Sometime at the beginning of July, I was to travel to Budapest on business. The train and bus were out of the question, the airline was no good because of the dates, and the only remaining option was a private minivan, which sounds good in theory, they pick you up at your address and take you to your specified address in Budapest, all for the price of 50 Euros for the return trip. But that’s in theory.
This is what it looked like in practice.
Me: “Hello, I would like to book a seat from Belgrade to Budapest, return trip, but it’s really important for me not to be in Budapest before 8 am, do you have any departures that could accommodate this?” (Given that my meeting was scheduled for 9.30, I wondered what on earth I would do alone in Budapest if I were to arrive at 3 am)
Operator: “Of course, Miss, we have daily departures at various times, and we do have one that is suited to you, you would be in Budapest at 7:30 if that’s not a problem.”
I must have asked a bazillion times if it was certain that I would not be arriving in Budapest at 2 or 3 in the morning, and after being assured that there is virtually no possibility of that happening, I confirmed my booking.
Day of Departure, around 4 pm (and my departure was scheduled for 2 am)
Operator: “Miss, we’re really sorry, but we have to inform you that your departure has been moved to 9.30 pm, which means that you will end up in Budapest at 3 am after all, let us know by 6.30 pm whether you still plan to travel with us.”
Most of you now me as a person of tact, but that operator got know my other side as well, much like that famous politician at the extraordinary government session when the cameras were left on.
I call other agencies, and I get more or less the same offer of arriving in Budapest around 2 – 3 am. I call about 30 hotels from booking.com, but none of them are prepared to check me in at 3 am and check me out at 8 am.
And it dawns on me: “I will be alone at night in Budapest and I have to figure out a place where there will be people, which will be open at night and where there is police around just in case.”
After feverishly browsing through various sites, I find that my only option is to go to Keleti train station. All I could think was, “junkies, hobos, prostitutes, dealers, perverts… hey, but that means there’s bound to be police around.” You know that I travel often and have no problem with travelling alone, but the thought of spending a night alone at a train station in Hungary was quite frightening.
During the trip, I met a fellow traveller and spent the journey in chit-chat. A Hungarian from Budapest, she was named Vera after her Serb great-grandmother. When I told Vera of my ingenious plan to spend the night at Keleti station, she insisted it was out of the question and invited me to stay at her apartment until my meeting.
Isn’t that something so human and noble? A young woman who never saw me before, offers me, a complete stranger, to stay with her so that I would not be alone at night in a strange city.
Although I was truly touched by her humanity, my proper upbringing made it impossible for me to come to someone’s house at 3 am. Vera and I exchanged phone numbers and Vera kept sending me text messages every 40 minutes or so until morning to make sure I was ok.
Dear Vera, thank you for confirming that human kindness is not disappearing, that there are people who still believe that all men are brothers and not that man is wolf to man.
And so at 2.30 am (of course, Murphy’s law meant that the border crossing was deserted, not a soul in sight, and of course the driver was a maniac hurtling down the motorway like mad), in my business edition with my laptop bag, I arrived in front of Keleti station. A group of young Arabs sleeping around me on the benches out front, holding underneath their heads all their worldly treasures, a bit to the side were three prostitutes, and across on the other side, two men, homeless I would say, looking incredulously at me as if I had just landed there form another planet.
I walk inside to find numerous Arab and African families sitting and sleeping on the benches and the floor, griping between them all their possessions that fit into a couple of bundles.
A bit further off are the Hungarian homeless, some drug dealers trying to sell to a bunch of drunken English tourists who don’t seem to know where they are and keep screaming how Vienna is a phenomenal city and that the people “here” are the best (I still hope they later managed to find their way to a Vienna-bound train, if that was where they were going), and a couple of prostitutes looking to find clients.
I settle down on a bench, press play and listen to Brejkersi, and pray to God to hasten the dawn. A man approaches me and tries to explain something in Hungarian and after my good evening in English, takes out his badge – he is a Hungarian plain-clothes police officer – and proceeds to tell me in perfect English that he wants to see my train ticket and passport. Because, it would be logical, if I’m sitting at the train station at 3 am, I must be travelling somewhere. It’s even more “logical” that I don’t have a ticket, because I’m not travelling anywhere.
I already see it all play out in my head, he’s going to take me in, I’ll miss my meeting, I’ll definitely have to pay a fine because “it is well known that the Hungarians don’t like Serbs and keep making us pay fines, because they hate us.”
None of that happened, though. I explained what I was actually doing at the train station. Whether he was in a good mood, or he felt sorry for me, or he was simply a kind man by nature, either way, he just smiled and asked whether I’d like some tea or coffee (let me repeat: he – a Hungarian police officer, me – a foreign national), and said he or his colleague would come see me in half an hour or so to make sure I was ok and wished me luck at my business meeting. As he was leaving, he stopped to cover an old lady sleeping on a bench and left a chocolate bar for when she wakes up. He passed by every half hour and waved to me.
