Some of my favorite moments as a tour leader are watching the expressions of our travelers as they first encounter some of these wonders. There is a particular corner where I like to skip ahead just a little so I can savor the expressions as the group rounds the corner and sees the magnificent Eiffel Tower towering above them in all its glory.
A couple of weeks ago, I told you about my Syrian friend Omar, who escaped with his life from the Assad regime some time in 2017. To refresh your memory, we met Omar and his then girlfriend on a trip to Athens, which Becky and I took with a team hosted by Servant Group International to better acquaint ourselves with the crisis caused largely by the Syrian civil war.
I had a conversation yesterday that will stick with me for a long time.
If you've been reading/following me for a while, you know that Becky and I had our lives changed when we made a visit to Athens four years ago to see up close just one of the crises caused by the Syrian civil war: the influx of thousands of refugees into Europe. Athens was the epicenter.
When my wife Becky and I were in Europe last summer, we followed the story of a number of the refugees we met in Greece, to Germany, where many of them had loved ones waiting for them. One of these was a young Syrian woman, who is engaged to a young man we befriended in Athens. We set out to visit her and arrived at the refugee center, a simple but clean apartment complex in the Berlin suburbs, and a pleasant looking man in his thirties came to greet us in the lobby. He turned out to be the young lady’s uncle, and was the only member of the family who spoke English.
We spent the next two hours visiting with both of them, and were joined about halfway through by her parents. Their hospitable and kind spirit was exactly what we had experienced in Greece in the camps. And when we left, I felt a strong connection especially with our interpreter, whom we’ll call Ali in this podcast, and had the impression that if I ever decided to get serious about learning Arabic, he would be a great teacher or mentor.
Well, it finally happened. Ali and I are now having weekly Skype conversations where he is answering all my questions that come up in my self-study. But I also asked Ali if he would be willing to let me interview him for this podcast. I had never heard his story of escape from Syria, where he would face almost certain death if he were to return now. I’d like to share with you here the unedited testimony of one Syrian who represents the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homeland in one of the greatest mass migrations of our time....
In our last Skype conversation, Ali told me he had just passed a round of German exams and is on to the next level. He hopes to eventually get a full time job, but is grateful for his part time job at the concert hall for now, as he carves out his new life in Germany.
