News • November 16 2003

Soldiers in detention camps exchanged eight packets of cigarettes for $100

Matthew Vella
"The men in our families paid USD4,000 to board a ship that should have taken us to Italy," Hagu, who at 45 is a mother of five, says. A Kurd, she left her small hometown just outside Istanbul almost 15 months ago along with her family and other Kurds. Three months ago, she was awarded refugee status, and now she and her family share a three-storey building that previously housed the Catholic Action in Msida, along with two other Kurdish families. They have been taken in by the Curia’s emigrants’ commission, headed by Mons Philip Calleja, who finds accommodation for refugees.
"We were five families in all before. But two of them have been moved to another place. Now we are 22 in all, families of 10, seven and five," she says, baby in hand. Sheila, 29, is another Kurdish refugee acting as impromptu translator.
Another woman is busy in the kitchen, but she scuttles off in suspicion. Sheila and Hagu are more talkative. "Malta is good. Monsignor Philip is very good", she OKs with her thumb, "he gave us this house to live in, and also some money."
But not everyone is happy with their situation, or their place of accommodation, which is barren and not welcoming. Two men, one in his fifties and the other in his twenties, lament their conditions, and Fajek, the older man, disagrees openly with Hagu. "Malta is not good. We are given Lm70 every two weeks. There is no work here. They won’t take us because we’re Kurds. I am living in one room here, with a family of ten," Fajek complains. Hagu protests, trying to mitigate Fajek’s laments with a smile and repeating that ‘Malta’ has been good to them.
But their ordeal seems to illustrate otherwise. They left around 15 months ago by ship to try and reach Sicily or Italy, and maybe make it to Switzerland.
"4,000 dollars is not a lot. We pooled in the money we had and we gave it to a Turk at the point of departure," Hagu says. "We left because there is always someone killing us Kurds. If it isn’t the Turks it’s the Iraqis," the younger man says.
At mid-point through their journey, they were stopped at another country and boarded off, possibly on one of the Greek islands, and then taken onto another smaller ship. But as food and supplies ran out, they had to detour to Malta.
The Kurds were all detained in the army’s Safi barracks, where they described their home as a garage, thrown in with another five families of mixed race. An eight-year old lad who joins us downstairs, decked in government school uniform but clearly having a day off, says the conditions were horrible. In clear Maltese he also quips that the place was full of blacks quarrelling with each other, showing that even in the midst of mutual tragic destiny, racial antipathy is never absent.
Fajek, a construction worker by trade, says the families spent eleven months in detention at the Safi barracks, "eating pasta every day," he complains. He says he had to sell his wife’s gold bracelets to be able to buy cigarettes. "Some of the Maltese soldiers would sell me a packet of cigarettes for ten dollars. I sold some of my wife’s gold for hundred dollars, and I was given eight packs of cigarettes in return."
"When we were taken to hospital, we were taken in handcuffs, as if we were criminals," the younger man says, who tries to knock up some cash doing some plastering with his cousin. "The conditions are not good in the detention camps…not good," he emphasises.
We shake hands on departure, and Hagu motions not to take any notice of the men and that Malta has been good to them. The younger kid in school uniform displays some of the local knowledge he has gathered from his schoolmates and shouts out: "Malta hanina, hobza u sardina."matthew@maltamag.com