Syrian archaeologist Abdullah writes about Cologne as a new home "I promise to be a good refugee"
by Sabine Kleyboldt, Catholic News Agency
The Rhine reminds Jabbar Abdullah of the river of his childhood: the Euphrates in Syria. That makes it all the easier for him to feel at home in Cologne. However, the way there was long, as he describes in his book.
Cologne/Aleppo (KNA) "Goodbye, my Euphrates, my good friend, please stay alive, someday I hope I'll come back to you." In 2012, Jabbar Abdullah said goodbye to his homeland of Raqqa on the Euphrates River in almost poetic words. The Assad regime is forcing the student to flee because he sprayed "Free Syria" on the walls of the house. Eight years later: "I like Cologne, I'm on the Euphrates. I'm on the Rhine... I live here and I want to continue living here like everyone else." In the meantime, the archaeologist has found a new home in Cologne – his “Raqqa am Rhein”, as he also called his book.
Abdullah, who came to Germany in 2014 and has been working at the Romano-Germanic Museum next to the cathedral since 2016, does not want to tell another dramatic escape story. He would prefer not to be perceived as a refugee at all. But as a person who had to leave his homeland Syria due to adverse circumstances. A country that he lets the reader smell and taste.
The oven-warm bread that his mother Maryam brought from the village in the morning, the black tea, hot and sweet, enjoyed under the vine arbor or the olive trees in the father’s garden, often during conversations with the neighbors about “Allah and the world,” he writes 33-year-old who describes himself as a non-practicing Muslim.
The idyll ends when the "Arab Spring" also reaches Syria. In Abdullah's place of study, Aleppo, demonstrators are brutally beaten. Out of fear, Abdullah returns to Raqqa with a bachelor's degree in archeology. There he and three friends sprayed freedom slogans on the mosque and the headquarters of the Baath party at night - and fled to Egypt via Lebanon with his brother's passport.
He is doing his master's degree, but after a year in Egypt, life here becomes dangerous too. He wants to apply for asylum in Europe with two fellow students in Turkey. A smuggler smuggles them to Bulgaria for 300 euros, where they live in refugee camps for months. Then finally: A bus via Romania, Hungary and Austria to the “Promised Land”: “After 45 hours of driving we saw the first sign that said Germany. For us, this sign was like a symbol of freedom and a better future,” writes Abdullah.
But first, grueling waiting in refugee shelters, most recently in Cologne. The young man is fed up with inactivity and gets himself a moderately affordable German course. And he drives the tram for hours to "see people how they behave on the train, because I was here too and would ride in such trams for the rest of my life, or at least for the time being".
After receiving a positive asylum decision, Abdullah manages to find an apartment and a job. But he doesn't get any peace, the news from Syria is too bad, where the terrorist militia "Islamic State" (IS) is now spreading terror. In December 2014, the International Alliance launched an attack on IS. Abdullah's brother reports from Raqqa about continuous bombardments in which many civilians die. In mid-2017, the Kurdish PKK, which cooperates with the USA, takes over the occupation; hardly any improvement for the people. And even in 2021, the situation is still anything but peaceful.
In Cologne, Abdullah is committed to the integration of other refugees, organizes art exhibitions and intercultural encounters. He was all the more stunned when, on New Year's Eve 2015, men from North Africa in particular attacked women: "It's unbelievable. It just can't be allowed to happen." That's why he and others set up the "Syrians against violence against women" campaign, which demonstrated on the cathedral square in January 2016. In "Raqqa am Rhein" Abdullah looks lovingly and ironically at the country that has meanwhile naturalized him - and still occasionally considers him a terrorist. "I promise to be a good refugee so that everyone will accept me. Someone who eats pork, gets drunk in the bars every day, who is against the building of mosques and for a headscarf ban.” Abdullah's next project: A novel.
© KNA
