Several hundred migrants resting in Victoria Square in Athens Photo: Getty
11:47AM BST 28 Sep 2015
Day 5 Sunday 27 September 5.00pm, train from Athens to ThessalonikiI am moving on to Thessaloniki, close to the Macedonian border, the next step on the route to Serbia and from there Hungary or Croatia.
In the buffet of a train out of Athens, an Iraqi man was trying to ask a Greek woman when we would arrive in Thessaloniki.
When I asked him in Arabic "Can I help you?" he sighed with relief, and we sat down to talk over coffee.
Taha Hasan Salman, 27, was from Al-Za'franiya, south-east of Baghdad. He was tired of living in fear and decided to leave, even if that meant drowning in the sea. "Every now and then we have suicide bombs," he said. "You always live in fear in Iraq."
His father died in 2008 and his mother six months ago. His sister went mad after losing her parents and because of the stress of living in Baghdad. He divorced his wife last year after four years of unsuccessful marriage.
In Iraq he worked as a car electrician, wi th some extra work mending computers. Mr Salman said that shortly before he decided to leave he was attacked by a gang while walking back to his home. They stabbed him between his neck and shoulder and he was lucky to survive.
When he arrived in Piraeus, he didn't attract the attention of the bus agents, who offer direct routes to the Macedonia-Greece border. He asked some other people how to get to the border and they told him to travel by train. Taking the train by day is more expensive than at night but he didn't know t hat and was in a hurry to move on..
He had flown to Istanbul from Baghdad, then stayed in Turkey for six days.
"I was afraid of smugglers and the stories of the people who were drowning at the sea but I had no choice.
"When I arrived at the coast near Izmir, I bought a life jacket. The smugglers told us: nobody takes bags. You put your important stuff - money, passports - in a plastic bag."
But Mr Salman had already bought an expensive bag for the journey and he didn't want to leave it, so he put his bag inside a plastic bag.
When he was told to board a rubber dinghy, he was nervous because he could see it was overloaded with people. Mr Salman dawdled but someone shouted "Go!" and he said he was afraid to turn back in case the smugglers killed him and took his money.
It was 7 pm when they left the Turkish coast. "The people on the boat were too heavy and water was coming in - we used our shoes to get the water out of the boat."
The smugglers didn't go with them, one of the refugees took the rudder. They could see lights on a Greek island, Mr Salman didn't know its name but knew that it was a military island.
When they arrived, a refugee stabbed the rubber boat with a knife so that the Greek coastguards couldn't force them to turn back. Soldiers approached them and Mr Salman, coming from Iraq, feared they might open fire. But a soldier asked if anyone spoke English and then brought them a box with some water bottles and food.
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They were instructed to stand in three lines, and then were taken to a military camp to sleep.
Mr Salman was wearing the life jacket under his jacket. His clothes were wet but he couldn't change as his bag was taken by the Greek soldiers.
In the morning, they were given back their bags, and were taken to Leros island. They were divided into three groups: those who had passports, those who had any other ID, and third group who hadn't any ID.
When he was asked by the coastguard where he was from, he said Syria, but a Syrian man told the police that he was not a Syrian because of his accent.
In Leros, they had good treatment, they were given food and new clothes. From there they booked a ferry to Athens. In all, Mr Salman had spent four days travelling from Turkey to Athens.
When I asked him where he was heading, he said: "It doesn't matter. Any European country. The most important thing is to get rid of the nightmare and live in peace without fear."
We eventually arrived in Thessaloniki at about 10 pm. Some fellow Iraqis he had met in Turkey had arrived in Greece as well, by a different route. They called him at his whatsapp telling him that they were also about to arrive in Thessaloniki. He decided to wait for them so they could continue their journey together.
Day 4 Saturday 26 September 11.00pm AthensI will move on to Thessaloniki tomorrow, which is about 31 miles from the Macedonian border and is a big destination for people heading north towards Hungary and Croatia.
We've had a rainy day with thunder, the worst weather for people who sleep in the streets.
One of the bus agents around Piraeus port introduced me to an Iraqi man who wants to go back to a refugee camp in Kurdistan after his money was stolen.
Delshar Mohamed, 32, is from Sinjar, outside Mosul. He has two wives and six children. He left for Kurdistan in August 2014 after Isil seized Mosul. Although he is Sunni Muslim, he preferred to flee his home, as he has Kurdish roots.
Two weeks ago he decided to join refugees crossing to Europe. He left his family, crossed to Turkey and then it was easy to find a smuggler in Izmir, who charged him $1,200 to cross to the Greek islands.
Mr Mohamed has no money even for food; he said that he had gone two days without food until a Syrian man helped him to buy some..
"I want to return to Erbil, my money was stolen," he said. "I have been without food or water for two days. I sleep in the street. I can't continue.
"My family is now living in a tent in Zakho [in Iraqi Kurdistan], they told me to come back. They told me we don't have money; we don't have anything to eat.
"My mother was getting a pension but she hasn't been paid for 4 months. They have only 500,000 Iraqi dinar, it equals $400."
His oldest child Jina, is seven, and the youngest, Abas, is just two months.
Having been living on the streets around Piraeus for several days, he had decided that life with his family in a tent in Kurdistan was better. But a bus agent was trying to persuade him to continue the journey north so that what it had cost him so far wasn't money spent in vain.
12.00pm AthensBefore moving on from Athens, I went back to Piraeus port. A big ferry had just arrived from one of the islands. There were a lot of people coming off it exhausted, and worried.
Among them was Abo Khaled, a Syrian man in his fifties fro m outside Damascus. He wanted to leave by bus for the Macedonian border immediately.
He had been living in Turkey, while his wife and four children have been in Amman, Jordan. The war had divided them against their will.
The family fled the Damascus countryside to Daraa during regime bombing, and from Daraa they crossed the border to Jordan. At that time he was working in Aleppo. His brother was a general in the Syrian army but defected – when that happened Abo Khaled was afraid to return to Damascus and fled north, entering Turkey last year.
His son Khaled, 12, has been sick with hepatitis C. The family had been in the Zaatari refugee camp but moved to Amman to get medication for Khaled.
It was difficult for him to travel to join them in Jordan, and they hadn't found a way for them to come to Turkey.
"I don't know what my destination is yet – if I make it to Hungary I will go to Germany, if not I might go to Sweden."
When I aske d him about his name he refused to give his real one. "I have a sister still in Syria and I'm afraid she might be in danger."
Since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 – long before the current migrant crisis – Athens has been one of Afghan refugees' favourite destinations. But recently this community has been boosted with thousands of new migrants.
The ground road from Afghanistan to Athens is long and tough but over time it has become known to many, who even risk bringing their entire family all the way.
Today, hundreds of Afghans are camped in Victoria Square, near the centre of Athens, where a lot of their countrymen who migrated years earlier live. But Victoria Square and the area surrounding it is also famous for prostitution, drugs and crime.
He doesn't speak English but his eyes reveal his feeling of loss. His wife was holding a baby in her hands, and his 11-year-old daughter Mariam was trying to help us translate.
Source: Walking with migrants: the diary of a journey from Greece to Berlin
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