Dear Hungarian police officer, thank you for proving that the police is not made up of corrupt cops and uninterested individuals. No, you’re not all the same.
Trains came and went. I wondered what it was like to sleep on the floor of a train station with train whistles going off every half hour. The answer appeared quite unexpectedly in the form of a skipping, beautiful little girl.
It was around 3 am, she was awake, while her parents and the rest of her family were asleep in the corner.
She ran over to me and started happily telling me something in Arabic. Now, since my Arabic consists of 20-30 phrases I managed to remember, I didn’t have much to work with in terms of communication, but that didn’t stop the two of us. She sat down next to me and continued talking, she took my hand and examined my painted nails, chatting happily. I felt slightly ridiculous trying in a mix of Arab and Turkish to ask her where she was from, and then I tried in English, but finally I decided not to complicate matters and asked her in proper Serbian: Iraq or Syria. She flinched, looked at me sadly and said Syria. She probably asked me where I was from and then decided I must be from Turkey, if I understood her correctly. At the mention of Belgrade, she smiled broadly and nodded her head, and when I pulled out some Plazma cookies, there was no end to her joyJ Now, how do I explain to a child that does not speak any language I know that she should go ask her mother whether she is allowed to have a cookie. And then you find how easy it is to communicate even when you don’t speak the same language. You just use your finger, it might be considered uncultured and primitive in the “developed and civilised world”, but you point to the cookie and then to mum and you nod your head. She ran off, woke her mother, who was first startled, thinking something had happened. And I could clearly see her relief that it was just about a cookie, that no one had attacked or hurt her daughter… The mother smiled, nodded her head and looked in my direction, smiling again, she put her hand on her chest and slightly bowed her head to thank me. When the girl started towards me again, she pulled her by the sleeve and I can clearly picture her saying, “Don’t go bothering that nice lady, it’s not polite,” but the girl pulled away and came to me.
And so the two of us, one 32 years old and the other only 5, one called Ivana, the other called Nur, we sat at Keleti station at 4 am eating Plazma cookies. Each speaking in her own language. Nur started drawing, she drew her life, she drew destroyed houses and tanks, because that was all she knew, and I started crying. And then a 5-year-old child comforted a 32-year-old woman, as a child would, as a human would, she took my hand in hers and caressed it.
And that is why I cannot allow anyone to view Arab children and these small asylum seekers through the prism of future terrorists, because these are children. An ordinary child that like Plazma cookies and is fascinated by painted nails like any other five-year-old girl, and likes to play clapping games.
Keleti station was slowly waking up, but Nur was already sleepy, so she went to her mother. As she was leaving, she whispered something to me, but all I understood was thank you.
The holy month of Ramadan was under way, and an old granny approached me and started talking to me. It often happens that in Turkey and various Arab countries, I am identified as “one of their own”, which is what the granny thought. Since we couldn’t understand each other, a young man from the next bench over jumped in to help. A young Syrian with excellent command of English.
The granny was actually little Nur’s grandmother and she had seen me talking with her granddaughter and now asked me to join them for suhur, the Ramadan breakfast eaten before sunrise.
And you feel like crying when you realise you are being invited to breakfast by a person who has been forced to spend her old age stranded in a train station because of the greed and money-grubbing of the world’s politicians. Who has lived to see European teenagers turn their heads at the site of her, because her kind “uglifies the city”. And when you realise this person still keeps kindness in her heart, you are defeated by the realisation that you have so few such people around you, how those around you are eternally dissatisfied and ungrateful for all they have. And you feel like calling up everyone in your phonebook at 5 am to tell them, when you wake up, be thankful for having slept in your own bed.
Thank you to Nur and her granddmother for giving me the opportunity to write this story and feel once again true gratitude for everything life has given me and for everything it has spared me. I hope that what awaits them at the end of this journey is what is contained in the meaning of the name Nur – light.
It was morning when I left Keleti station, leaving them behind. Hopefully as happy as I was that for a few hours I managed to reaffirm my faith in people. And I have stopped fearing nights in train stations, because sometimes it is good to face your fears and prejudices.
And all of you, dear friends (those who had the patience to read to the end of this text), do not turn your heads away when you see them on the street, do not turn your heads from your poor and helpless neighbours. If life has already deprived them of so much, there is no reason for anyone to take away and trample their human dignity. If you can, try to be brothers and sisters to each other, and if you cannot, there is really no need to turn into wolves.
Ivana Karalejić
*we publish a story with the permission of an author
foto: Idro Seferi
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