Paris, Encore Une Fois!

C'est Paris, créé avec Google Picasa.

Bienvenue à Paris!

Salaam. Paris calling. Bonjour tout le monde. Je vous écris cette lettre de Paris.

It's been complicated, and even though I should be familiar with the damp, I'm not quite over the weather shock after having moved from the Arabian deserts to Yorkshire. Whilst I've made a certain peace, I have needed to make minor escapes after feeling trapped by the terminally wet and grey skies - even if crossing the Pennines to view things differently (not that much to be honest), though most recently I had some time in the heart of London, which, of course, is a city which I have always found to be an exciting and dynamic place. 

Over the Eid break, I took the long train journey from the north of England picking up the Eurostar Service from London Kings Cross/St Pancras International to Paris, Garre du Nord. I have been staying close to the Rue de Quatre Septembre in the 2nd Arrondissement (2^e) in the area known as Opera. The summer air, tight cobbled streets and open air cafe atmosphere has been a welcome relief and yes, I've done the touristy things as well - taken an open top bus ride to see the sights - Notre Dame, the Latin Quartre, the Seine etc. I've paid a visit to the Louvre, seen da Vinci's Mona Lisa and taken the walk along the Jardin de Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the fashionable Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe. Of course, no trip to Paris is complete without a trip up the Eiffel Tower.  

Aujourd'hui, c'est ma dernière nuit à Paris. Here's taster photograph. More to follow InshAllah.

The Boys Who Walked to Europe

This pains me and impresses me at the same time. Leaves us with a lot of food for thought.  

Out of Afghanistan: the boys who walked to Europe 

Behind the security bars of a spartan, white-tiled room, 25 youths are arranging bedrolls on the floor. The workers on the Salvation Army nightshift, who watch over these lone foreign teenagers in a shelter in a gritty corner of Paris, are distributing sheets and sleeping bags; there are a couple of boys from Mali and a contingent of Bangladeshis; the rest have travelled overland, by every conceivable method, from Afghanistan. The youngest are 13 years old, pint-sized cousins from Kabul who arrived that morning after a journey of five months. They take off their trainers and place them at the end of their bedrolls. One of them, Morteza, gingerly peels off his socks. The undersides of his toes are completely white. I ask what happened to his feet.

"Water," he says. Where was he walking in water? Mohammed, the boy on the next bedroll who knows more English, translates. "In the mountains," he says. Which mountains, I ask, thinking about the range that forms the border between Turkey and Iran. "Croatia, Slovenia, Italy,'' Morteza says. Mohammed intervenes. "Not water,'' he clarifies. "Snow." Suddenly I understand. Morteza's feet are not waterlogged or blistered. He has limped across Europe with frostbite. Morteza's 13-year-old cousin Sohrab, pale and serious beyond his years, recounts, in English learned during two years of school in Afghanistan, what happened. 

"Slovenia big problem,'' he says, explaining how he and Morteza, "my uncle's boy'', were travelling with eight adults when they were intercepted by the Slovenian police. Two members of their group were caught and the rest made a detour into the mountains. They spent five days in the snow, navigating by handheld GPS, emerging from the Alps in Trento, in the Italian north. Morteza acquired frostbite on the penultimate part of a 6,000km journey that detoured through the Balkans: through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia. Their aim is to join their uncle who lives in Europe, after Morteza's father was killed in an explosion. His mother died earlier "in the war''; Sohrab lost his own father when he was 11.

Morteza and Sohrab are among the world's most vulnerable migrants. Like scores of Afghan teenagers in transit across Europe, they are in flight from violence or the aftershocks of violence that affect children in particularly harsh ways. Those who turn up in Paris have spent up to a year on the road, on the same clandestine routes as adults, but at far greater risk. No one knows how many unaccompanied Afghan children have made it to Europe. Paris took in just over 300 in 2011 – the biggest nationality among the 1,700 lone foreign minors in its care. Sarah Di Giglio, a child-protection expert with Save the Children in Italy, says that at 4,883 in 2010, Afghans were the biggest group of separated foreign children requesting asylum in Europe. 

Adapted from this story from the Guardian, Jan 2012. 

Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP 

French Jungle - دا زمونږ کور دی

This is the plee that comes from 700 Pashtoon refugees who have camped in Calais, France in makeshift homes - made from wooden crates and plastic tarpaulin sheeting. Conditions are squalid mainly because these people are stranded - this is obscene - who would believe that this is 'modern' Europe? How can we consider this civilised when people end up living on the fringes like this, right under the nose of the EU? The refugees want to cross the border to make it to the UK, but the fortress mentality of the Brits means that hearts and minds are too small to assist at this time, so the Brits have exerted pressure on France to close the camp.

دا ځنګل زمونږ کور دی،
که دا وران کړی نو مونږ به چیرته ځو؟
Da Jungle Zamung Kor De, Ka Da Wran Kre No Mung Ba Charta Zu?
This jungle is our home, if this is destroyed, where will we go?

Considering that the world shares major responsiblity for the damage inflicted on Afghanistan over the years, Europe needs a wake up call. Sometimes considered 'pariah' states by political commentators, Iran and Pakistan took in millions of refugees during the heart of the Afghan crisis - comparatively, a mere 700 is hardly going to dent the economic status of countries in the EU.

They are sending in the riot police today to clear the camp. News link here.

Tor_Khan تور خان