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saw some people shouting. I supposed it was his family. Finally, I managed to get him onto the boat. Then, once on board, he hugged me very strong in a way that I had not seen before. He introduced himself. His name was Mazen, he was 30 years old (3 year less than me) and he lived in a house in the upper-class neighborhood of Latakia. He was in the boat with his parents, his wife, his wife’s parents, his son and his sister. Despite the dark, the cold, the moisture and my fear, I thought that Mazen’s sister was incredibly beautiful. Some days after, still on the boat, we realized that we didn’t have any more food and no water. I mentioned it to the driver but he ignored me and he ordered me to sit down and stay quiet. The following days were horrendous. The children were crying, and men and women were praying to their God. But no God came to save us from those stormy nights when some people got hypothermia and others fell outboard or died because of the gigantic waves, hunger and thirst. It was hell. Finally, we reached the north coast of Greece where people of an NGO welcomed us and gave us some blankets, water and food. There, we stayed for two days and then we went to Serbia, where we waited for a convoy of buses toward Germany that would make a long way between mountains, rivers and desert areas. Once in Serbia things became desperate because they separated elderly, children and women from men in different buses. I remember the exact number of the bus in which Mazen and I traveled, because we lived in it for more than two weeks. Once we reached the Hungarian border we spent nights and days full of despair seeing people suffering as we had never seen before. They were bringing us food and drink and were consoling us but they would not let us pass through the wall. But after nearly a week of despair we got some hope when a guard left