduring sleepless nights, with your mother cooking in the same cramped space, you studying, your father tinkering with a discarded appliance, your brother making a kite from an old newspaper…
Four people confined for a year and a half in a 1×1 metre space, concealing their thoughts and, more importantly, their fears, clinging to hope and feeding each other’s illusions.
What is it like to live in a tent today, in the middle of nowhere, in an unfamiliar and hostile place, with temperatures ranging from 38° to 44° Celsius in the shade? What kind of illusions can you nurture? These are no longer questions that concern us.
They should have stayed in their homes (if they had any). They should not have embarked on this futile journey, whatever their reasons for choosing the unknown. These are the answers we give ourselves and would give to the journalist from the British newspaper The Guardian before he wrote his report on the 53 people trapped in our dead zone for months.
Really, what do those who must decide the fate of these people think? Should they let them stay there as a deterrent to others contemplating the same journey? Should they be left there as tangible proof that we are effectively managing migration and that no one can set foot in Cyprus without permission? That this isn’t a free-for-all? And how long should they stay? Should these 54 bear the entire burden of an insoluble global problem?
They can neither move forward nor backwards; they are truly trapped, hoping for our compassion.
Let them leave, share their stories of why they seek a new homeland, have their cases examined, and yes, perhaps even rejected.
And then let them return, having learned that paradise doesn’t exist. And if it does, the seats are already taken.
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