Alongside the Refugees: What Happens in Refugee Camps?

Photo: Transferring asylum seekers to new accommodation centers in the Netherlands. November 2023. photo from volkskrant.nl

“I stare at the dancing snowflakes in the air. It’s as if I’ve been thrown out of the world. To where? I don’t know. I still haven’t found a name for that outside. Then, for the thousandth time, he asks:

‘What’s going on?’

And I return to this world again, without knowing the answer to his repetitive question.

Suddenly, I remembered the Arab woman who died in the camp a few months ago. The Dutch woman who is in charge of the music room came one day, upset, and said that today a middle-aged woman died in her room in the camp. And I imagined my own corpse on that small bed in a small room, where all are alike with coarse blue blankets. Then thousands of questions hovered in my mind. Who will wash the body of that Muslim woman? Will her body be buried? What happens to the bodies that don’t have a BSN number? Who will mourn at her grave? Is her death really death?

(BSN number refers to a Dutch social security number, indicating the administrative challenges faced by refugees without such documentation.)

What a great sorrow it is to be driven out of your city and country, to reach a so-called safe land but never feel safe in a refugee camp, to have white people maintain their distance from your colored body at all stations, to wait for hours for the bus in relentless wind to go to the market, to be unaware and far from your family and friends, to go up and down the stairs of the immigration office countless times, to bow your head in front of a bunch of racists, to have your breath trapped in your chest from fear, to have your heart wash away with anxiety, to always wait for good news, and meanwhile, in this eternal wait, in this anxiety and alienation, to suddenly die in your small room in the camp. This thought made me shiver.”

‘What’s going on?’

“He asks again, ‘What’s going on?’ I take my fixed gaze away from the window and look into his blue, unknowing eyes. How can I transfer the anxiety of a foreigner waiting for an unclaimed corpse into eyes that have always been at ease?

And I remembered R, who was only nineteen years old and had come to the Netherlands with her mother. Her mother was old but always smiled. She smiled, but I couldn’t look into her eyes. Her slanted eyes that had crossed borders illegally four times. Rebellious, swallowing eyes that had escaped death’s blade four times. Once in her youth, she had migrated from Afghanistan to Iran, and later in her old age from Iran to Turkey, stayed in Turkey for a while, then went to Greece, and after two years of wandering in Greece, came here. One gray and rainy night, when our hearts were tight in those three-meter rooms, I walked with R and her mother on the road beside the camp. She told me that her other daughter had been a refugee in Turkey for years, tired of wandering and alienation, and had killed herself. She told me her husband had left her for a younger woman in their family and gone. She told me that now, at this age, she didn’t know what to do in a camp in a foreign country. She said all this with mischievous smiles. In my heart, I admired her, but fear gnawed at my bones. Fear of aging in the camp, fear of dying in the camp.

He incessantly asks questions. He asks, and asks, and asks, and I don’t know what to say in response to him, who has always walked on smooth ground. Where have I come from, how have I come here, and what do these scars on my body signify? How can I explain the blade of the sun and the madness of water? I just look, and if he looks carefully, the answer is all there.

I close my eyes after a minute because the blade of my gaze has torn the room’s walls, the ground, and the ceiling, and now he and I are not alone. Our small room is connected to a thousand disordered lives in refugee camps. In our bed, we have never slept alone. Because the blood-stained lineage of mine was with me, and his unanswered questions with him. At the dinner table every night, all the hungry people of the world gather, and the more I pour, the emptier I become. In my glass of water, the thirsty of the south are submerged, and the more I drink, the thirstier I become.”

“He asks again, ‘Tell me a story. Our life in the northern countries is cold and devoid of life.’ I laugh. Which story? These are not stories. What has passed and what never passes. The red trail from border to border, breaking and being destroyed. Singing death in strange rooms, in trains, in boats, in containers, in basements. The wound of breathing illegally under the shadow of immigration police. The wound of loving in the endless nights of waiting, a deadly wait.

G lived in the camp as if the camp did not exist. Her ceaseless dance was a denial of the suffering of displacement. She didn’t walk, she leaped. She laughed so heartily that the gray sorrow of the camp bowed before her teeth. How did I first meet her? She knocked on my door and asked, ‘Are you Tehran?’ Then she showed me my temporary ID card that I had lost two days earlier. On it was my name and the name of my city. I laughed and said, ‘I am Niloufar. Tehran is the name of the city I come from.’ She laughed.”

“We drank coffee together, and I invited her to the music room, which is a small refuge in the camp. She came and sang. G sang with every cell of her body. She danced and sang. She flew and sang. She distanced herself from the displacement and the camp and sang. We sang and danced together in the music room for about a year. Then suddenly, she disappeared. I never saw her again. Just last week, I asked about her from a friend in the music room. They said she was sent to another camp in Amsterdam. They frowned and asked, ‘Didn’t you hear what happened to G?’ Then they showed me a photo of G, her face cut from the forehead to below her chin, the stitches barely covering her wounds.

One day, while she was leaping and dancing and singing as usual, a boy in the camp touched her hands, and G angrily pulled away. The boy wanted to touch her, to embrace her, but G resisted. Then that boy, who himself was driven out and a refugee, pulled out a knife from his pocket and slashed G’s beautiful face. It’s astonishing that the only thing the suffering can do to each other is to tear each other apart.

Where is the refugee camp? Everyone knows there are refugee camps in the world that are not good places. No one says much more about refugee camps. Those who live there try to deny it. Then, when they leave the camp, they prefer not to look back and not talk about those plague years. If you ask them where they live, they dodge the question. No one wants to know about refugee camps. When I first arrived, wherever I was asked where I live, I would proudly say, ‘A refugee camp in northern Netherlands.’ And then I would see how the shadow of pity and fear would swallow my interlocutor, and they would leave me on some pretext.

Several times on online dating apps, after I said I lived in a camp, the person blocked me. Not once, not twice… many times. Camp residents themselves despise other camp residents. They don’t want anything to do with their strange neighbors. It’s as if the neighbor is a mirror in which they see their own misery and displacement. During my time in the camp, I have invited my friends and acquaintances, those who claim to be politically active, and in my opinion, it’s essential for a social-political activist to be aware of refugee camps. But no one comes to visit the camp. Refugee camps, nursing homes, addiction recovery camps, homes for the disabled, leper houses, and asylums.

These cursed and cold places belong only to the news and others. No one gets close to these places. These cold places remind one of death and oblivion, every displacement and death insanity reminds you again. What you have tried all your life to forget. It reminds you that it’s not unlikely that one day you will emerge from this cursed cold place. You prefer to read or hear about these places from a distance, from afar. But really, what happens in refugee camps? Ironically, I live in one of the best camps in the Netherlands. But I know that there are camps in Amsterdam that are like prisons. A camp suspended on a ship at the dock. Small rooms without windows. You need permission to leave each time and go through a myriad of obstacles for each entry. Camps in remote villages where no train passes. Only one bus per hour.

The sun has set. Light and soft snow is falling. My companion does not ask any more questions. Perhaps they have read the answer in my restless and vague looks at the snowflakes.”

Text by Niloufer Foladii, an Iranian refugee in the Netherlands.

My journey in creating this space was deeply inspired by James Baldwin’s powerful work, “The Fire Next Time”. Like Baldwin, who eloquently addressed themes of identity, race, and the human condition, this blog aims to be a beacon for open, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable discussions on similar issues.