Lost Boys: Mohannad
Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, arrived on a July morning like any other.
Before the rows of tents in the Diavata refugee camp began their slow roast under the high arc of the Greek sun, 17-year-old Mohanad of Idlib, Syria, had a soccer ball between his feet.
Mohanad slept little. Thrown in jail twice without charge, first in Syria and then in Greece, he could not shake the permanent state of alert from his body.
For years, Greece has systematically jailed child refugees traveling alone (i.e. unaccompanied minors), many for months on end, in dank police cells and overcrowded detention centers. Thousands of boys who flee to European shores have endured these deeply scarring first encounters with the state.
For Mohanad, memories of his 40 days in a windowless cell in the Evzoni prison, where he survived on boiled potatoes and water from a showerhead, were soothed by his compulsive study of English, German, soccer. And poetry.
Today, to celebrate Eid, he would recite his poems on a stage before the camp, alongside other boys. Mohanad's brother Salem, 16, hung bits of his own verse in their tent: "Nor does life show mercy/ neither humans understand."
Mohanad and Salem had fled the devastating airstrikes in Idlib, leaving behind a mother and sister who could not make the dangerous journey, but little else.
"When I lost my father, I cried for many days," Mohanad said. "When I lost my second friend, I cried. Eventually, when I lost my fortieth friend, I stopped crying." Over 150 of his friends and relatives had died by the day we met. He still keeps count.