Beaded Necklace

In 2016, the border between Greece and North Macedonia became the symbol of a Europe that was closing its doors. In Idomeni, an informal camp born out of mud and waiting, among cockroaches, asbestos and rats, about 15,000 people arrived at the same time. Entire families, single people, and unaccompanied minors lived in summer tents, exposed to the rain and to the denial of fundamental rights, dreaming of continuing along the Balkan Route — what migrants call “the game”, the game of survival.

Ali was one of them. He was 40 years old and carried his whole world with him: his wife and three young children, aged seven, five, and four. After seeing Kurdistan devastated and losing all his material possessions, Ali had invested the savings of a lifetime to pay for a clandestine and dangerous journey, hoping to offer his children a future without the sound of bombs.

We met there, between the food lines and the barbed wire. We started playing with his children, and from that moment a friendship grew. When our paths finally separated, Ali gave us this necklace. It was not just an object. It was the last fragment of his homeland, a piece of identity that had survived kilometres of roads, deprivation, fear, and violence. A gift to thank those who, in that chaos, had recognised his dignity as a human being — and which, at that moment, was all the material wealth he had left.

He told us: “To get here we paid with everything we had. In the end we found nothing. Europe closes its doors. Our sons and daughters have the right to live, not to die here. But the most important thing is that we have not lost the strength to remain human.”

We said goodbye with a hug, a hug as wide as the world.