Travelling in a world of refugees

Reconciling the contrasting journeys of travellers and the migrant.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Migrants on a freight train reach for food bags held aloft by people on the track side.

Migrants on La Bestia being passed bags of food and water.

Pequeño Mar, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

I’ll never forget the sight, 10 years ago this month, as I hitchhiked north through Mexico, of dozens of migrants hanging off the side of a goods train as they made their own journeys towards their Promised Land.

Like me, these migrants - of whom there must have been at least 30 - were heading for the United States. Unlike me, they were doing so not for fun but for their futures.

“Come with us!” some shouted, as my wife and I lugged our backpacks towards what we hoped would be our next successful hitchhiking post, having begun our journey seven months prior at the southern tip of Argentina.

We declined the offer, but I wondered then - and still do - whether they had known we were in a different position to them, or had simply assumed us to be in the same metaphorical boat.

Around the same time, a new wave of refugees were making their way westward across Turkey and Europe, in a reversal of my first hitchhiking adventure, which took me eastward from the UK to Malaysia. And again, I found the contrast between the respective circumstances of our two journeys confronting.

There I had been, a post-university thrill-seeker, taking to the road with my best mate to open my eyes to the big wide world beyond these shores, and now six years later, these poor souls were moving in the opposite direction - again, not for fun, but through sheer desperation.

Many were fleeing ISIS, who took control of Mosul while I was hitchhiking through Brazil at the time of the 2014 Football World Cup. My chief concern during those days were the occasions hitchhiking proved less straightforward. On some days, we had to wait hours for a ride. Sometimes, night would set in as we waited, and we were forced to call it a day.

There were times, too, when we fell foul of the law, such as in the States, where a policeman told us off for hitchhiking on the freeway. But undoubtedly the most challenging moment of that trip was the time we ended up back in the same hotel we had been in two days prior, having done a 1,000km round trip only to find ourselves right back where we started.

This came about in Prince George, Canada, after we had been encouraged by a trucker on the so-called “Highway of Tears” to take a different route to our final destination: Alaska. I can still remember the feeling, as I woke up early the next morning, in the very same room of the very same hotel, of such a lot of effort wasted and a deep desire to get moving again as swiftly as possible, if only to enjoy a sense of progress.

No doubt, there have been many refugees who have experienced the same emotions - only, one imagines, with much greater intensity. Perhaps they have been deported back to where they began their journey, or simply sent back to the last country from which they arrived, in the process undoing in their minds and hearts all of the efforts that went in to getting them there.

No doubt, many of these refugees will also have fallen foul of the authorities. Some, will have been detained; others deported. Perhaps some will also have been told off for walking on a highway, or illegally crossing a border, as I myself tried to do between Bangladesh and Myanmar back in 2008 - only to be picked up by a border patrol and taken back to where I’d started again.

Yet, unlike me, I doubt many refugees were offered helping hands by strangers along their way, or at least not so frequently, and I expect many more of them experienced harsh words from passersby than the few jokey thumbs-downs or shouts of “gringos!” that I received on my own journeys.

And while I, with my Great British passport, was able finally to arrive at my goals and to feel the joy of that completion, many refugees will not have been so fortunate. And while I was able eventually to return home and continue my life - in whatever way I saw fit - for many refugees, their own journeys will still be ongoing, and there will still be a lack of clarity regarding what the future may hold.

I always used to say, standing beside the side of the road, that if only we knew how long it would be until the next ride, we needn’t worry. If someone could tell us that in four hours we’d be picked up, or that although we wouldn’t get another ride that day, that on the very next we’d be adopted by a lovely family who would end up taking us with them for 10 days (as happened in northern Argentina), then all our worries would melt away.

I felt the same way during the years in which my wife and I struggled to conceive, post-adventure. Were someone to have told us then that in a few years, we’d have three beautiful boys, we need never have suffered such heartache.

So too for refugees: if only someone was able to tell them when, where and how their journeys would end, they would be able to come to terms with what lay ahead, and to stop feeling so anxious about the many unknowns.

But of course that’s not how life works - whether you’re lucky enough to have been born with a British passport that enables you to see all the world has to offer without a second thought, or whether you’ve had the misfortune of being born in a country within which you find yourself unable to remain.

I have long wrestled with the question of whether my travels were simply a selfish waste of time. Not that they didn’t bring me great joy and truly opened my eyes to the big wide world - they most surely did - but whether I might instead have used that time in some nobler endeavour.

