Cut off from family, nation and purpose, many incomers aren’t actually happy in Europe
It was a clean flat, if nothing else. My father had known his friends since childhood, but this was a reunion over 14 years in the making. War and collapse in Syria and elsewhere scattered his network to the winds, the bulk of whom in continental Europe. They embraced and kissed each other passionately, tears awkwardly falling out their eyes in a way that is rare to see among a community like theirs. He was kind and generous enough to house and feed us for a few days, a gesture that repeated itself over the coming days by his other friends. A mercy for my suffering wallet.
The house found itself among a cascade of similar abodes that acted as the slum for the local MENA community. If England has been the subject of a long-standing debate regarding integration and assimilation, what appeared before me in Germany far outstripped any parameters that we’ve grown accustomed to. In this neighbourhood, the shop-signs are in Arabic, the menus are in Arabic, the advertisements are in Arabic, and German is rarely heard while walking. It was a nakedly cynical exhibition of the fact that no attempt was made into acclimatising into their new homes. However, it is more accurate to say that every effort was expended in retaining and remembering their lifestyles, identities and overall national memory. The sheer vehemence of their collective rejection would have been admirable in normal circumstances. Most of the people I spoke with did not assume I knew their language, owing perhaps to my uncompliant appearance, tourist conduct and bewildered countenance. What I found most remarkable, whether it was between my father and his interlocutors, or casually said in the shops and the streets among themselves, or elsewhere in the local community, was the ubiquity of a single sentiment:
It is easy to mock the absurdity of this brazen hypocrisy and yearning for a home that likely never existed
“God, I hate this place.”
Nostalgia and regret almost physically manifested itself in the conversations held by this community, on their faces and in their voices. The content of most discourses typically pertained to how dear their old homes are, how regrettable their departures were, how much better the food and the company and the climate and the nature and the women and the hygiene and the schools and every little grain of sand on the beaches were.
There was something so fascinating, and so miserable about all of this. It is easy to turn our nose and ignore or even delightfully mock the absurdity of any individual displaying such brazen hypocrisy, and yearning for a home that likely never existed. However, when it is thousands, possibly millions of people, then this is something that must be discussed. So many people view themselves as unhappy, roaming nomads, going about their lives like rounds in a prison. A safe, wealthy, and well-organised prison, but to them, a prison, nonetheless.
If it was only true that this was a uniquely German phenomenon, so that we may pride ourselves on our shared heritage of English liberties, and traditions of pluralism. This could not be further from the truth. On the way back, I sit opposite an elderly Moroccan woman, who tells me she has lived in this country for over 40 years. Her English is poor, so we switch to Arabic, and she compliments how much I managed to retain, a compliment veiling the clumsiness with which I wield the language. She expresses her eagerness to depart this place, to leave behind what she calls the “filth”, “degeneracy” and “low-lives” of this country. Before she departs for her stop, she fails to restrain herself from mentioning the size of my girlfriend’s nose, a Pakistani woman who had been mute for the duration of our conversation. Perhaps she could not see how much in common she had with the local communities when it came to other foreign peoples.
I commiserate the attempts to pinch the thread of order from among the chaotic heap of immigration discourse, but a closer inspection reveals just how contradictory, elusive and frankly absurd much of the facts underpinning the reality of immigrants who reside in Europe. We are accustomed to reasonable assumptions of opportunity and desperations that animate the decisions of immigrants to depart their homes. Indeed, where one places themselves on the spectrum of perceived motivation is often a corollary of political identity. Opponents of immigration more readily subscribe to the “cynical opportunist” theory, who cravenly flees their home to escape their duties to their nation and leech off a generous welfare state. Proponents note the desperate circumstances that inform their decisions, be they wars or poverty.
In reality, the lives of immigrants of a Middle Eastern background are seeped with inertia and uncertainty. Desperation and opportunism are both present, but there is a more chief element of nihilistic uncertainty. “What else is there?” is a sincere justification for these individuals. They go where their families, friends and other members of their now-riven networks currently reside, which just so happens to be Europe. This in spite of the fact that life in Europe is treated with a sort of awed fear. Safety and even comfort could be provided, yes. But the European Dream is increasingly viewed as a sort of altar, where all of their most prized virtues are offered. It has become more common to identify this fear in the smug humour these communities employ, A cousin of mine calls Essen “divorce town”, owing to the high rates of familial breakdown among settled immigrants from Syria and Iraq. The Kurds I met are content to employ this sarcasm as a shorthand for their self-perceived advantage over the Arabs; the Kurds pride themselves on the strength and invariance of their social hierarchies, and divorces are considered highly taboo, even dangerous. It was as if to say “observe the frivolity, decadence and pretentiousness of the Arab migrant! They divorce and remarry to advertise their Western airs!” The retention of culture and norms is a point of pride for these communities, with grave consequences for deviation, ranging from social exclusion to outright hostility. In these communities, authenticity is one of their greatest virtues, which is correlated with a dogged and stubborn refusal to assimilate, and to retain the normative systems that they brought with them, even when it becomes incongruent or even harmful in their new landscapes. An inability to learn the language after decades is quickly excused, and when linked to a family that is perceived as “successful” and “virtuous”, it is even celebrated.
