A love story: The Macedonian cop and an Iraqi refugee
The scene was hardly
conducive to romance. She was a sick Iraqi in a wave of refugees trying to
enter Serbia, while he belonged to the stern Macedonian police force keeping
guard. But Noora Arkavazi, a Kurdish Muslim, and Orthodox Christian Bobi
Dodevski quickly fell in love after they met at the muddy border in early March
-- and celebrated their wedding four months later.
Bobi recalls the rainy
day he first saw Noora in no man’s land between the two Balkan countries, when
he was working only by chance after swapping shifts with a colleague. “It was
destiny,” the affable 35-year-old tells AFP over tea in his small apartment in
the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo, where he now lives happily with his
young wife.
Noora, 20, hails from
Diyala, an eastern province plagued with violence in the Iraqi conflict. She
says at one point Islamic State jihadists kidnapped her father, an engineer,
and demanded thousands of dollars for his return. Early in 2016, Noora and her
brother, sister and parents abandoned their home and began a long journey west,
crossing the border into Turkey, taking a boat to the Greek island of Lesbos
and eventually entering Macedonia.
Their path was one
well-trodden by hundreds of thousands of people escaping war or poverty in the
Middle East, Africa and Asia -- and like many of their fellow travellers, the
Arkavazis had set their sights on Germany. While her family continued on their
odyssey, Noora stayed put in Macedonia after Cupid’s arrow struck. “I had a
simple dream to live with my family in Germany,” she says. “I didn’t imagine a
big surprise for me here.”
‘Just don’t worry’:
When she first met Bobi, Noora
had a high fever and was desperate to know if her family could cross the border
into Serbia. Balkan countries had just begun closing their doors to migrants,
so the fate of those transiting through Macedonia was unclear. The other police
officers all directed her to Bobi because he spoke good English, and he made
sure she and her frail mother were taken care of with medical aid and blankets.
“He said just don’t worry, everything will be very good in your life,” Noora
remembers, now laughing over the fact that he couldn’t stop looking at her.
Twice-divorced Bobi
says he knew he had found someone special. “When I saw Noora for the first
time, I saw something good in her eyes.” In the coming days, while the migrants
waited in limbo in the Tabanovce transit camp, Bobi and Noora spent more time
together -- he would take her and her mother to local markets to buy food and
clothes. Noora, who speaks six languages and began helping the local Red Cross,
liked the way the tall policeman would play with the migrants’ children, unlike
some of his more serious colleagues. The Macedonian force has faced criticism
for its treatment of migrants, particularly for firing tear gas at some of
those trying to cross the border from Greece.
The proposal: One evening in April, Bobi invited Noora to a restaurant, where she
recalls him being extremely nervous, drinking lots of water and shaking. Then
he suddenly proposed. “I told him
no, you are joking... but maybe ten times he repeated this, ‘will you marry
me?’.” Noora eventually said yes, but she worried about her parents’ reaction
to her marrying a non-Muslim. She told them: “I chose a good man for my life
and I will marry him. I don’t want to marry another guy”. But they were “so
nervous and angry,” she says. Noora is reluctant to talk about her family now,
except to say she is relieved that they are living safely in Germany.
‘A beautiful
wedding’: Noora and Bobi
celebrated their wedding in Kumanovo on July 13, her birthday, in front of 120
guests of “every religion”, including her Red Cross colleagues. The town is one
of Macedonia’s most ethnically mixed, with Muslim Albanians, Serbs, Roma, Turks
and other groups as well as the ethnic Macedonian majority. “It was a very
beautiful and fun wedding,” says Noora, describing the live music and dancing
that continued into the early hours.
The couple now live
with Bobi’s three children from previous marriages, and Noora is expecting
their first baby. As a sign of their commitment, the lovers have each other’s
names emblazoned on their forearms in matching swirly tattoos.
Believing in
destiny: Noora says she misses
Iraq “very much”, but the welcoming nature of her new neighbours reminds her of
the Iraqi sense of hospitality. “I feel like it’s my country, the life here is
so easy. Nobody here watches me like I am a refugee.” Migrant numbers at the
nearby Tabanovce camp have dropped off sharply since the so-called Balkan route
was effectively shut down, although some still cross the region with the help
of smugglers.
Dejan Kladarin, senior
protection officer at the United Nations refugee agency in Skopje, says around
200 people are now in Macedonian transit camps. Noora’s experience “is a nice
story and we would like to have more like this... but most of the people are
eager to continue” to where there are better economic prospects, Kladarin says.
Bobi hopes their romantic tale will encourage other young people to overcome
barriers to be with the one they love. “Noora and I want to tell people to
believe in yourself and believe in love -- and in destiny.
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