“What do you want to be when you grow up, Marwa?”

We’re sitting in a circle in a small room in Gaziantep, in southern Turkey, on the border with Syria. “A doctor,” the little girl says—her beautiful Arab eyes sparkling with pride—“I want to help people.” “And you, Alya?” “A lawyer, to defend justice.”

Marwa (11) and Alya (13) have been living here with their three other siblings for six years, but their home is in Aleppo, 120 kilometers from Gaziantep. “But I’m going to be a soldier!” says Hamid, their lively 6-year-old little brother. “I want to liberate my country.”

“He’s more dangerous than a hundred of these militiamen because he has the power to change people’s minds.”

Dani, Fadi, Hussein, and Omar—by describing their efforts to expose the Syrian regime—serve as examples of the tragedy of war, but also of how resistance is possible: the only antidote to the gray disease of indifference.

How much are you willing to risk to stay true to what defines you most?

Klara, that’s right. Faith isn’t something to be taken for granted—it’s a part of you that you can’t give up, even if it means losing your life.

In fact, she tells us that being a Christian woman in Iraq, now a refugee in Kirsehir, means constantly feeling the pressure from those who ask you to be someone other than who you are.

“I wish Moses would part the sea before us.”

Let’s close our eyes and imagine that it’s possible to build a bridge that frees people from the hellish limbo of waiting.

“Dear Everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well.

Success comes to those who recognize its value, and creativity belongs to those who know how to reap its rewards.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your dedication to helping migrants, for your sincere feelings, and for your beautiful souls.

Nothing is as valuable as planting a seed of hope in the minds of those who have lost faith in others, and nothing compares to reviving vulnerable and oppressed hearts through the ability to care for them and never forget their suffering.

Your visit and your deep interest in our stories have shown me that—by simply renewing the idea of raising awareness, providing support, and defending rights—small seeds can have a big impact.

Keep up the good work, and I wish you a safe trip.

Let’s stay in touch

With love,

“Hussein”

* A letter from a young Syrian man who hosted us in Gaziantep.

Basheer is an elderly Iraqi refugee living in Kırşehir, Turkey. In Mosul, he was a civil engineer; now he spends his days studying the Bible: “When I was younger, I built many brick churches; now I build churches with words.”

The ferry from Izmir to Samos is a mix of contrasts.

I wonder if those who travel this stretch of sea do so without realizing it.

And so I feel like whispering in the ear of that Australian girl a few seats away, of that Chinese gentleman, of that elderly French woman—foreigners just like the migrants who set out on their journeys from distant lands—that this is a border, a sharp divide between two worlds where different rules apply depending on the color of your passport.

“Day after day, we stand by you as much as we can. Your words and photos tell us something about what you are experiencing along your ‘journey of humanity and brotherhood.’ Your testimonies and those of the people you meet—refugees, exiles, and migrants—and of all those who, like you, are on this ‘path’ of a wounded humanity, yet one that is strong and full of life and hope, reassure us.

“Together, we can build a humane and fraternal world. Thank you—starting with those—children, young people, and adults—who, like you, bear the wounds of ‘inhumanity’ in their very flesh; we must all be the ‘Good Samaritan’ to one another.”

Have a good trip!

Marcello, Lino, Jaime, Raffaello, Mario Vabai, Italo.

Samos Hotspot: Over 5,000 people in a camp designed to hold 650. Fifty percent are women and children, many of whom are unaccompanied.

What kind of twisted logic lies behind detaining people indefinitely on an island that is an open-air prison?

What courage and faith in the young volunteers from all over the world who choose to witness and dedicate themselves to being there, where those in power trample on human rights?

How is it possible that all sorts of violations occur in plain sight, with the complicity of national and international institutions?

What should we do with what we’ve seen, and how can we put into practice the strong sense of responsibility we feel weighing on our shoulders?

