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41 " We went from Greece to Macedonia, and then to Serbia, Hungary, and Austria before reaching Germany. "
― Wendy Pearlman , We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria
42 " Because I’m a doctor, I tried to help whenever someone was injured. People were choking on tear gas and we’d pour cola on their faces, which counters the effect of gas. Their faces were sticky and glistening. "
43 " Everything in Jordan bothered me. My family, the government, the bad way the Jordanians treated us. "
44 " In Italy we were placed in a refugee camp, but then managed to escape. We found a Syrian guy who agreed to drive us to Denmark for 500 euros per person. "
45 " In Sicily they asked us if we were educated: engineers, teachers, doctors . . . if you said yes, they took your fingerprints so you stay in Italy. If you said no, they told you to keep moving to northern Europe. "
46 " I’m a woman. And I’m Christian. And I believe that this regime should go. "
47 " I was thrown in jail in Hungary, but it was like a five-star hotel compared to my time in our jails in Syria. "
48 " If I’d known this was life here I would have stayed in Syria and handed myself over to ISIS. It’s better to die once than die slowly every day. "
49 " We were thirty-five people in one house. The women would sleep in one room and the men in another. When there was shelling, we’d be about three hundred people in the underground shelter. "
50 " So we left and came to Lebanon and my husband and daughter stayed in Syria. "
51 " It was humiliating. Syrians were treated like a burden. By the time I finished university in 2013, I was scared shitless to stay in the Arab world. "
52 " The more people tried to address the issue of sectarianism, the more violent the regime became. "
53 " Thank God, we came here to Lebanon. But life is terrible here, too. This neighborhood of shacks, the lack of hygiene, the germs making the kids sick. "
54 " Here in Germany they respect that I’m strong and independent. But I’ve also realized how Syrian I am. The way I enjoy human interaction, the way I let people into my life—this is our Syrian, our Arab culture. "
55 " In the future, I will have grandchildren who speak Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish. If they don’t learn Arabic, they will be strangers to each other. They won’t have any traces of where we came from. They won’t be Syrian. And I will live in exile and die in exile. "
56 " Everyone takes advantage of Syrians. If you go to the hospital, they register your visit even when they don’t provide treatment, just so they can charge the fees to the UN. "
57 " America, we started to learn about debit cards, credit cards, credit history, credit scores. "
58 " I'm not saying that the conscience of the international community is asleep. I'm saying that the conscience doesn't exist at all. "
59 " There's nothing to protect us. No state, no government, no law, no human rights. Animals have more rights than we do. "
60 " My family supports the Assad regime. Especially my mother. She’s a true Christian believer who goes to church every Sunday. She loves her country and wants to stay there. "