A story from Cordoba.

Mohammed.

 

My name is Mohammed.

I was born amid the winds of the Sahara,

where the sun doesn't ask where you come from,

and the sand keeps the secrets of the soul.

But I grew up in northern Morocco,

under a sky that also dreamed.

 

I studied...

Physics!

Yes, physics.

With my eyes on the stars

and my feet firmly planted on the dust of the earth.

I married a lightning woman,

brave as the desert and sweet as scarce water.

But life there,

life offered no future,

and love also needs a tomorrow.

 

So I left.

 

A bus to Turkey,

and then...

the endless walk.

Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria,

Serbia, Croatia...

Italy... Germany.

This is not a list of countries.

It is a string of steps,

of moonless nights and days without food,

of police, of fear, of death.

Yes. Death.

Because not everyone made it.

Because some bodies were left on the margins of the dream.

But I...

I kept going.

With wounded feet and a broken soul,

I kept going.

 

I arrived in Spain.

In Córdoba.

An NGO, Caritas, opened a door for me,

but the legal door remains closed.

I am “undocumented,”

a name in the shadows,

a label that denies everything I am:

a man, a husband, a graduate, a worker.

A human being!

 

Europe,

where are your human rights

when it comes to us?

 

Two years held back by bureaucracy.

Invisible.

But I exist.

I EXIST!

 

And I have held my soul with both hands,

so as not to break.

Because dignity cannot be processed,

dignity is lived.

And I have lived it.

 

Here, in a house for those who have no home,

I was offered the chance to participate in IN-HABIT.

And I said yes.

I don't want to be a victim.

I don't want to live waiting.

I want to give.

I want to beautify spaces,

make them dignified,

for us,

and for those who will come with their stories in tow.

 

INHABIT.

That's not just a name.

It's a way of resisting.

Of living.

Of sowing beauty where there was once abandonment.

Of saying:

I am part of this too!

I contribute too!

 

And now,

in this little corner of Europe,

I have left a mark.

And they, my colleagues, have left one on me.

 

Thank you, INHABIT.

Thank you, colleagues from the GREEN TEAM.

I am not a number.

I am not a file.

I am Mohammed.