‘Is Germany full?’

“Is Germany full?” an Afghan refugee asked me as he waited for registration on the hills of the Moria Refugee camp in Lesvos.

No Of course not. Germany isn’t full. It can’t be full. It will never be full. But the field we were standing in, along with hundreds of Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi refugees and so many other migrants, was full.

It was full of people like you and me, whose faces tell a piece of the story; of their extensive journey to Greece. With nothing in hand, they wait for their journey to continue, at times with no destination and a very delicate drive that leads to the ‘nowhere’ that will potentially become home one day.

Their gazes are like razors that beg for a dignity that we as volunteers have never been thirsty for. At times, the helping hand you give feels somewhat insulting because you know that there is a fine line between humility and being disconcerting.

With a few days to go before I return to my reality, I realise that the question that has very rarely left the back of my mind throughout my days in Moria is one equivalent to the one I began writing this column with. “Where will this end?”

I think about Amir, Fahrad, Mohamed Reza, Fatima, Wesa, and so many refugees I have met whilst at the camp and I wonder where they are, where they have landed, where their fate has taken them.

I’m not sure that merely helping them to continue their journey to Athens is the right thing to do, but it’s what they’re ‘told’ to do. At least for now. I cringe at the thought of their future. I cringe at the way the world has let the situation come to what it is.