Not all people fleeing Syria seeking handouts on arrival
MOERS, GERMANY—After calling his parents to tell them he was alive and still not in jail, the first thing Khaled Ghazi did after arriving at the Vienna West train station was buy a Starbucks frappuccino.
He had been craving one since the Starbucks in his hometown Damascus closed four years ago, as Syria’s civil war escalated into cascading brutality.
Sitting under a tree in a park on a sunny, brisk day in a small town near Duisburg, Germany, he told of an Arabic-speaking German woman in Dortmund who asked him if he was “in need.”
“It’s the first time I am ever asked this,” Ghazi said.
“I have money. I’m not in need. I don’t come to Europe for money,” he said. “It’s about safety. It’s about being able to sleep and to wake up safe, to go out of your house, to do sports and things like this.”
Ghazi, 21, is one of thousands of Syrians who gave up a middle-class life to spend weeks sleeping in railway stations, dodging police, all to reach safety.
Most of the wealthy who wanted to leave got out early. Those who couldn’t afford to pay the fare on a smuggler boat to Greece remain in ruined towns across Syria.
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” said Ghazi, who studied English literature.
“If there was no war, I wouldn’t leave my country. Maybe I will not get the best job or have the brightest future. But now, there is not even this much, there is no future at all.”
Ghazi felt that to leave for Europe was his only option, although he said he wished wealthy countries closer to Syria — such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates — would accept more refugees.
University student fleeing Syria’s war may have reached road’s end | Toronto Star
So Turkey and GCC destroy Syria, yet they wont take any refugees?
@atatwolf you keep talking about dictators, yet you only have knowledge of one Assad, all others dictators controlling GCC you cant remember or dont disagree with.