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Friday 5, April 2013
WARSAW, 5 April (UNHCR) – Mehmet is busy serving customers visiting his stand at one of the biggest shopping centers in Warsaw. Glass cases full of kitchenware surround him –a rich assortment of branded goods: glasses, cutlery, kettles. The young man behind the counter praises his merchandise with a smile. The customers listen; some make purchases, some move away. They do not know that they are talking to someone who came here to save his life.
Mehmet arrived in Poland from Chechnya six years ago and this is the best job he has had so far. “For the first time in my life, I have signed an employment contract, so I have access to free medical care. And I am independent; I get a salary, which is sufficient to survive,” Mehmet says happily after recalling the string of odd jobs in construction and kebab stands he held previously.
His superior, Maria, is very happy with him. “Mehmet is polite, conscientious, I can depend on him. I am very glad I hired him,” she says.
But working at the kitchen stand is not Mehmet’s dream job. He would like to be an actor and works hard to find the time to take acting lessons and attend regular casting sessions on top of his job.
Mehmet has won a minor role in the Polish TV series “Mission Afghanistan,” and has appeared in several ads and other programmes. Every appearance brings him cash – an additional 500, sometimes 700 zlotys (about 120-150 Euros – and boosts his self-esteem. “I am proud that I have been able to overcome a taboo. There are only a few foreigners at the castings, and the expectations towards me are the same as towards the Poles. Therefore, even a small role is a double success for me,” Mehmet says.
The boy’s path to relative stability has not been an easy one. “A village in which my cousin lived was attacked by fighters. One of them died during the shooting, and the rest swore they would take revenge. My cousin’s life was in danger, so he decided to escape. In Chechnya, revenge is taken against the whole family, so I had to escape with him. I was in grammar school, I was a good student, and an escape into the unknown was the last thing I wanted. My father persuaded me it was the only choice,” Mehmet remembers.
The boy, barely 15 at that time, took a well-beaten track. A train to Moscow, a train to Brest, and a train to Terespol. He planned to move further west to France but was sent to an orphanage by Polish border guards as he was an unaccompanied minor.
Each year, the Polish Border Guard receives several thousand applications for refugee status (with a record-breaking 10,750 received in 2012.) Some applicants stay, some go further west, violating – perhaps unintentionally – the EU regulations which state they should await the decision in the first EU country they entered.
Shortly after being sent to the orphanage, Mehmet decided to try his luck in the West. His cousin, who had managed to get to France, sent a friend to get him. They were caught in Germany. After a month in detention, Mehmet was sent back to Poland and placed in Korotynskiego orphanage in Warsaw.
“I understood I would have to try to settle down here. At first I was frightened of the orphanage. It was really difficult for me to fit in among the Polish children, but soon I made friends with a boy from Uzbekistan, as I could speak Russian with him. There was a group of refugee children at the orphanage, which soon made me feel like in a family. We faced the same problems; we didn’t mind speaking different languages at all,” Mehmet says.
Jolanta Chmielewska, a tutor of the group of refugee children at the orphanage, remembers her former charge well: “He was very sad, he sought family warmth, homeliness. I could see something was bothering him, but he was very brave about it. He brought lots of positive energy into our small group. I remember he taught a six-year-old girl from Chechnya to read. We could not do it, and he did. He had a lot of patience with children”, Chmielewska recalls.
Today, Mehmet speaks fluent Polish without any foreign accent and lives in a small room in an apartment building, an accessible 10 kilometres from the city downtown. He is now convinced he wants to stay in Poland, despite eventually meeting up with his cousin in Paris and spending six months there.
“Warsaw is better for me. I have more development opportunities here. I am not moving anywhere,” Mehmet declares.
Rafał Kostrzyński, Warsaw, Poland
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