MOUDI
From Syria, age 27
Living in Denmark for 4 ½ years
Former professional basketball player
Coaching basketball, studying and working in the hotel industry
Fled Syria at age 21
Moudi’s story of finding refuge in Denmark is one of pursuing dreams, finding courage, having perseverance, and keeping hope.
"My dreams have changed a lot in the last 10 years. What I mostly want now is to have a good career, to provide a good living for myself and for my family, if I will get a family soon. We’ll see. Ten years ago, I would have wanted to be a great professional basketball player. It was the only thing I wanted to do. But now, it’s not possible. Maybe I can coach bigger teams in a high level in the future.”
The Syrian Civil War
Moudi grew up in Damascus, Syria with his parents and three siblings. He was a talented young basketball player and played professionally. He had a good income, close friends, and a nice life, “Of course Syria was a great place, and I love it more than anything. The country used to be very safe. Once the war started Syria became a very different country.” His family stayed thinking the situation would improve. They could hear the fighting, but it was not in their neighborhood.
That all changed in a night, “The war zone started getting closer to the neighborhood I lived in and the RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) were very close to our house. After that my mom said we have to leave. We started packing our things and other people around us did too. It was a crazy night. There was a lot of fighting happening outside. We could hear the bullets; we could hear the bombs; we could hear everything happening outside. We were all sitting in one room trying to cover ourselves, hoping that it wouldn’t come to our house. The next morning when my uncle opened the door to check what was happening, the street was full of dead bodies. It was like a carpet of dead bodies. This was the moment when everyone said we could not stay here anymore. I didn’t really want to leave because I was still playing basketball and getting money and my life, my friends and everybody was there (I was 19 ½). But it was too much to handle after seeing that. We booked a flight out to Egypt that day; between Syria and Egypt you don’t need a Visa so we could just go. We packed as much as we could and left.”
The family left thinking the situation would calm down and they would return, but it just continued to get worse, “A lot of people died. I lost 5 friends, 2 of them were my teammates. One of my friends from the professional level had an opinion and got shot because of it. It was scary to stay there because nobody was safe. Even for your opinion you could be killed. It was a good decision for my family to leave when we did.”
A Perilous Journey
From Egypt, Moudi made the decision to travel alone to Europe, looking for a safe place to find opportunity and make a new start. He paid smugglers to travel across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Italy, “They took us far away to an empty area at night, close to Libya, to the sea. We met about 300 people there. It was dark and we had to walk and hide. They took one group at a time. My group was around 23 people. We had to run and swim to a small rubber boat that took us out to the big fishing boat. The moment my group arrived at the big boat it started to move further away from shore. They told us the police attacked the group behind us, so we had to runaway.”
“We travelled almost all the way to Greece, but then they told us we had to go back to Egypt pick up other people. It was very dangerous to go back because once we left the Egyptian waters no one could arrest us, but if we went back and they caught us, I would be immediately sent back to Syria. Plus, we had left the country, so the moment we enter back to Egypt we are now entering illegally. We had to do this every night for 6 days. Every time we went in they would hear there are police so we would go back out to sea. After 7 days, the boat was running out of gas. At that point, they needed to get rid of us. The fishermen were threatening us to throw us in the sea because they could not go back with us and they didn’t have gas to go to Greece. They called other dealers to come bring a boat to get us.
“Thankfully, their boss sent another fishing boat in the nighttime to take us from them. In the middle of the night the other ship came and they tried to tie up next to our boat, but it was wavy so the boats were crashing together. Even though the boats were close, they were going up and down so you had to jump carefully. I was the 4th one to go and I was so scared when I looked down. I will never forget that jump. I thought I would never make it. All I remember, one of my feet touched the other boat and a guy grabbed me and hugged me and threw me on the deck. Every time someone else made it on the boat we hugged them because it was such a scary moment. All 23 people made it. Then they sent us below deck on the boat while we waited for other people to come. We stayed there for two days.
“Another group arrived with 80-100 people and then a big boat came with 200 people, so we had a total of 320 people on the boat when we arrived in Italy, according to the Red Cross. On the boat, I was given the role of dividing the water all around so everyone had an equal amount. If the water ran out we would die. We each had ½ cup to drink daily, although some of it tasted like gasoline from the containers it was kept in. Because of my role, people started to come to me to ask my advice about what to do because they saw me as a responsible person. I built nice connections, which made me happy. In total, the whole trip took 20 days.”
