Hatay, Turkey - Dawn breaks, stretching its pinkish-orange gaze westward across the sky as the smuggler's van slowly rumbles along a dusty road toward the Helleh River, the natural border separating Syria and Turkey. Pulling off to the right-hand side of the road, the van stops along an earthen trench, 15 feet deep and 10 feet wide, running parallel to the border for as far as the eye can see. In a few areas, mounds of dirt have been compacted to form a thin walkway to cross the division, leading to foot-holes chipped into the far wall to help climb the rising embankment on the other side of the trench. Standing atop the tall embankment, you look down on the Helleh River with its green, slow moving waters laden with sediment. On the other side of the river, Syria.
 |
| Syrian refugees eagerly waiting the cross the Helleh border river into Turkey |
The day has only just begun, yet already dozens of Syrians gather on the far bank of the river waiting to cross—illegally—into Turkey. Women, children, and men, young and old, have traveled through the night to reach this crossing point. Now they congregate along the river, starring anxiously across the water, eagerly waiting to put the living nightmare that is Syria behind them. A single rope, spanning the breadth of the river, is all there is to help pull each of them across on a makeshift floating device. For hundreds of Syrians every day, this simple length of twine, four inches thick, and 150 feet long is the difference between a safer life in Turkey and a continued life in the midst of war. One by one, families load themselves and the few belongings they can carry onto variously styled rafts, and are tediously drawn across the river to Turkey.
 |
| Syrian refugees using a rope to cross the river on make-shift a raft |
The window of opportunity to cross the border is slim. Soon the Turkish military will arrive to stop the crossings, and everyone knows it. A tense atmosphere lays in the air, as thick as the dust being kicked up by the newly arriving refugees who are scrambling up the embankment with their children to the smugglers’ trucks waiting across the trench. Everyone's pace quickens, the tension ever rising, the grips of desperation clearly seen and felt. The personal story of each refugee is varied, but all are fleeing from violence and war. Many families traveled for days on end through war-torn areas and cities under constant bombardment. They don't know what life has in store for them, or their children in Turkey, but they cling to the hope that whatever the future holds, it surely must be better than living a life under endless shelling. The uncertainty is total. Many people have no idea of where to go, or where to turn. Yet, as the father of one family expressed to me, "I would rather risk my family's starvation, than continue to live a life under the bombs."
 |
| Crossing the trench |
 |
| The dawn crossing over the Helleh river |
No comments:
Post a Comment