Daily Times

FRANKFURT: She tackled the gruelling 2,000-kilometre (1,200-mile) migrant trail in a wheelchair, translating along the way for other refugees using English she learned from a US soap opera. Syrian teen Nujeen Mustafa is not one to shy away from a challenge. Now living safely in Germany, the 17-year-old has set herself a new goal: to prove Chancellor Angela Merkel right. “We will do our best to prove to everyone that Germany was right from the beginning,” Nujeen told AFP in a Skype interview from her new home just outside Cologne.

Hers is a story so remarkable that even Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has hailed her as an inspiration. “She says I’m her hero, which feels a little weird to me because she has shown that girls can change the world,” Nujeen says, almost apologetically. The young Syrian, who has cerebral palsy, has chronicled her arduous trek from war-ravaged Aleppo across Europe in a moving memoir, co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb.

Nujeen describes the memoir, which she will present at the Frankfurt book fair on Thursday, as an attempt to put a human face on the wave of refugees that has swept across Europe. “People think of the Syrian crisis as something that is happening really far away and they should not, or do not, care. I know that people just turn into numbers,” she says. “I hope that it will have an effect on even one person, change even just one idea about refugees.”

The book, “Nujeen”, starts with the early days of the Syrian war and the escalating violence, until it becomes too dangerous for the family to stay. “Forgive me Syria,” Nujeen whispers as she crosses the border into Turkey. Too old to travel, her parents stay in Turkey, leaving just Nujeen and her sisters to set off for Germany where two brothers already live. Nujeen recounts in detail the terrifying boat trip to Greece, with her uncle steering the dinghy based on what he learned from YouTube videos while Nujeen worries that the other passengers will want to throw her wheelchair overboard.

Once ashore, they have to navigate cheating smugglers, crowded camps and closed borders before finally arriving at their destination. But there are also moments of levity and solidarity, like when fellow migrants help lift Nujeen’s wheelchair over obstacles and volunteers offer them lifts. Nujeen, who before had barely left her fifth-floor Aleppo apartment, sees much of the month-long journey as an adventure, and feels useful “for the first time” as the English she picked up from watching “Days of Our Lives” suddenly proves invaluable.