From travel to arrival

After three months of travelling, Ayoub reaches the Netherlands, where he is placed in Ter Apel. Together with a volunteer, he made this spencer there, which he has kept as a memento of his arrival and first few days in the Netherlands. On the one hand, it signalled the beginning of a whole new journey, albeit within the Netherlands. On the other hand, it marked the end of his long journey away from Afghanistan, which started to dawn on him when he was put in a taxi to Ter Apel by the Dutch police.

Ayoub entered the Netherlands by train from Germany: a friend had told him he could go to the train station and ask for a ticket to the Netherlands at the information desk. Naturally, he did not understand the service employees, but they did hand him a piece of paper. Ayoub boarded the first available train to the Netherlands. After a while, a conductor came to check his ticket. What was supposed to be Ayoub’s ticket, appeared to be a schedule with train departure times. Ayoub offered the conductor some money, but he understood that this was not sufficient. He was brought to a wagon far in the back, and was given a seat next to a Dutch woman, who was asked to keep Ayoub company. Even though she was very friendly, Ayoub felt extremely out of place: “I feel like so much less than the other passengers: I had a good life but was forced to flee, and now I’m sitting in the train, dirty and illegal, and it feels like everyone is watching me. That is when I yearned back to Afghanistan so much.”

At the first Dutch train station, the police removed him from the train, under protest of the woman who accompanied him. But the officers were kind and brought him to the police station, where they quickly came to the conclusion that Ayoub came to the Netherlands to seek refuge. So he was brought to the refugee centre in Ter Apel, one of the first locations where refugees end up when they reach the Netherlands. “I was put in a beautiful taxi, which was warm and comfortable. Then I was so tired, so tired of travelling for three months. Now I was somewhere, and I immediately fell asleep. I tried to keep my eyes open, but my eyes just kept falling shut.”

Ayoub tells of the exhaustion from constantly moving, never being able to stay at one place. This spencer symbolizes the turning point from travelling to arriving, although at this point Ayoub still had a lot of migrating ahead of him. During the five years he has been in the Netherlands, he has seen many shelters and refugee centres, among which in Budel, Harderwijk, Katwijk, and mostly in Leiden, where he feels most at home. As a refugee, you end up in countless roller coasters through an immensely complicated system. For a long time, Ayoub still longed to go back to his impossible life in Herat.