Fatma finally set foot on the mainland this morning. After a long stay at the Samos camp, they finally boarded the 11:00 p.m. ferry with us: she, slender in her white veil, and her two little girls, Aya, who is one year old, and Maryam, who is just a few months old. Classified as “vulnerable” at the Samos camp, after months of waiting, the UNHCR purchased tickets for them to Athens. Following the all-night ferry ride, they will be relocated to one of the reception centers in the capital, where their long wait to obtain their documents will continue.

“The first thing we need to restore is dignity.”

In refugee camps, food and clothing aren’t the only necessities: what matters most is restoring a sense of worth to the dozens of families stranded in shipping containers and tents.

Dignity means nurturing our humanity by satisfying other kinds of hunger: reading, culture, art, and music. That is how anger—however justified it may be in certain contexts—is transformed into a stroke of color.

Who says that in a camp like this one in Diavata, near Thessaloniki, a library and classes in painting and rap music aren’t projects worth investing in?

The passage of migrants here in North Macedonia is almost imperceptible and silent. In a country that has been struggling for years to define its identity amid the mix of languages, ethnic groups, and religions that is the Balkans, every night these invisible migrants move ceaselessly across borders. They walk for a week or put their trust in those who have decided to make human trafficking and deception their biggest source of income. Rest, hunger, and the cold take a back seat. Only those who are at their wits’ end stop at the Tabanovce transit camp. But it’s a matter of one night, two—no more—and then they’re off again: the real life coursing through their veins is the adrenaline that drives them forward.

“How would you design the best city in the world?”

You can become an architect of a happy city for an afternoon at the educational center in Belgrade, which finds a creative way every day to champion the youthfulness of migrants on the move.

When we don’t speak the same language, we need to find more creative ways to communicate. Hands kneading clay can tell stories of dreams for a new life we imagine, memories of a blurred past, roots that anchor us to our homeland, and branches that propel us toward the future.

And so Belgrade, the white city, can become Happygrad, the happy city. And we can get our hands dirty with soil together, without distinction, because all we need in common is the desire to build.

There is a station in Tuzla, a small town in the heart of the Bosnian forests. It is the first town you come to after the border with Serbia: many bus routes stop here, as does the only train that reaches the Croatian border, once a day. A narrow, sloping ledge shelters a row of blankets from the rain, on which about seventy young people—mostly Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Afghans—are dozing. They spend one, two, or even ten nights here, waiting for a seat to open up on the train to the border. There are no transit centers or facilities here where migrants can stay before continuing their “journey,” nor are there any international organizations looking after them. “They need shelter from the cold, food, and a place to wash, but they also need to talk and joke around,” says Senad, a journalist who has been active in his country since the war and who, along with other volunteers, spends his days with the young people at the station. “Many people here in the city don’t agree with what we’re doing. But all I see are human beings in front of me.”

Sarajevo

The Jerusalem of the Balkans.

Grenades that have left indelible marks on the concrete.

Creative Examples of Civil Resistance.

Open wounds to remember and heal.

New processes to be built, poised on the cusp of the recent past that is now the present.

The complexity of the unit.

Communication is something to be created, and it’s a daily challenge to come to terms with natural imperfection and diversity.

The fear of recognizing one’s own scars in the wounds of another.

50,000 young Bosnians have emigrated since the beginning of the year.

Cities where migrants pass through legally while waiting for the game.

May 27, 1992, Sarajevo.

22 people were shot while waiting in line to buy bread.

From that moment on, for 22 consecutive days, Vedran Smailović played the cello while sitting amid the city’s growing ruins, heedless of the danger posed by snipers. Every day, before an audience of rubble, he gave voice to every single victim.

September 20, 2019, Bihać.

Thousands of people are stranded at Europe’s gates. Croatian police are violently turning back anyone who tries to cross the border. Who will take up their instrument? Who will make the voice of this army of the forgotten resound in the ears of a deaf Europe?

Sometimes in these parts, you come across a border where you least expect it. We’re in Bosnia, in the tiny village of Velečevo along an unremarkable road. At one point on the left, there’s a guardhouse with a police car. Nothing special: it’s the internal border between two regions of Bosnia, and you can keep driving along the little road. That is, unless you’re Pakistani, Afghan, Syrian, or otherwise a migrant: in that case, if you’re traveling by bus toward the border, your bus ride is over. The police will make you get off because the government of the Una-Sana Canton, which you’re about to enter, doesn’t want you to end up crowding the closed border with Croatia.

