Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Loveless in Mannheim; Confused in Dossenheim

11 October 2015

Having car-pooled from Herzogenrath - a German town close to the Dutch border near Maastricht - I arrived in Mannheim late this evening, and went to the tram station to go to Dossenheim. It was the first time I had carpooled, but the pleasantness of the journey had left me underprepared for what I was about to encounter.

Tram tickets are quite cheap in Germany, but I had not figured out how to correctly operate the vending machines. So, I turned to a gentleman standing next to one to help me out. He did not respond. In the rubbish German that I could muster, I asked another elderly gent if he spoke any English or Dutch: “Entschuldigung mijn heer, ich bin auslander, und spreche nicht Deutsche, sprechen sie English of Niederlandisch?” He refused to respond beyond a few words muttered under his breath, and walked a few meters away to give me the dirtiest look. “Okay, grumpy grandpa”, I thought to myself, and repeated my awful German to a younger guy, who was fiddling with his smartphone, this time around.

“Kidhar se ho? Pakistan ya India?” (Where are you from? Pakistan, or India?), he responded in Punjabi-Urdu.

“India se, aur aap?” (From India, and yourself?), I replied.

“Pakistan.”

I shook his hand and asked him if he could help me figuring out how to buy a ticket. 

Ali Raja spoke neither English nor German, and went on to explain to me in Punjabi that I should not bother purchasing one. "No one here buys tickets, nor does anyone check for them in here. You need not worry.”

Finally a Turkish guy taught me how to operate the machine, and I purchased my ticket. 

Ali - the Pakistani guy - approached me: “How long have you lived here?”

“Four years, but I live in the Netherlands.”

His next question stumped me.

“Do you think we are at risk of being deported by these people?”

“Why, if you have a visa, would they deport you?” was my instant reaction, realising only a moment later that something was amiss.

“Seems like you haven’t seen much in life. There are a lot of Indians and Pakistanis who have come in this country without visas.” Ali was an economic migrant who had come into Germany camouflaged as a refugee.  He told me that had walked or hitchhiked all the way from Karachi for over three months, via Iran and other countries all the way to Germany to take advantage of the refugee situation. 

I was flummoxed because of his smartphone and the smart clothes. The phone he had purchased out of the necessity to navigate and keep in touch with others while making the journey from Karachi, and the clothes were given to him by the German government, which also fed and housed him. 

“It’s the money”, he said rather matter-of-factly, when I asked why he would want to migrate (he wasn't a refugee) with his language handicap. The “very big European Rupee” was equal to “118 Pakistani Rupees”, and the 10 Euros that he earned per hour were equivalent to his fortnightly earnings in Pakistan! And given that public transport in Germany was free according to him – I suppose there weren’t as many corresponding expenses. 

The tram was a rather crowded, but no one sat in the two seats next to me and another foreign-looking guy. As I ran my fingers through my rather thick beard, I caught an older woman, standing, and staring at me. Finally, it dawned on me that they all had thought of me – bearded guy carrying a small suitcase – as a free-riding alien! I smiled at the staring woman, but she promptly looked away.

But the tram chugged along anyway, and there weren’t many passengers by the time we were close to Dossenheim. I started a conversation with a young woman about the refugee crisis, and asked about her take on it. “I am partly for refugees, and partly against them. I do understand that these people are only escaping war, trying to save their and their loved ones’ lives. For this reason they are most welcome. But having said that, I also know that many of the refugee men see women as inferior beings. A woman from my sister’s university in Trier – was raped by a refugee while she was walking alone. This cannot be! If they want to come to Germany, then they must accept our values.”

Could one possibly argue with these apprehensions, which were based on real experiences, and not Trumpèsque rhetoric?

I do not know yet. This one tram journey has left me rather confused. I need to gather my thoughts about it.

2 comments:

  1. How is a migrant different from a refugee? Please share. Regards.

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  2. A migrant is someone who migrates - usually voluntarily for economic or personal reasons. A refugee, on the other hand is a term of art defined in international law.

    The 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees define a refugee as person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

    In simpler words, a refugee is a person who is forced to abandon (without the need to migrate, as she may already be present in that country) her home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution.

    Hope this clarifies.

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