Unaware of the latest German proposal for the relocation of refugees in Europe, asylum-seekers sit idly outside Brühl’s Flüchtlingsheim (refugee home). Women wearing headscarves and long skirts look on warily while men in scruffy jeans and crocs walk about the compound dotted with washing lines, tricycles and scraps of used furniture.

Around 90 refugees from lands as far as Pakistan and Nigeria reside in this transitional accommodation erected partially out of housing containers in an old building. Twelve per cent of the population of Brühl, a small city of the German state North Rhein Westphalia (NRW), are foreign nationals.

As the sun sets on the pale walls of this refugee centre in western Germany, the sombreness is disrupted by the soundtrack of a Hum TV drama serial. The television is flickering in Riaz Ahmed’s room. A mobile shop owner from Shad Bagh, Lahore, Ahmed fled Pakistan in 2010.

“[That was the] year when bombs exploded everywhere, from Data Darbar to the FIA building in Model Town,” Ahmed reminisces bitterly. He is in his 50s, his hairline disappearing, and he’s dressed in loose trousers with a white tee-shirt — something that often ‘offends’ anti-migrants like Thilo Sarrazin.

Ahmed leads me to his room which he shares with a refugee from Bangladesh. The room is cramped: two iron beds, a coffee table, an old leather couch, a refrigerator, a cupboard, a microwave and a TV set. A copy of the Quran rests on a pile of German language course books.

“I came to Germany from Pakistan via Italy in 2010,” he recalls. “I never knew what ‘asylum’ was. I paid Rs400,000 for German citizenship to the immigration consultant, who was a friend. But when I arrived here, it turned out it had been a fraud. I couldn’t go back, I had risked all I had in Pakistan for the German passport.”

He was devastated, his dreams of driving a BMW shattered. Stranded in the bitter German cold, frightened by the Deutsch-speaking crowd, the semi-literate shopkeeper met some Pakistanis who advised him to apply for political asylum.

Pakistanis rank 10th among foreigners applying for asylum in Germany. According to the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 3,412 Pakistanis sought asylum in 2012. Most of them reside in NRW, which has the highest migrant population.

This room in Brühl has been Ahmed’s abode for almost five years. German authorities have rejected his asylum request twice over the past three years. The decision on his fresh appeal is pending. He is entitled to receive a monthly allowance.

Life in a refugee centre segregated from the main city is not what he had dreamt of. “Germans passing by this centre look at us scornfully. It hurts,” he says. “German law ensures our right to healthcare but my German doctor treats me very badly, because I’m a foreigner.”

A typical day at the refugee centre starts with noisy brawls between Moroccan and Syrian families opposite Ahmed’s room while at night he has to bear with the wall-wrecking banging of drunken Africans and Asians. Violent scuffles are common, but no official takes notice.

In addition to a couple of illegal odd jobs at desi pizzerias, which he refers to as “kala kaam” [bad work], Ahmed works as kitchen and cleaning help at the Refugee Centre for €1 an hour. The legal hourly wage in Germany is €8.

During the last five years he has hardly gone out, and no further than the park nearby. “It is suffocating but this room is now my house, my whole Deutschland [Germany],” he says.

Even so, Ahmed thinks this is far better than the financial insecurity and terror in Pakistan.

“At times I regret my decision and wish I had a decent house or at least my own room,” he observes. “But then I get a phone call from my wife cursing loadshedding, mean landlords and the mobile snatchers in Shad Bagh. The daily news from Pakistan is enough to rein in my self-esteem and emotions.”

At this point his smartphone buzzes. It’s his wife. This can wait, he says, and shows me the selfie of his wife and three daughters sent just now.

“Everyone, even my wife, advises me to marry a German woman for citizenship,” he tells me. “Marrying a European national is very common among asylum-seekers.”

Two Africans in the refugee centre recently travelled to Belgium to marry native women just to break free of the asylum agony. Asked if he intends to take the nuptial route, he smiles shyly: “If I marry a German lady, how will I support my own family?”

No matter how much Ahmed pines for his children, he can’t go back. “From menial work to insulting behaviour, from Poland to Italy, I have endured it all for my children,” he says. “Why leave when there’s hope now? I have burned my boats but I will not recommend asylum to any Pakistani.”

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2015

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