Credit: Yana Zalesskaya. All rights reserved.I live in Germany now. I have a bicycle, an address and everything, and some wonderful neighbours. We talk in English and they teach me German words. On my first day here, my uncle, a German citizen, said to me, “look after this society, it will look after you in return”. He also said, “there is justice, you will take what it is rightfully yours, despite all the bureaucratic crap”.
He said these things while we were walking downtown in the city of Oldenburg for the first time, shopping for clothes, a few hours after I arrived. Right after I said to him, “I feel that this might be a dream and I will wake up any time now and everything will be gone”. He patted me on the back, smiled and said: “It’s not, you’re here”.
Even now, thinking about it, it takes me back to how suddenly it all came to be. One single decision to leave, leaving everything behind but faith in Allah and the love of family. I took my backpack, kissed my parents’ hands and left Cairo where I was temporarily staying, once and for all. Only Allah and some friends know what happened after that.