And so they remain there, on a patch of land along a road. With nothing. No place to spend the night, nothing to eat. That’s why, for a year now, every single day, it’s been just Sanela and her father who’ve been there with bowls of hot soup and their smiles for anyone passing through their little village.

What can we learn from objects left behind along a forest path? We can imagine the stories, faces, and emotions of those who have passed that way.

To try to cross the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia without being spotted by the police, you have to go through the woods: walking through these beautiful green hills around Bihać and Velika Kladuša, watching out for minefields. You walk in small groups, especially at night, silently, almost invisible. But the traces left on the ground by this slow procession are striking: here, a family stopped for the night—you can see the remains of their campfires and the children’s diapers. There, a shelter made of fir branches where someone took refuge from the rain.

Red Bull cans everywhere, a desperate search for energy to get through the long days of walking, then dozens of packs of SIM cards: the need to communicate with those left behind and those already ahead.

Will these tracks through the woods lead across the border, or will they come to a halt against the Croatian police’s batons?

Insh’Allah, God willing

“How many more of us will have to die? We need your help—save us!”

This is the cry of those living in the government-run camp at Vučjak, a former landfill site near Bihać in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the border with Croatia.

A life marked by waiting: for a hot meal, if you’re lucky, or for a fresh start. Endless lines of tired, cold men, yet still capable of being grateful for the little they receive—a simple cup of tea—in exchange for everything: dignity, freedom, life. Only one dream remains: to take a chance on the Game to reach Europe.

Where does hope come from in a place like this? Perhaps even from despair, because when hope is desperate, it is all the more profound.

Hassan and Ishtab made it. They won the race: they crossed the Turkish desert, the sea, the Greek camps, the forests of Macedonia and Serbia, and the Bosnian tents in Vučjak; they tried and tried again, and in the end they managed to escape the Croatian police, their dogs, their drones, and the Slovenian barbed wire. There—they’ve finally arrived in Europe, in Italy.

Exhausted, sitting under a tree at the Trieste train station, they nibble on roast chicken: their feet worn out from the last 12 days of walking, but on their faces the subtle joy of those who have made it, and in their hearts the bubbling dreams for the future in this imagined Europe, a new land of milk and honey.

“I’m going to visit my brother in Milan, then maybe to Germany—who knows… but what matters is that I’ve made it here: now everything is easier!”

If we do not share in the pain of others, we remain solitary beings.

We return to Italy with a clear desire to make what we have seen with our own eyes, touched with our own hands, and felt on our own skin an issue that concerns us. Building a society means keeping the good of the community in mind, and this good will remain out of reach as long as barbed wire continues to separate borders that exist only in the minds of those who do not see, hear, or feel that pain. Because we remain convinced that shaking hands and looking each other in the eye is the only way to experience the beauty of the intersection of diversities—and to rediscover just how similar we are in our dreams, needs, and hopes.

Silent men with wounded feet are knocking on our doors. Recognizing ourselves as human beings means saying “yes” to their unspoken plea that we make the rights enshrined in our charters universal.

Yes, because that is the promise we made to one another as Europeans. Yes, because as citizens, we want to be able to enjoy these very same rights. Yes, because as people of the world, we must be allies on the path toward eliminating injustice.

So thank you to everyone who believed in Umanità IninterRotta and supported us.

Thank you to the organizations and individual volunteers who agreed to join us on a journey that remained just a dream until their “yes” became a concrete response and a source of encouragement.

Thanks to the people along the way who put everything on the line to teach us, once again, a love of life and faith in a world that sometimes betrays us, but for which it’s always worth taking the risk—no matter the cost.

This journey was a stop along the way, not the final destination. From here, we set out once more to fulfill our duty to act and give a voice to those whose lives are on hold.