I want to end my blogs in France on a more serious note. I’ve been asking myself a lot recently what it is I truly want to take away from this program. When I forget which competences are conferred on the EU from which treaty article and when the TTIP passes or doesn’t and the debate ends, what is it I will keep?
Last night I was taking the overnight bus from London to Paris. I had gone from Paris to London the same way and was dreading another sleepless night in a rickety bus with a 90 minute ferry ride punctuating the night. All I was thinking was that I wanted to get back to Paris, back to school so that I could go to class, write my final papers and get ready for break.
Me with my friend Hannah in London with a random stranger photo-bombing.
And that is when Sefi sat down next to my friend Hannah and me. It’s not that we were so exciting; we happened to be sitting near the bus door and he was one of the last passengers to board. When we got off the bus at Dover to check our passports, we waited ten extra minutes while Sefi had difficulty with border control, much to the very vocal annoyance of the driver. When he got back to his seat, documents in hand, I noticed in clear silver letters “The Republic of Afghanistan” on his passport. Sefi looked a little flustered, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the trouble wasn’t that he came from the Middle East, and that the border officers were suspicious. Nervous, but feeling that it was the right thing, I asked him if he were okay. To be honest I have no idea what his response and explanation was – something about his visa – but Hannah and I nodded and smiled and that was the right response. When the bus pulled into the ferry to go cross the English Channel, Sefi couldn’t understand the rapid English instructions for boarding. Hannah and I let him follow us to the seating area and share a table. When Hannah stood up to get coffee just a few minutes in, Sefi insisted on getting it for her. To our surprise, he came back with three grande cappuccinos and three king sized candy bars–one for each of us.
The view from my seat on the bus back to Paris. It seemed like a good photo idea to my 4am brain. My recommendation is to not take a boat to London–crossing the channel is not fun.
We made awkward small talk, with bad English on his end and worse Italian on ours, and Sefi was proud to show us a video of himself cooking at his job in Milan. He didn’t seem upset that I went to be sick right after he showed us, and indeed bought both Hannah and me bottles of water to soothe our mouths and stomachs during the tumultuous crossing.
I learned that Sefi walked for seven months from his home in Afghanistan to Europe. I learned he lost his mother and sister to the war, and that he never wants to go back. For all I know his family was killed by an American bomb. He was visibly our age, working to make ends meet instead of studying. But there we were, two privileged Americans, being helped by an Afghani refugee on an unpleasant boat ride that would last two hours, not seven months.
To what did we deserve this kindness? A simple question to see if he was ok and instructions on how to properly board a boat?
He said the Italian people are good people. There are not a lot of jobs but there are a lot of good people. I know he is absolutely right. At a time when American governors are trying to shut the doors to refugees, when politicians travel to Jordan to see a refugee camp to make a more legitimate-sounding statement that refugees don’t need to come to the US, my heart broke to meet Sefi and know that we have absolutely nothing to offer him. It might better for him to stay in Milan, where he has work, where people don’t turn their backs on refugees and where those who do do not have guns.
This is what I will take from my time in Europe. I’m about to go home; Sefi never will. Shame on me if I ever forget that.