The Hours of Tragedy..a square for Arabs suffering from the horrors of war in Ukraine

As soon as war breaks out, as is the case now in Ukraine, news bulletins are filled with developments in the situation and its course.

Resonant expressions echo, assessments of the current situation mobilize, scenarios and possibilities are drawn up, but all of this hides pain that hardly anyone pays attention to, the pain of ordinary people like us who wake up one day, unlike other days, to experience conditions they cannot believe.

We talk here about those, and them.

When the clock points to five

"It was five in the morning on the twenty-fourth when the Russians bombed all the airports and most of the ports at once. We woke up stunned by the horror of the news. People ran in opposite directions without twisting anything. They brought their money from the banks and bought food and drink. The bombing never stops."

This is what Badr Sonbol, a student at the Kherson Naval Academy, tells

.

Badr is not alone. According to him, the number of the academy's students who are still in the city is close to 15 Egyptian students, and their number as Arabs totals 70, including Syrians, Lebanese, Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians.

He adds: "We are in trouble, the shelling is indiscriminate and the strikes don't stop. The city is closer to having already fallen. We tried to get out in the early days, we offered taxi and bus drivers and others a lot of money, but they were afraid to take risks, as cars are being targeted on the road. We tried to leave by all means, even We have reached the point that even if we provide transportation, we will not be able to leave our homes together, because the danger is imminent, and we are completely surrounded, and the Russians are currently in the streets."

Badr went on, in response to

's question about the current situation, saying: "We have less food or drink, and there are colleagues of ours who are languishing in other places without electricity or water, and they have run out of everything that can be eaten."

He describes the efforts of the besieged students to communicate with several parties, saying: "Initially, they called the embassy, ​​spoke with the Egyptian ambassador, Ayman El-Gamal, and he told them that he would take care of their evacuation from Ukrainian lands. After that, the communication was completely cut off, and they received no response or statement from the embassy."

The besieged students in Kherson demand to communicate with an official body and secure exit corridors for them, similar to what happened in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Kherson is a coastal city, connected to the Crimea, which is under Russian control in the south, so the Russian supply continues to it, and it was one of the first cities to fall completely into the hands of the Russians.

Badr tells us, "Yesterday, there was a man with his wife in one of the streets, and they were shot dead. Others got out of their places to fetch water, and they met the same fate. Night falls upon us, so we cannot turn on a light so that they do not notice our presence and find us easily."

safety

From Kherson, we head west to the western border of Ukraine where we spoke to Muhammad (a pseudonym), a young Egyptian who had managed to escape but had not yet reached a safe land. He spoke to

, saying: “I am tired, and we are all exhausted and suffering here. I got on the last bus from the The Polish border, but before that I was deceived many times, we met people who promised to help us, but they took our money and left us. It happened not only with me, but with many, like the Sudanese young man next to me in the seat. And here we are, we may be left alone in Poland without help or support".

We do not know the fate of Mohamed and his companions today, but perhaps those who crossed the border into Poland have better luck than their trapped comrades, as the Egyptian government announced on Friday that it directed two planes to Poland to bring back Egyptian students who crossed the border from Ukraine.

We don't know at the moment exactly how many have made it across the border, or who are still trapped inside.

But apparently, the Arab presence on the Polish border is not limited to students. Here, too, the Moroccan doctor “Noureddine al-Murabi” stands. We ask him in “

” about his person and the reason why he did not leave with the rest, and he answers: “I spent a good amount of my life in Ukraine.” Here I studied and practiced medicine. I see a tragic situation that requires us to help and join hands. I am here on the border of Poland and I can help."

We asked him again about the impact of the war on him and how he received the news at first, and he replied: "We did not believe it, we used to say that these were just hearsay, and overnight the bombing took place. I was then in the capital, Kyiv, sleeping in a 35-storey hotel. The hostel blew up and collapsed. its floors, I did not turn myself, except as I hurried along with the crowd, to hurry to an underground shelter to hide in. We had never seen anything like this, until now I feel that we are in a terrifying dream."