I find encouragement today in knowing that my love of people of different countries - and especially Iran - was birthed during those travels, and that I probably would not be doing the job I am now, had it not been for those experiences. But it doesn’t make it any easier to reconcile the contrasting journeys of travellers and refugees, which although they may share many parallels, also exhibit some stark differences.

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Freedom of Belief

23 November 2023

3 min read

A tale of two Septembers

The recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is already a twice forgotten war. Forced to flee twice, Anush Petrosyan describes the experience.

Anush Petrosyan

Anush Petrosyan is a writer now based in Armenia. She is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh.

A sunset dramatically silhouette's a ruined tower and people at its base.

A September 2023 sunset over Stepanakert.

The ethnic cleansing of 100,000 Christian Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh has left Armenians around the world questioning the world order that allows dictators to have their way without impunity.

Following Azerbaijan’s brutal war of September 2020, the people of Karabakh were subjected to a complete blockade of their region – an exclave of Armenia in Azerbaijan. In the small stretch of land where Armenians had fought for independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, civilians were being kidnapped, the elderly were dying for lack of basic healthcare, and schools were closing due to no heating gas. To the outside world, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev was speaking of peace and integration. Inside the region, experts were warning of genocide by starvation.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan at last got what it wanted - the territory of Karabakh without Armenians. After an attack that left hundreds of people dead, Azerbaijani forces moved into the region as people began to flee to Armenia, forever leaving their homes and homeland.

This is the story of Anush Petrosyan. A native of Shushi, Karabakh, which Azerbaijan took control of in 2020. Since then, Anush had been living in the Armenian-controlled Karabakh capital of Stepanakert, which she was forced to evacuate during the ethnic cleansing.

In September 2020, I left my birthplace in Shushi, Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) with a strong conviction that I would be back soon.

In September 2023, I left Stepanakert, my new hometown, with only the hope of staying alive.

In September 2020, I had a father. He drove us to Yerevan in our own car.

In September 2023, I no longer had a father… A kind person from Martakert, Artsakh, who I had not met before, agreed to evacuate my mother and me to Yerevan in his car.

In September 2020, I left Shushi when there were still some people in the city.

In September 2023, I was among the last to leave Stepanakert. The hotel where we had been living as refugees from Shushi for the last three years was empty. I had never seen the streets of Stepanakert look so desperate. There were stray dogs roaming, and those without cars and were waiting for public buses to come and evacuate them.

In 2020, we left behind the harvest of my father's garden in Shushi, and an abundant life.

In 2023, we left a few kilos of buckwheat, rice, and potatoes in our hotel room in Stepanakert. Food we had managed to get a hold of during a nearly year-long brutal blockade.

In 2020, I left Shushi with dreams in my heart. I had not been broken yet, I had no personal loss, and I was confident I’d be back.

In September 2023, I left Stepanakert with a sense of uncertainty about my life and my future. I had lost a homeland, my father, and I was lost in my own life.

I have written much about Shushi since the September 2020 Artsakh War. I left a whole life and a garden of violets there.

But I haven't written a single line about Stepanakert since the violence and ethnic cleansing of September 2023. Maybe one day I will write about this cozy city and its beautiful stadium where I would jog and regain a sense of peace.

In September 2020, for the first time in my life, I felt how alone and powerless a person can be.

In September 2023, for the second time in my life I felt how alone and powerless a person can be.

In September 2020, I started to realize that in any hopeless situation a person should put their hope only in themselves and God.

In September 2023, I became convinced that in any hopeless situation a person should put his hope only in themselves and God.

I went through hell twice, or through different stages of hell. It is difficult to say which hell was worse.... I am only afraid to imagine that there are people whose hell has been more hellish than mine.

But in the midst of hell, I came across the most compassionate people, who made me feel God’s presence in this absurd world of ours.

Stepanakert and Sushi

An avenue of colourful flats beside green trees.

Stepanakert before the exodus.

A hillside road blocked by stationary vehicles.

Cars evacuating from Karabakh to Armenia.

Hunot Gorge State Reserve near Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh.

War ruins and gardens in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Voices of Artsakh is a new series developed in collaboration with The Armenia Project, an educational non-profit in Armenia, that features the stories of the refugees who were forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh). These personal essays will focus on their experiences, and life after Artsakh as they try to rebuild new homes following the ethnic cleansing from their historic lands.