Still from Welcome, a film about the fate of Kurdish refugee seeking passage to the UK (Mars Distribution)

Rome, city of eternity for asylum seekers

They have travelled through Iran and Turkey, or crossed the Mediterranean to Greece, to find themselves blocked in Italy, waiting to obtain right of asylum. Cafebabel.com went to meet up these Afghan refugees in Ostiense, in the south of Rome.

Published on 9 October 2009 at 15:16
Still from Welcome, a film about the fate of Kurdish refugee seeking passage to the UK (Mars Distribution)

On the Via Ostiense, they try as best they can to avoid attracting attention. For the Afghan refugees that have run aground in the Italian capital, life in Rome is tough: a city where it is impossible to live and even more difficult to leave. "I have to wait here until my application for asylum is accepted," explains Samadeli — and it is a story that is endlessly repeated by virtually all of the Afghan migrants. During the day, they hang around the entrance to the underground at Piramide — on the B line heading out towards Laurentina — sitting in small groups, in a welter of empty Peroni bottles and dirty tissues. They speak in Pashto, and look warily at people they do not know.

Some of them are very young, some are old: all have them have applied for asylum. "I want to get away but I'm stuck here. I was forced to apply for asylum in Greece, but I left because I wasn't doing very well. I wasn't working. Here, I get odd jobs, and I'm able to help a friend. I won't be able to stay, but I'm not able to leave either. I don't want to head back to Athens, and there is no way that I could now go back to Kabul, which is my home town."

Leaving the resistance in Afghanistan

All the stories are more or less the same. If you listen to one you have heard them all: the overland journey through Iran and Turkey, the sea crossing to Greece and then on to Italy, where the endless wait begins. The Dublin II regulation stipulates that applications for asylum must be submitted in the first EU country where refugees arrive, and in many cases that means in Greece — a country that is almost never chosen as a final destination.

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"I didn't even know if I was going to be able to stay in Italy, where I was supposed to live with my brother," one 20-year-old man told us, "and I hadn't planned to apply for asylum. In Greece, they took my fingerprints. I wanted to be safe and happy in Europe – that's why I left the guerillas in Afghanistan – but then I felt like a prisoner. I ran away from from Athens just like I ran away from Ghazni. And nothing has changed. Wherever I go, I am treated like a refugee, and not like a human being."

Comings and goings in Ostiense

Not far from the station, in the camp where they sleep, the randomly pitched tents are separated by washing lines — an arrangement that reminds Samadali of the white slopes of the Safed Koh mountain range on the Afghan-Pakistani border, an area controlled by the Taliban where Bin Laden may still be hiding. The refugees from Safed Koh live under an old open railway wagon, where they sleep between the wheels. The man from Ghazni showed us a souvenir from home. "Smell the scent of this piece of leather that I brought from my country." Ghazni — which is 200 kilometres west of Kabul — is famous for its tradition of embroidered and inlaid leather. Then this symbol of a faraway place is carefully stored away amid the abject poverty of its new surroundings in Rome. Another one told us of occasional visits from the authorities to the camp: "Until yesterday, there was a boy sleeping next to my tent. He stayed for three weeks and then he left. They took him to a centre because he was only 15 years old."

There is not much in the way of solidarity between the men who to and fro between different camps. From time to time, Alem comes by to visit. "I don't come here to see anyone in particular," he explains. "Very few people stay here for long, and the ones that do are mainly adults. I mostly come just to make sure that they are safe, and that they are managing to survive." Alem arrived in Italy when he was 15, shortly after the death of his parents. When he first arrived from Greece, he spent two nights in the Ostiense camp. "Then they sent me to a foster home. Finally, I was granted political asylum. Waiting for the letter for two years was really terrifying. I was so afraid," he says. Today, Alem is studying accounting in Rome and his story, which is often cited as an example, was even included in a book of five refugee accounts, La città dei ragazzi by Eraldo Affinati. "I would like to write my own story myself, and publish a book one day," adds the young Afghan with a smile.

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