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I told her that because I opposed the Syrian regime, they put me in prison many times and tortured me for no reason and with no meaningful questioning.
"Maybe, it was their way to draw the poison out of my head. I have no other explanation for what happened. I didn't want to leave, but after the fourth time in jail, I decided I could not stand the humiliation anymore and fled the country with my wife, Maria." I was good the first time I lied to an official back in Lebanon, and to my shame, Cyprus and Olivia just made me much more efficient at lying.
Pam used all the stories she heard from the news and told the German official about the horrors of the refugee camps in Turkey and the two times we tried to cross the Aegean without being successful.
"The first time, they rescued us because we were not away from the Turkish shores yet. The second time, not all the people who tried to flee with us were so lucky. Most of them died, and we were among the lucky ones who made it. We lost the bag with our papers and most of the money we could smuggle out of Syria, but we had some left on us which made the journey here possible." Pam was even more convincing than I was. We rehearsed the story many times along our long journey to Berlin, but I never thought we'd be that good.
"How did you get to Greece?" The German lady asked both of us, but I let Pam do the talking as she was apparently the better actor.
"Oh, the third time worked; as we say in Arabic, the third time is the one."
"But you didn't stay there. May I ask why?"
"Moria camp was more a prison than a camp. The Greeks who came to help were very nice and helpful. Actually, one of them helped us flee to Athens and after that, you know the rest of the route and where it led us."
"How was Moria a prison?
"Not all Syrians who fled the country are good people. Some fled to seize the opportunity. I bet they never gave a damn about either side or sides if I may say. They built the camps in a hurry, and many things were not available there. Maybe, the UN did their best or maybe not, but there was room for monopoly in the camps among other dirty businesses going on."
"You don't have to tell me more if you don't feel comfortable about it. I want you to know things are different in Tempelhof and that I am here to help."
We both looked gratefully at Greta, the German official and thanked her.
"No Herr Greta, we don't mind. We have been on the road for over a month now, and I'm sure we are over the terrible things that happened in the camps."
Pam and I told her about the offers Pam had to refuse and the many times when they tried to kill me to get to her, the prostitution rings and drugs. It surprised Greta to learn about the overpriced bread, lentils, and rice in the camps, especially because we did not belong to any of the factions there. I let Pam do most of the talking, and for a moment, I might have felt a little wrong about us living that big lie this much, but these were only the things we heard, and they were true. I was grateful they didn't happen to us, but there must be other people who were suffering worse fates than the farthest places our imaginary story could take us.
"But you were riding along Europe freely with no restrictions. I understand you needed to ask for asylum, especially without papers. This is the right thing to do, but why Berlin, why Germany? There are many camps all along the way here. Why didn't you stop at any of them?"
We were waiting for Greta to ask this because it was the only truth in our whole story and why we made our plans to come along all this way to Berlin in particular.
"We are software engineers, and we thought we might have a better chance of leaving a German refugee camp faster than any other refugee camp." Greta nodded with some sense of German pride. I thought we had nailed it.
Greta told us that first, she needed to work out our missing documents. They would issue us temporary documents with our names on them. Then we could apply for asylum and wait to get it, but she told us not to bother now about the details as she would tell us about each phase in time. She wanted us to be sure we were safe and that they would take good care of us.
After Greta left, the turn came to Johan, one of the many psychiatrists in the camp, and finally, we had our physical examination. We waited until they made sure the results were acceptable before they let us in the camp.
The room we got was immaculate, but it felt more like the cubicles we had back in the company. There were two beds with clean sheets and clothes, there was a door to that little room, but there was no ceiling except for the two-meter separators which replaced regular walls. It was the only way they could host about twelve thousand refugees in one place.
We had shared bathrooms with our neighbors who were cautiously friendly at the beginning, but that suited us, and we did not want to have stronger relationships with anyone, so we stayed in the room most of the time. We wanted to avoid creating more stories to patch up our original lie as much as we could, and when we had to, we came out as the optimistic, positive people who wanted to forget all about the past and think only about the future.
The canteen was like that in a huge school where we got food in trays and large tables to share with people we didn't know. Although the first few days were uneventful, especially that we did not hear from Greta yet, but I felt some looks from some tables went a little beyond the natural curiosity kids would have at school when a new kid came along, but we wanted to feel safe and imagine this stop as the last towards our journey to a whole new life. I just didn't know our stop in this station was going to be much longer and much more painful than we ever imagined.