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Verk av Matthieu Aikins

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The Best American Magazine Writing 2012 (2012) — Bidragsgivare — 34 exemplar

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parts of this were really excellent but i had trouble getting through a lot of it. his idea, of going underground with a refugee in order to show the way someone has to cross borders and escape to another place, was risky and important. it's a world that we don't see and have no access to. in practice, i'm not really sure how well it worked in this case. but clearly i learned something about how this works and the conditions people are forced to be in, while just trying to find a better life.

"Nothing is intolerable until an alternative exists, if only as a dream."

"Economists refer to a citizenship premium which measures how much--all else, such as education, being equal--someone earns simply as a result of living in a particular country. It is as much as ten times more valuable to be the same individual in America or Europe than in a poor country; that is how much he or she might gain by crossing a border. Inequality is the slope of the frontier. It is the height of the wall that a person will scale."

"Imagine the cities of the world connected by a network of paths that measure not physical distance but danger: the risk of getting arrested, stuck in transit, scammed, kidnapped, or killed. For the underground traveler, the shortest distance between two points is rarely a straight line; it might even be a flight halfway around the world to transfer in an airport with corrupt officials. The space between two people clasping hands through a fence could be wider than a desert."

a poignant quote from george orwell: "You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilization that produced them."
… (mer)
½
 
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overlycriticalelisa | 4 andra recensioner | Sep 26, 2023 |
“When does a migrant become a refugee?”

Canadian journalist Matthieu Aikins spent seven years covering the war in Afghanistan. In the course of his work, he meets and befriends Omar, who acts as his guide and translator. Despite his serving as an interpreter for the Special Forces and having worked with USAID, Omar’s efforts to emigrate to the USA are unsuccessful on account of his being unable to procure all necessary documentation. As the situation in Afghanistan worsens and fearing backlash from the Taliban, Omar plans to emigrate to Europe traveling via the refugee route. He is reluctant to leave without Laila, who he loves but whose family opposes their marriage. Eventually he has to leave without Laila, promising to come back for her.

In August 2016, the author, disguised as an Afghan migrant (using the alias “Habib”), accompanies Omar as he leaves Afghanistan through a smugglers’ route, hoping to be allowed entry into Europe as a refugee. The author, in the process of helping his friend, hopes to gather insight and report on the refugee experience. He leaves his passport and paperwork with friends, fully aware that being discovered with a Western passport by the wrong people could lead to dire consequences. Aikins is also aware of how different his situation is compared to that of Omar whose family is escaping Afghanistan for the second time, the first being in the past when his parents had emigrated to Iran to escape the Soviet invasion. (“There is no future for me here. You have a good job, you have documents, you can travel anywhere you want.” He looked out at his city. “The only thing I have is my luck.”) What follows is a harrowing journey across borders, unsafe passages and dire conditions- all for the hope of a better future for Omar. Though the author and Omar do get separated in the course of their journey, they reunite in Turkey, travel by inflated boat to the Lesbos(after being duped by a smuggler promising to deliver them to different destination), becoming one of the many “boat people” arriving at the Greek island of Lesbos and the Moria refugee camp (“Built for two thousand people, by that point there were around five thousand crammed inside Moria, with hundreds more arriving each week.”) from where they move to a “squat” in Athens from where Omar continues his efforts to secure safe passage onwards.

“The right answer to the question of why you left was: Because I was forced. Because I had no choice. But what does it mean to be free in our world? The refugee is freedom’s negative image; she illustrates the story of progress that we tell ourselves.”

“The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees” by Matthieu Aikins is exceptionally well-written, factual and informative with a fluid narrative that paints a realistic portrait of the peril fraught journey refugees and asylum seekers are compelled to undertake for a life of freedom and liberty that they are denied in their home country. The author discusses in much detail the places and people he encounters through his journey- the smugglers, the migrants and the activists and welfare groups. We also get to know more about Omar’s family and Maryam, Omar’s mother, a high school teacher, who will do everything in her power to keep her family safe.

“Maryam had become a refugee almost forty years ago, and yet Afghanistan was still at war. In the future, her grandchildren would tell her story to their own children here, to Europeans. But if Maryam’s tale inspired because of the long odds that she had survived, then it was also a testament to the many who had vanished. In this way, our stories carry forward fragments of others, just as we pass on our siblings’ genes, though they be childless.”

Aikins's accounts of life in the Moria refugee camp and the squatters' residence in Athens are particularly moving. He describes the experiences of migrants in foreign lands and the hurdles they have to go through in seeking asylum and how when faced with rejection of appeals and failure, they are compelled to resort to means and methods that put their lives at risk- a risk they are willing to take to avoid being deported back to the country they are fleeing from. It takes a while to wrap your head around the fact that this is not a work of fiction but an eye-opening first-hand account of events, focusing on the human angle of the refugee crisis that we might read about in the papers or works of fiction, but is the reality for so many people. This is an important book , the kind that stays with you. I commend the author for his courage and initiative in undertaking such a daring endeavor and sharing his experiences through this hard-hitting and thought-provoking memoir.

