“Nobody wants to stay in Greece,” Saleem said quietly.
Roksana, less na?ve than most girls her age, was not surprised to hear Saleem say this.
“Where are you trying to go?”
“England.” Saleem sighed. Saying it out loud, it seemed like an impossibly far destination. “My aunt is there.”
“Ah, England,” Roksana nodded as she looked out at the other refugees. “Yes, England is very popular.”
“Greece is beautiful, but Greece does not want us here.”
“It is a small country. The government does not have the money to help everyone.”
“But you . . . you give food and help.”
“We are just people, not the government.” Roksana did not go into ideology or motives. She was not here to sing about the cause. It was her quiet presence that spoke to her beliefs. Saleem felt ineloquent around her.
“You do not agree with the government?” Saleem felt a little apprehensive for her. Where he came from, it was more than dangerous to blatantly oppose the thinking of those in power. Roksana was young and bold. His father would have liked her.
“We believe that people should be treated decently. We know what happens when people come to Greece, and we don’t think it should be this way.”
“People cannot apply for asylum here. Why is it so different?” Saleem had initially been frightened by the stories he’d heard about Greece from the boys in Attiki. He worried that the rest of Europe would be similar, a dead zone where his family would be adrift forever and in fear of being sent back to Afghanistan. The life of transience was exhausting both physically and mentally. But the Afghans he’d met also told him tales about the better worlds. Places deeper into Europe, countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, did not turn up their noses the way Greece or Turkey did. Afghans there had been given second chances at having a normal life.
“Most people do not understand our system. How did you get here?”
Saleem did not want to answer. He twisted the cap back on the bottle of water and shrugged his shoulders cheerfully. His playful elusiveness made Roksana laugh.
“Tell me what happens here,” Saleem said instead.
“Yes, yes. Okay, forget the question. This is what happens to most people who come here. They are arrested and the police take them to detention centers. They should be clean and safe places for people to stay, but there are too many people. There is no room. People say it is like a prison, even for children. They say it is worse than the place they came from. Sometimes they stay there for months.
“One day, the doors open and they get some papers. The papers say you have one month to leave Greece. Some people even get a ticket to Athens so they can leave from there.”
“But asylum? There is no asylum?” Saleem was once again grateful for the false passports and the good fortune they’d had not to be stopped in Piraeus. They’d breezed through checkpoints without a second glance. According to what Roksana was telling him, their story was an exception.
“There is no real asylum. You must have work to get asylum. How can people find work?” She waved in the direction of the park. “First, you need a work permit. And for a work permit, you must apply for asylum. You see the problem?”
“Why are your friends here talking to refugees and writing these papers?”
“We volunteer. We want to be here. No one is giving us money to come. We come because we want to help.”
Saleem looked at Roksana and wondered what kind of person he would be if he were in her shoes. He tried to picture himself as a high school student in a peaceful Kabul, coming home to his mother and father. Would he take up the cause of strangers? Would he care enough about how people were being treated that he would spend his time handing out food and filling out applications on their behalf?