And then it happens that after weeks you have been escaping from oppression with your wife and six kids, paying dozens of thousands of euros to smugglers, being shot by the police in Iran, crossing the country on the trunk of a car compressed with other 3 people and struggling to breath, walking three days and three nights without food and water to cross the border between turkey and Bulgaria or risking your life in a raft in the sea, being beaten and robbed by Bulgarian police and their dogs, you eventually reach safety, you enter European Union in Croatia. But for some reasons your heart decide to stop beating in the unknown city of Slavonski Brod, and the doctors can't do anything to keep you alive. You leave your wife and the six kids you were bringing with you in desperation but at least they are closer to the promised land. No, you didn't come here to steal the jobs of locals or increase the criminality rate as some of them might claim, you just wanted to live a peaceful life with your family. Now your body will probably rest for ever in foreign land because taking it back to Iraq is too complicated and expensive. This is the story of one of the many heroes, a man that passed away last night in the refugee camp. (His route was elaborated from the stories we heard these weeks while volunteering along the "Balkan route")
Davide Vadalà
