Migrants arrive in Mytilene, island of Lesbos, Greece, on February 24, 2016. Picture by NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved. Crossing the Syrian border into Turkey by foot took only a few hours, but they were so devilish we thought it was a lifetime, and almost died doing so. Others who crossed the border at the same time, only a few metres away from us, got shot and didn't make it. After a long and exhausting ride to the Aegean Sea in the west, we undertook another border crossing into the Greek islands on a miserable rubber boat. It was more like a swimming coffin than anything else.
Along with forty other people, exhausted from shivering to the waves of the Aegean and fearing inevitable drowning, we spent these few hours holding our hands on our hearts. Reaching the shore of the islands was like a new birth, after barely surviving the shooting of the Turkish soldiers on the border with Syria.
Thinking of the thousands of dead bodies which lay deep on the bottom of that sea as we crossed from one continent to the other, it was certainly a reincarnation. They didn't make it, and couldn't see the land of the Greeks or admire it as we did.