“We all have things about ourselves we’d like to change, and it’s seductive to imagine it happening in one swift movement. That was the dream behind migration: a fresh start. The journey was a prelude. Life came afterward, and it might be harder, more heartbreaking than the smuggler’s road….But in truth, we can’t leave ourselves behind. We get only one story, which we narrate looking backward.”
… (mer)
 
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srms.reads | 4 andra recensioner | Sep 4, 2023 |
Der Kanadier Matthieu Aikins beschließt , seinen afghanischen Freund Omar bei der Flucht nach Europa zu begleiten. Er gibt sich ebenfalls als Afghane aus. Es ist Ende 2015, die Balkanroute bereits geschlossen, als sie sich auf den Weg machen. Das Buch zeigt, wie viel Energie zur Flucht nötig ist, wie viel Geld, wie viel Zufall eine Rolle spielt. Er zeigt zermürbende und gefährliche Situationen, das viele Warten, die Ausweglosigkeit. Niemand macht sich aus Jux und Tollerei auf diesen Weg, Sehr interessant und auch frustrierend ist dieses Buch.… (mer)
 
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Wassilissa | 4 andra recensioner | Dec 8, 2022 |
„Ich war zuversichtlich, dass wir Afghanistan in jedem Fall gemeinsam verlassen würden. Und mit unserer Flucht würde sich ein Kreis schließen, denn seitdem wir uns kannten, meinte ich, eine Parallelwelt im Verlauf unseres jeweiligen Lebens zu erkennen.“ (Zitat Pos. 183)

Thema und Inhalt
Dieses Buch ist der Tatsachenbericht einer Flucht, teilweise geführt von Schleusern, mehrmals gefasst und zurückgeschickt. Millionen von Flüchtlingen nehmen diesen gefährlichen Weg durch die Wüste, über Gebirgspfade in die Türkei und dann über das Meer bis nach Griechenland auf sich.
Omar, ein afghanischer Journalist und Übersetzer, hatte in Afghanistan einige Jahre lang als Dolmetscher für die USA gearbeitet und als er den Entschluss fasst, sein Land zu verlassen, sucht er daher um ein Special Immigrant Visa für Amerika an. Sein Ansuchen wird abgelehnt und so bleibt nur die Schleuserroute nach Europa. Seit 2009 ist er mit dem Journalisten und Kriegsberichterstatter Matthieu Aikins befreundet und dieser beschließt spontan, seinen Freund zu begleiten, ebenfalls als afghanischer Flüchtling und mit einer passenden, genau einstudierten Identität. Dies war im August 2015, im Juli 2016 fällt die endgültige Entscheidung zum Aufbruch. Der ursprünglich geplante Flug nach Istanbul mit einem gekauften Visum im Pass ist jedoch nicht mehr möglich. Dies bedeutet Plan B. Ende August 2016 treten sie den ersten Abschnitt ihrer Reise an: viereinhalbtausend Kilometer über Land, von Kabul aus durch den Iran nach Istanbul.

Umsetzung
Die Geschichte ist in vier große Teile gegliedert: Der Krieg – Der Weg – Das Lager – Die Stadt. Beginnend mit einem kurzen Abschnitt über Geschichte der Familien von Omar und Matthieu und prägende Kindheitserlebnisse, berichtet der Journalist chronologisch über den Verlauf der Reise. Täglich spricht er seine Notizen über den Ablauf und die Ereignisse des Tages auf sein Smartphone und ergänzt diese mit Fotos und Videos. Wo sich ihre Wege zwischendurch trennen, schildert er seine eigenen Erlebnisse und ergänzt diese später mit Omars Erzählungen. Dieser Bericht zeigt auch die Hilfsbereitschaft und den Zusammenhalt, die ihnen begegnen, unter den Flüchtlingen, aber auch von unerwarteter Seite. Auch die Tätigkeit der Schleuser sieht man nach diesem Buch wohl etwas differenzierter. Ergänzt wird die Geschichte ihrer gefährlichen Reise durch Fakten und Daten aus aktuellen Forschungsberichten und Expertenarbeiten, aus Berichten über die politischen Hintergründe, Entscheidungen und Gesetze dieser Jahre und ihre Auswirkungen. Im Anhang folgt ein Namens- und Literaturverzeichnis mit ausführlichen Quellenangaben aller Zitate.

Fazit
Gerade die sachliche, empathische Sprache dieses packenden Tatsachenberichtes prägt sich ein und führt zu einem besseren Verständnis dafür, welche Strapazen und Lebensgefahren jeder Flüchtling voller Zukunftsträume und Hoffnungen auf sich nimmt, wenn das Leben in der Heimat unmöglich geworden ist.
… (mer)
 
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Circlestonesbooks | Aug 13, 2022 |

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Verk
8
Även av
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Medlemmar
123
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#162,201
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
6
ISBN
14
Språk
5

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