Hasib, Sajab, Mehdi, Subhan, Hasiba… Smile, joy, game, happiness… Cry, sadness, fear… What does a child know?! Or what does this same child need to know and experience in the years when playing and going to school are his mayor day tasks? His life becomes very uncertain, like an equation with many unknown variables. He needs to learn to find solutions for him and his family, cause that’s the only way he can overcome this refugee mathematics.

While arriving to the refugee camp the mothers and children are already waiting with anticipation. They run to us and shout: “let’s go to the classroom, we have a lesson!” We hold hands and run to their escape from reality. We go there where they are safe and where they can express their phantasy, but also their worries. We color the drawings on which there is a star, the star of Afghanistan and a house. Then we proudly put them on the wall. We play board games and we are all very happy when we roll the dice and get the number 6. We count the fields of the board in Serbian, English and Persian.

The mothers also draw, to express their sadness for their husbands and other children lost on the road. We teach them how to write with Latin characters and we write their names, in Persian and in Serbian. This way we feel that closer to them and show we are thinking of them. Other than Hasib, who is ten years old, all other children speak only Farsi. But we understand each other well, the language is not important. In fact, nothing is important. Just our game and us. In one moment we are like rabbits, trying to catch each other and everything turns into laughter, while in the other moment we take names of famous football players and play football. We sing and dance to their national songs and don’t let them feel like they betrayed their country.

We are restless and we enjoy small things. We enjoy a sincere child’s smile and in the reassuring looks of mothers who give us will and motivation to go on. Their struggle for a life without fear, but our struggle as well, means welcoming them and sharing their burden. They are humans. We are humans. And this matters the most.

Olga Zdravkovic, Arabic translator at the Caritas team

of psycho-social support in Belgrade

The work of the psycho-support team is financed by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Caritas Germany