Photo Credit: Katarina Šapina
Dreams in spite of reality
With reporting from Croatia and Serbia
Yolla Ofan pulls up an article that she wrote while studying to be a journalist. (Photo Credit: Barbara Ravbar)
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“So, what makes a good journalist?”
Yolla Ofan is curious, because it has always been her dream to become one. Now the 21-year-old journalism student is conducting her first interview on camera - a rite of passage for any budding reporter, except that Ofan lives in a refugee camp. It has been 18 months since she fled the war in Syria and had to abandon her studies. |
When a team of reporters visits her at the refugee reception center in Kutina, Croatia, she takes the opportunity, accepting the microphone and conducting an impromptu interview on the spot. She follows up her first question with queries about ethics and practice. Stuck in Kutina for the last seven months, she has learned to make the best of her situation, writing stories for a refugee magazine on her cell phone, reading whatever books she can get her hands on.
Ofan has always been intrigued by human communication, and she understands that understanding and empathy are most important during a crisis. Safe from immediate harm, she has found that national borders are sometimes easier to cross than those set in society. Along with tens of thousands of other refugees strewn along the so-called “Balkan Route” to central Europe, she is trapped in a bureaucratic limbo, her dreams on hold while her family awaits documents they hope will grant passage to a permanent home in Austria.
One of Yolla Ofan's first articles was published in the magazine "Paths." Scroll down to read it in English.
Over 2,400 kilometers away, Jawad Droubi, 25, is visibly frustrated as he struggles to communicate in broken Serbian. But he composes himself with a smile, rearranging his white doctor’s coat. In 2012, after hundreds were killed by the tanks and bombs in his hometown of Homs, the third-largest city in Syria, he fled and eventually made his home in Novi Sad, Serbia, where he lives in a barren room in a shared house on a narrow one-way street.
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Despite his refugee life, language troubles, and difficulties finding a medical school that would accept him, Droubi has refused to give up on his dream of becoming a doctor. He waited two years in Syria, as the situation grew more and more dangerous, before he was accepted to a medical school abroad.
Last year he completed his exams as one of the top international students at the Faculty of Medicine at University of Novi Sad, finishing what he started years before at the University in Damascus in Syria. He now volunteers at a local clinic as he works toward his qualification, honing his Serbian with quiet drinks after work with friends. Young Droubi radiates happiness. He has a habit of not digging too deeply into bad memories or fears about the future, and focusing instead on the positive things. He blushes as he describes his new crush, and smiles as he talks about local farmers growing wheat, corn, fruits and vegetables, which his neighbors also raised in Homs in the old days. It’s good to recall a nice story from his old Syrian home, he says. |
Jawad Droubi volunteers at a local clinic in Novi Sad, Serbia
(Photo Credit: Jawad Droubi)
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“To be honest, when I came to Serbia, I was thinking as people in the Middle East think about Serbia, that people here are extremist and that this is the land of war and guns. In the end, I believe in what I see and how I live, and that is a totally different picture,” he says.
In a 10-meter square room at a refugee center in Krnjaca in greater Belgrade, ten-year-old Ferhard Nuri carries his memories in a different way. He proudly unveils a stack of sketches, including one of a white rabbit splashed with bright colors. But that’s not his favorite. If you ask him, the boy others in the camp have dubbed “Little Picasso” will show you a lifelike portrait of one of his idols, Salvador Dali, complete with curly mustache. Nuri sketches most of his creations in pencil on the top of his bunk bed, a long way from his home in Herat, Afghanistan. He continues to hone his skills at the refugee center, where he has also drawn portraits of Serbian tennis star Novak Djoković and German chancellor Angela Merkel.
He keeps his drawings in a plastic bag, and along with his two brothers waits for a permanent home. In his free time at the center, he works on his other talent - music. When he was six, his parents discovered he is able to mimic a song in any language after hearing it once. Now, he practices on a guitar a band member gave him at a previous camp in Greece.
Ferhard Nuri is inspired by his favorite painter, Picasso
(Photo Credit: Miljana Miletić)
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"I want to sing one day in Italy and in the show Make a Talent," he says.
Nuri looks forward to a time when he will be able to use his talents and show them to the world, painting in America or singing in Italy. His parents are eager for him and his two siblings to continue their education, and hope for a safe place to root the family. But in in the meantime, the three children continue to draw and hone their skills. |
There is a lesson buried somewhere in the stories of those that wait to find their new homes. Even as they fled chaos into the unknown, they have not forgotten their potential. Ofan, the budding journalist in Croatia, is still shy in front of the camera when the reporters return, but she still leads a formal television interview.
Droubi practices his Serbian by memorizing traditional folk songs, which he sings with a grin when asked. And Nuri plucks at his guitar from his perch on his bunk bed, surrounded by his sketches.
Droubi practices his Serbian by memorizing traditional folk songs, which he sings with a grin when asked. And Nuri plucks at his guitar from his perch on his bunk bed, surrounded by his sketches.