Finding Safety in Denmark
After reaching Italy, Moudi came by plane to Denmark, “I never regret the decision to come here. I had learned about Denmark in school in Syria growing up. I was always hoping one day in my life I could visit Denmark because you hear it’s the happiest country in the world, and it’s a good place to live. I knew people here are having a good life, so I was thinking, ‘I want to be a part of this community.’ I got asylum and refugee status 5 months after I arrived.” It would be very dangerous for Moudi to return to Syria now because he has a mandatory military commitment that he would have to fulfill, so if he went back he would be immediately forced into the military, “I didn’t want to be part of the conflict at all. And I don’t want to fight someone from my own country. Of course, I wanted to go back to visit my friends, but the moment I would step inside the airport I would be taken.”
Integrating by Choice
When Moudi arrived in Denmark, he was required by the government to participate in a three-year integration program that included Danish language classes and a ‘praktik’ that he was told would be working in a factory with other immigrants collecting shampoo inside boxes. However, Moudi had bigger dreams and declined work in the factory, saying that he would find another job better suited to his qualifications and for a more experiential integration process, “I walked out, passed by a school in that village and thought of offering myself as a basketball coach. It was the week before school opened in August. I met a teacher who let me straight to the director. She listened to my story, and I was given a coaching job immediately. Integration could not have been better than being part of the teachers’ team, speaking in Danish, and working with Danish kids. There was no better way to start understanding this new culture. After six months I was offered a job at a Copenhagen basketball team. I agreed, came to Copenhagen and knew directly that this was my town. I now live in Østebro, have played basketball for two years, have been coaching kids, and started my studies in business and tourism. My mother would say that, ‘Everything has a reason,’ and now I believe so too.”
Building a New Life
The decision to come to Denmark was basically Moudi’s desire to get his life back on track as soon as possible, “I just wanted to build a life as quickly as possible, and I was lucky with that. From day one I met good people here. The moment I arrived here I learned Copenhagen life in a very short time. I just started walking around and talking to people, asking if I can get a job. I was willing to learn new things. Then I met the CEO of a company, and I explained my situation and he offered me a position. He is a great man. Now everything is going smooth.”
After Moudi started working, he realized that he just needed to prove himself, “Then it begins to be about who you are as a person. In Copenhagen if you are confident and have the chance to socialize with people you can easily life here. It’s a place where you can start from zero. It’s about who you are. If you have the mentality to say, ‘I can do it’ Copenhagen is the best place in the world, I think, to actually do it. I want to develop as much as I can, so I talked to an education counselor and decided to study to learn more in my field. I finish studying next month, in the end of May. It’s my own integration.”
Gratitude
Moudi is very grateful to be living in Denmark today, “Denmark has given me so much by giving me the chance to live here. I feel like now I have a base where I belong. I’m also getting an education, which is another benefit of living here. The rest is up to me. I like the simple lifestyle in Denmark. People don’t judge each other here. I can work any job I want, and people will never talk down to me. A general manager and a cleaner will be treated the same way. People just want to live life, so everyone can be what they want to be. That’s what I love most about Denmark. It’s a good place.”
The Benefit of Sport
Although he cannot play professionally anymore, basketball continues to be a big part of Moudi’s life, “Basketball was the main reason I moved to Copenhagen. It saved my life, I can say. In general I think sport is a great way to integrate and build a connection, make friends, make new teammates. I’ve met a lot of great people through basketball. I also have a part time job now coaching kids basketball between 6-11 years old, and I have gained a lot of other skills mentoring kids and teenagers. I still have my basketball jerseys from Damascus…I took them when I left in 2013. They are the only things I took with me. They are very important to me. I’ve been collecting them since I was 6 or 7 years old, and I have one from my Dad that was a gift to me in 8th grade. Sports have been a major factor in my life. I could have never predicted that it would help me so much, with integrating, finding a new me, and being accepted.”
Moudi’s Dreams
Moudi recognized that his dreams have shifted due to his circumstances and time, “What I want now is to have a good career, to provide a good living for myself and for my family, if I will get a family soon. We’ll see. Ten years ago, I would have wanted to be a great professional basketball player. It was the only thing I wanted to do. But now, it’s not possible. Maybe I can coach bigger teams in a high level in the future.
The journey that Moudi has endured from a war zone, across an ocean, and starting over alone in a new country is one that can inspire others, “It’s hard to keep telling my story, but the more I talk about it the easier it gets, and maybe it will help other people. What I’ve been through in Syria, how I came to Denmark, adjusting to life here…it was always there in my head. The bad things pop up, but I try to overcome them as much as I can. I think about where I am now and try to be happy and grateful. I try to make myself live in the moment. When the bad times come, I remind myself how I overcame the bad times in the past.”
To read Moudi's story on the UNHCR Northern European website click here: https://www.unhcr.org/neu/29747-second-chances-moudis-story.html