Interestingly, religion is not present when these matters are discussed. I cannot speak for all MENA people in Europe, but many Syrians have an idiosyncratic, even parasocial relationship with religion. It is not spoken of in polite company, or even frequently called upon. There is reverence, but not to the extent that it dominates the conversation. Rather, its influence is far more passive. It is impossible to imagine whether the same dynamic that immigrants have with their host countries and culture would have been the same but for their Sunni Islamic backgrounds. An emphasis on traditional families, obedience, and a resistance to the forces of over-socialisation, is a common denominator that explains the insular nature of these communities.
The MENA communities of Europe are becoming more aware of the price they have paid for their new lives in Europe, including of the perhaps regretful nature of this bargain. These communities have lost the cohesion and strength of their culture as their families broke apart, their youths became the bedrock of a criminal underclass and even the “successful” among them demonstrating a sort of gauche vapidity that makes them seem ridiculous among their peers. In the Netherlands, I visit a cousin who is undergoing their PhD in psychology. His small abode houses him and his family, and the walls are festooned with dozens of poorly printed posters and portraits of various academic “great men”, a dubious display of being an intellectual.
Many residents jubilantly discuss the new order in the Middle East
In a restaurant, I strike up a conversation with the owner, who hailed from the same town that my father’s family were from. We talk about his new life in Germany, attempting to draw from him some sort of confession of a benefit that it conferred to him; something optimistic that can help me withstand the stale taste of yet another tirade of bitter complaints. Between the high rent, high taxation, and the high peak of the mountain that is regulatory paperwork, the entire business is a sunk cost. He describes it as “paying to come to work at my own business.”
The unreliable, bloated, and corrupt nature of the Syrian state meant that most regulations were seen as gratuitous—and therefore widely ignored. As a result, a similar business in Syria was often better able to compete and turn a profit for the same amount of work.
In Europe it is difficult to justify virtuously working and being productive when a lackadaisical, sedentary lifestyle of smoking and grumbling at home can be subsidised by the state.
Meanwhile, many residents jubilantly discuss the new order in the Middle East. The anticipation is apparent even without understanding Arabic, as it is one of the few moments when joyful smiles radiate across their faces, dreaming of salvaging what little income they can collect in Europe so they may return and live comfortably in their old homes. They talk of farms in the hills, holiday homes on the coast, businesses in the capital. “I tell you, son, I would choose one hour of the air back home over 30 years in Germany!”
This is what is lacking in much of the conversation about immigration in Europe. It is a fiction to assume that all of the millions of people who departed their homes are somehow ignorant, or inept. They are fully cognisant of the price they pay to come here. Ordinarily we rely on a simple assumption of cost/benefit analysis, but in this instance it is pointless, because the costs far outweigh the benefit. It is a dull truism that one exchanges physical poverty for spiritual poverty, but in this instance these communities find themselves with both, for an arbitrary bargain that feels more like a swindle. The families that came to Europe have steadily seen everything they cherish whither, be it their families, their culture, their comfort, and above all their honour, which they cherish more than life. This lifestyle that many lead is the furthest thing from enviable, as having lacked the intricate relationship between family, community and state that they had in their homes, they became even aggrieved parties to the same force of fragmentation that has overtaken Europe.
As such, what must remain at the forefront of the mind of anyone who wishes to discuss immigration and the MENA communities in Europe, is the realisation that this is a deeply lonely existence. The decision to cross the sea into this continent is, in many ways, an act of self-immolation, driven by a complex cocktail of desperation, opportunism, indirection, rumours, and inertia. It is done, in many ways because that is what everyone is doing. That is the extent of the substance of the decision to be here, the root of the unfortunate condition that is so readily apparent to us, but not so apparent to these communities.
This is also why I have found that the immigration debate is so far removed from reality. It is challenging to translate anything that is observable in a casual context into useful data. It is even more so when the motivations and the behaviour of the parties are so frustrating, so self-contradictory and even self-harming. Syria’s neighbouring countries are not the bastions of liberal society that Europe is, but it is almost a given that the refugees who have settled there enjoy far easier and far more fulfilled lives than the one in Europe do. The prevalence of regret marries the stubbornness of a headstrong people, eager to prove to themselves and the world that they can succeed and thrive, and turn tragedy into misfortune. But the reality is that all that they have achieved is tear themselves asunder; and the immigration debate will continue to ignore the hard work of offering alternatives, or purpose, or anything resembling a solution to this problem.
What is often most ignored, however, is that the act of immigration is often less a practical move as opposed to a act of redemptive salvation for those who force themselves to swallow the bitter pill of vagrancy. In Germany, I stay at the house of our neighbours growing up, whose children I fondly remember playing with while my parents and theirs idled away over coffee for hours. I look to the corner of the room, and the picture of one of my friends stares at me warmly, standing there in a shrine. He had died recently, a victim of the Turkish Air Force’s incursions into the north of Syria, among countless other children. His parents look at me, bittersweetly asking “do you remember? Do you remember playing with each other when you were small?” It is memory that decides the actions of the refugees who reside in Europe, not the future. The defiant clinging to the memory of what was loved, be it their children or their home. Despite the poor and limited prospect of their family, unlikely to live the dignified lives they had dreamt of, still they marched on to Europe, to justify the cost of losing so much, even when what all that awaited them was a final hollowing out of what remained.
