Do you know Sisyphus? The Greek myth who was punished by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeating this action for eternity? Well, we are all Sisyphus here in Idomeni. But with a difference: we haven’t done anything to deserve it.

My name is Mamoon Hassan, from Al- Raka, in Syria. I am 26 years old, but I have already lived more than many men would live even if they lived three lives. My family is big (I have ten brothers and sisters) and so they were our dreams until one day, during the cold winter of 2014, the so-called organization of Islamic State destroyed our hopes when they gained control over my city. Life under IS control was worse than a nightmare. Colors were abolished and my mother and sisters had to wear black. Smoking a cigarette was punished with lashes. With resignation, I was forced to see how my University Degree in Journalism became a useless piece of paper: IS considered journalism to be a heretic profession, characteristic of the unbelievers and unfaithful. Even though we lived in a state of constant fear, we tried to keep ourselves optimistic.

Sadly, optimism was not enough. One day IS knocked our door and asked me to work for them. That was the day in which I realized I had no choice but to leave my loved country. I would rather die than to serve them, and IS doesn’t ask twice. I will go to Europe, I told to my family. In Europe, I said, I will be safe and free to work again. I will regain control over my life again. Only if I knew…

So my trips begun as it did for so many before me: crossing the Syrian – Turkey border. I have to admit, I was lucky since I manage to sneak into a sheep truck instead of covering the distance by foot as most Syrian does. When I finally reached the border, there was a fighting going on between the Turkish police and human traffickers mafias. Violence escalated and pretty soon I heard the bullets flying over my head. My friend Marwan and I started running. It was nighttime and fog was so thick that one could barely see its own feet. It was as if we were running blindfolded. I ended up trapped on barbed wire, and I doubt I will be here writing this if it weren’t because the help of Marwan who put his life in risk to help me escape from those cutting knifes. What we couldn’t save from the wires was the only luggage that I was carrying: my phone, camera and laptop. The tools that would help me find a job once I could reach my dreamed Europe.

Once in Turkey, another fight began: our battle against the sea. This time, unfortunately, I was right in the middle of it and with no place to run. The death boats, as they are known, are tiny and overcrowded. The journey can last more than ten hours. Not all the boats make it. No one in his own mind would get into one of them unless it has no other choice, but our hopes for a better future made us forget about the dangers of the sea. When we were in the middle of the sea, the engine of our boat broke down. Helpless, our tiny boat was left to the mercy of the sea but, against all odds, we reached the Greek shore. It was the 19^th of February 2016, a month latter since my journey began.

Greece! At last! The country of philosophy, the country that invented Democracy thousands of years ago. The distances to cover will be shorter now and all the suffering and hardship will be worth it, I told to myself. Pretty soon, I thought, I will be crossing the border with the Republic of Macedonia, the only route available after Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia sealed their borders. One last effort and I would be at the heart of Europe. Europe! After catching a myriad of buses, I finally reached the small town of Idomeni, right at the border between Greece and Macedonia, together with other thousands of refugees like me. With the other routes closed, the affluence of refugees into Idomeni was by then massive, and the Greek police had implanted a border crossing protocol in which the refugees who arrived to Greece before should past first. Fair enough, I will wait my turn. Then, our worse fear materialized: Macedonia closed its border. The last route to Europe is now closed. All of us, trapped.

Ever since, I am stuck in Idomeni, the graveyard of the living, the beginning of the end. The place in which we lost our humanity, where children are hungry and sick people can’t access their necessary medical care, where we camp on tents that lack the slightest living conditions and where food is distributed in interminable lines where one waits for hours, sometimes to hear that the food is already finished. Those who still keep some strength among themselves or that that their desperation is stronger than their tiredness try to cross the border every night. Most of them leave their tents intact with their stuff inside: they now most probable the Macedonian police will catch them and they will be back in the camp soon.

Personally, I have lost every hope. Every hope on crossing the border or that Europe will find a solution about us soon. All I can do is to write, to write about how the day to day life is in the place. Each day, I write a message on a piece of carton and stand with it on the train tracks, at the entrance of the camp.

I have meet already many Europeans. Aid workers and volunteers. They are all gently, decent people who have been very kind to me. But what about your governments? Here in Idomeni we are not Greek myths, we are real people. Real people which is being used on a power game in the hands of your government, so this is my message to you and to every other European citizen: please, stop this game, we just want to live in peace, as all of you do.