“ No Coffee in My City For Refugees”

Once upon a time, there was a lion happy and proud in the jungles. One day a clan of hyenas trapped him. The lion survived the traitorous hyenas and went to another forest. Upon reaching that big faraway forest, he took a deep breath and filled his lungs with fresh air.

Shortly, the lion discovered that the survival story did not end there but it entered phase two. “ Yesterday I survived death. Today, tomorrow and for some years to come maybe, I need to survive life” said the lion to himself. At that moment the lion was converted to a new Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, looking with his two faces at the yellow pages of the past and the white ones of the future.

This is not a story for kids, but it is my own story. When I fled my home country, Syria because of the civil war in 2013 and went to the Netherlands. I was like that lion in Amsterdam Airport upon reaching there while my heart beat with chills and thrills. I reached thinking that I just finished a difficult chapter in my life novel to find out shortly that other difficult chapters are waiting for me.

I came to the Netherlands as a Master's student, not as a refugee and after studying I started to work and I have never ever had refugee status.

It was the time when all the headlines, top news, and documentaries were about Syria and its war. Being Syrian at that time in the Netherlands ( or any other country, I believe) would put you under the label of refugee especially when you mentioned that you came to the country during the war.

I started to face that situation increasingly when I started to work. As soon as people in the introductory meetings got to know that I was a Syrian I got bombarded with questions about the regime, chemical weapons, ISIS, Human rights, Women's rights…etc. Of course, that was normal and I appreciate that curiosity is an innate trait in us as humans.

The majority of people without asking thought that I came as a refugee. They had, I believe, the typical image of refugees. Those people who come from all “ horrible Third World countries with war and hunger ” are usually in the sea with nothing and the hosting country takes care of them everything: food, education, housing…etc. The funding of all those activities is basically coming from the citizens: the taxpayers.

When you are an immigrant, people would appreciate it if you learn their language and culture & accept and respect their habits and way of living. Something reflects the famous proverb “ When you are in Rome, do what Romans do”.

When you are a refugee, people expect you to do all the previous steps and they will not appreciate less than that. This is basically the huge difference.

It was not so easy to deal with the “ hidden” expectations of many people in the beginning. They expected me to ride a bike( the most common transport method in NL) and to learn Dutch rapidly although they had no similar expectations from an Irish colleague who joined at the same time.

For me throughout the years of being under a dictatorship in Syria, the best exercise to do is to focus so much on my inner environment and learned not to care so much about the signals of expectations that people sent to me. I did always what I was convinced to do. The good thing is that expectations, come with no obligation, fortunately.

I understand that the majority of people were coming from a good place and I felt their kindness, care, support, and more importantly respect increasingly.

I had a colleague who I had a total belief that he had an issue with me as a person. His body language, his way of looking, and more importantly his way of acting reminded me always of the hyenas in the story of the hyenas and the lion.

He started to use the technique of disparagement humor with me. This humor is the one that denigrates and belittles others. The joke is used as a vehicle to disguise the expressions of prejudice in a form of “harmless” and “ trivial” fun.

Luckily, I read about this kind of humor previously. I learned that those people wanted to convey a message but they were afraid of its consequences. The safest way is to use the joke so if the targeted person or groups feel bad the easiest explanation is “ It was a joke” or “ you do not get it”. The impact of such “humor” on the “ victim” could be more dangerous than the bad clown in Hollywood movies. The easiest way to deal with it is to play the role of the naive and give a trivial answer responding to their trivial though “bad” joke.

When the German government used an “open door policy” to welcome refugees in 2015 and for weeks the top news was about the refuges reaching the train stations in Germany, the guy after a meeting told me in a sort of whisper “ Could you tell the Syrians to keep on coming to Germany not to the Netherlands as our railway station services can not deal with such number” My answer was “ I will do my best though it might take some time”. I believed he felt horrible but this incident did not stop him to try to do this again.

Once we had a meeting at his office. Upon arrival, he was drinking coffee. He told me “ I can not serve you coffee. I have no coffee in my city for refugees. I am a bit racist” and he laughed.

My answer was easy “ No worries. I do not drink coffee. Maybe a refugee thingy! I take tea” I think he would love to give me a punch in the face after those words.

Surprisingly, the guy at my farewell party of that company brought me a tea mug gift. Apparently, he kept on not offering coffee to refugees.

Once upon a time, a lion survived hyenas in his forest and went to another forest where he met other hyenas. With time the lion understands that there is no forest without hyenas. The goal of all hyenas is to put down and destroy the lions. The lion understands now that there is no progress without learning how to deal smartly with them. You need to run away from some of them, face others and ignore the rest.