Myrto Papadopoulos (Athens, Greece)

"My name is Amani el Mekhlef. I am 29 years old and a mother of five. When I was in Syria I was seven months pregnant and one day an air strike hit next to my house so I lost the baby. After that they took me to a place to take out the baby from my belly without any anesthetics. It took the doctors about six hours to take the baby out. After that we decided to leave while being pregnant again. We basically left when I was pregnant to my son because of the many bombings. The borders were closed so we waited for about one week to go to Turkey. After that we went to Turkey and we stayed in a camp (Tel Abyad). After one year already in the camp I got pregnant again. It just happened. My husband wanted another baby because of our culture and habits. We don't calculate how many babies we have. It is whatever god gives us. My mother in law has 18 children.The journey from Turkey to Greece was very hard. My husband left turkey alone and after I followed (with the children). We carried many things but we threw most of them. We got into the boat and the kids were crying all the way. We stayed in the sea for two hours. When we arrived an organization came to help us. I was not afraid at all, thank god. Many organizations welcomed us and took us to the camps. When we arrived to the shore I nearly lost my children because of the amount of people that were waiting there. At some point I lost one of my children and we stayed without any food because we had to look for him."