Searching For A New Life, Loss Along The Way

Robert Samuels: BUDAPEST — The train ticket would take Josef Majade to a place where he would be safe, but he no longer sought that refuge.

Instead, he lay his balding head against a heating vent at the Keleti train station and tugged a small scarf around his beard, gone gray. A bag of three yellow apples sat next to him, but he could not bear to eat. He had left Syria with a family of five, and now three of them were missing.

The trains to Austria or Germany kept coming. But each time, Majade opted not to go, longing for the family members whose passports were still inside his fanny pack.

“Some days I just get cold, and I wonder if they are cold, and then I burn on the inside,” Majade said. He couldn’t find his wife, his only daughter, 13, and his youngest son, 5.

“How could I start a new life without them? I feel so much shame.”