Dr. "Noureddine" showed us his Palestinian friend, Dr. "Mahdi al-Khalil", who was crouching far from him, on the Ukrainian border of Odessa. The latter spoke, saying: "The situation is very bad and it keeps getting worse. There are students until now who cannot leave cities such as Kharkiv, Sumy and Kiev." And etc. On the other hand, the police and the army do not allow us to bring in aid, fearing for our lives.

What we do is we try to secure cars to pick them up in front of their homes and take them to the train station, we give them a ticket and free food and drink, and so far we've got 700 students out of Kharkiv.

Where I was, Odessa, the bombardment became so violent that we were forced to flee to the borders, but from our positions we can help those who want to cross into Bulgaria or Slovakia, and we can even help those who want to cross the borders of Romania and Poland and enter them without papers.”

"They treat us like animals here"..

Egyptian and African students complain about their mistreatment at the Polish-Ukrainian border pic.twitter.com/17gZyJGT1Y

— Monitor Network (@RassdNewsN) February 27, 2022

We ask him, what about the discrimination that many talked about?

Dr. Mahdi continues after a moment of reflection: "We heard about discrimination, but we didn't see it."

He tells us that there are a number of students who confirmed that the priority is for Ukrainians first, then foreigners, and that on the borders of Poland and Slovakia the Ukrainian enters immediately, while the foreigner is left for days between awakening and sleeping in the bitter cold.

The situation is getting more and more dangerous hour by hour, so the people stationed at the border are calling on everyone inside to get out.

Dr. Mahdi mentions the Egyptian embassy in his speech, saying: "In front of my eyes, I saw her providing a means of transportation for her students in front of the Romanian borders, and she did not accept to accompany any of the other communities."

By inquiring about whether the Egyptian embassy was the only one that had taken this path, he denied and told us that the embassies of all countries do this, and ignore those in need of assistance from non-nationals.

Fleeing is not an option in war so much as a destiny, which Mustafa (a pseudonym) was pushed to after 13 years in Kyiv.

He tells his story from the beginning: "We never expected a war to break out in Ukraine, we have our jobs and our lives. I thought about going to Egypt or any European country, but they did not hesitate to assure us that there would be no war, and even if it did happen, it would be in the east, for example Dnipro or Kharkiv." And because we were in Kyiv, the capital, we thought we were safe.

We all slept on the day of the war. The sound of rockets and bombs woke us, and the screams of crowds packing their belongings and going down to the metro station near my apartment, I didn't know what to do, my wife and four children with me, and we don't have a car to drive to a relatively remote western city like Lviv.

On the road

Mustafa adds, "I did not want to leave Kyiv. A few days ago, people gathered in the shelters under the houses, while I stayed in my apartment. When we ran out of supplies and water, I went out to check the shops and groceries, but their doors were locked."

He continues, "At that moment, I saw the missiles with my own eyes buzzing in the air, I hurriedly went back and demanded that my wife prepare herself to leave. We left with almost nothing, and our children were terrified."

He tells us about his trip saying: "I spent some time thinking and making my calls. I finally found a car to take us, and of course it cost me a lot of money. It was difficult to get out of Kyiv, and we had to stop at several checkpoints. We heard on the news that the Russian army had arrived at the border "Kyiv and he broke through several ports, but we did not face any dangers, and it seemed to us that everything was fine. We made the road to the city of Lviv, and in the end we found ourselves near the border."

The cars swarmed and came to a halt 15 kilometers from the border.

Mustafa and his family dismounted and continued the march.

After that, they rode in one of the cars of the Ukrainian army towards the Polish border, where they were received, as he asserts, graciously in one of the asylum centers.

After that, they were allowed to take a car to the capital, Warsaw, where they met a relative and escorted them to Germany where he lives.

"We don't know how long we will stay here, and whether we will be able to return to Ukraine or not," he says.

Well, in

, we chose to leave the space for these young people to convey their stories to you. We only intervened with a small amount of detail. We believe that only the tales of those who are tired from its sides, trembling at the sounds of missiles and bombs, and here are more important than everything else.