It's somewhat ironic, and even more traurig, that I had never met any Afghans or Iraqis until coming to Austria. In the United States, we're not confronted with the "collateral damage" of the wars we've started in an up-close, personal way. We have our oceans to protect us, meaning that very few refugees simply wash up on our shores.
The situation in Europe is rather different. Because of its geographic position, it's quite common for refugees from conflict-ridden regions of the world (Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent) to find their way to the shores of the Mediterranean, and then by boat to Italy, Greece, or Spain. From there, due to open borders within the EU, it's relatively common (although bureaucratically non-permissible) to move on to countries like Austria, where the economy is stronger.
And so I encounter Afghans, in my classes and in my private life, and I hear their stories. I do job interviews with the sixth form and, looking at the resume of the girl sitting across the table from me, learn that she had never gone to school before arriving in Austria in 2008. She can't even read in her native language, only in German (and English).
Today, one of my Nachhilfeschüler (tutees), who also attends the Übergangsklasse in my school, told me his entire Fluchtgeschichte. His family left Afghanistan in 2001, when the war started and he was just a toddler. They spent a few years in Pakistan, which was of course overflooded with Afghan refugees at that time, before moving to Iran. Because they had no papers, Ahmed* wasn't allowed to go to school. His father took his to every school to Tehran, but they all told him the same thing: as a refugee, he had no right to an education. "That is inhuman," he told me. "How can you tell an eight-year-old kid he's not allowed to go to school?" So he worked during the day, and went to an illegal school at night.
Four years later, the family fled again, this time to Turkey. From Turkey, they arranged transport (with a Schlepper, a smuggler / coyote) across the Mediterranean to Greece, where they were found by the police and registered as refugees. Because Greece was at the time in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in history, there was very little money for providing them with subsistence. So they moved on to Italy, where Ahmed and his brother slept on the streets for two weeks, because they weren't allowed into the emergency men's shelter with their father or the women's shelter with their mother and sisters. After a few failed attempts to cross the border into Switzerland, they arrived in Austria, where they were sent to a Flüchtlingslager, a refugee detention facility, for seven months. Only when they received a positive verdict on their application for asylum were they given passports, allowed freedom of movement within Austria, and began learning German. This was in 2009. Eight years of Flucht, of insecurity, of Kinderarbeit (child labor). "Now I can go to school," said Ahmed, "and because I have this chance, I need to use it." He's already worked enough, he says, in his 16 years, now he wants to study for as long as he can.
It is this positive outlook that never ceases to amaze me. As an American, I've never once encountered hostility from the Afghans I've met. My students and Nachhilfeschüler, the people I do improv with, have never once blamed me, or my country, for the horrors they've witnessed. Which is almost worse. I could handle hostility: I would just turn on my customer service face, apologize profusely, and try to defuse the encounter.
But I have no defense against their humanity, resilience, and desire to keep looking forward. "All I want is to live in peace," said Ahmed. And that fills me with a deep sense of shame. Why have I never done anything, except console myself with the knowledge that I was against the Iraq War back in 2003, to stop the carnage? How were there entire years when I almost forgot the wars existed? Why have I never really understood until now the true extent of the horrors inflicted by the U.S. military upon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? There are only 300 million people in the world who can change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, and I'm one of them. So why haven't I tried?
I was always against the War, but it took coming to Austria to turn me against war. There is no justification for this. No foreign policy goal that's worth the hundreds of thousands of dead and dying, the lives uprooted, the childhoods tarnished, the human potential lost.
* Not his real name.
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