THE TIES THAT BIND
WHEN AYA, A 23-YEAR-OLD SYRIAN REFUGEE living in the west German town of Xanten, came home from her language lessons one afternoon in October, the house was in disarray. A frantic search revealed that her 2-year-old son’s stroller was missing, along with their passports and IDs. She tried her husband; his phone was off. A few hours later Aya received a telephone call from Syria. “Go pack your bags,” her husband’s brother told her. “Mohammad is taking Joud to Syria, and he wants you to go with them.”
The instructions were simple. If she wanted to be with her son, she would have to retrace the path she and her husband had taken more than three years ago, when they sought refuge in Europe. Instead, Aya called the police. Her son, after all, had been born in Germany. Her time in the country had taught her that she had rights.
But it was too late. The police said her husband and son had taken a plane to Greece that morning. Her brother-in-law filled in the rest: as soon as they arrived, a smuggler took them across the border to Turkey,
