IDOMENI, Greece — WHEN we first got here we had money to buy a little food. Now it’s gone. We stand in line for hours for a sandwich. My husband told a journalist recently: “People are fed up. Maybe tomorrow they will break down the gate and flood across the border.” The journalist said, “How many weapons do you have?” If we knew how to carry weapons or wanted to carry weapons we would not have fled Syria. We want peace. We are sick of killing.

We fled a war, and now the European Union is making war against us, a psychological war. When we hear rumors that we’ll be let into Europe, we celebrate. These leaders give us new hope, then they extinguish it. Why did you open the door to refugees? Why did you welcome people? If they had stopped it before, we would not have come. We would not have risked death, me and my children, and thousands of others, to make the crossing.

I’m 39 and Kurdish, from the city of Hasakah. I knew from watching the news that Hasakah was under threat from the Islamic State. Every day last spring, the government would shell the city’s outskirts. Sometimes a stray shell would land near us.

Image Laila’s tent, right, at the refugee camp. Credit... Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

One day, at 5 in the morning, we heard the shelling and we knew that the Islamic State had arrived. I took my children and two bags and fled. In those days, everyone had two bags ready at all times: one containing important documents and the other clothes and other essentials. We ran through a dry riverbed. It was still muddy and we sank in up to our ankles.