“When you are a refugee, you have to do ten times more than others”

“When I arrived in Greece and was able to play sports again, it was a rebirth”admits Ibrahim Al Hussein, still moved. A member of the Paralympic refugee delegation, he is preparing to compete on Sunday, 1^is September, during the para triathlon event (in the PTS3 category, reserved for athletes with moderate coordination disorders on one side of the body or with an absent limb) at the Paris Paralympic Games.

The life of this Syrian from Deir ez-Zor, who has been living in Athens since 2014, was turned upside down in 2012. While the Syrian conflict had already been raging for a year in the country, the young man rushed to save a friend who was being targeted by sniper fire. A bomb exploded a few meters away from him and permanently deprived him of the lower part of his right leg. “In the chaos of war, only a dentist was available to try to treat me and heal my wounds, but he didn’t have the necessary equipment… I knew at that moment that I had to leave to succeed in rebuilding myself.”explains the athlete, now 35. His family had already fled the banks of the Euphrates, but he had hesitated, having to do his military service and fearing persecution if he deserted.

At the end of 2012, he undertook a perilous journey to Turkey. For several months, the young man traveled from hospital to hospital in the country in the hope of being able to walk again. “But I couldn’t get the help I needed, I was still in a wheelchair, and I couldn’t find an orthopedist who could offer me a suitable prosthesis.”remembers Ibrahim Al Hussein.

“I wanted to feel at home again”

February 27, 2014 – “This day remains etched in my mind forever”, confides Ibrahim Al Hussein – he embarks near the city of Izmir, in Turkey, in a dinghy with other exiles to reach the Greek island of Samos. With the help of volunteers and compatriots met in the camp of Samos, Ibrahim Al Hussein quickly manages to reach Athens. But without means, lost in the Greek capital, he will spend fourteen days in the street.

Then one day, a Syrian who had been living in Greece for twenty years introduced him to an orthopedic surgeon. “He saved me, he paid more than 12,000 euros to make me a prosthesis, so that I could learn to walk again and return to a normal life. I would not be here today, participating for the third time in the Paralympic Games, if he had not made this gesture of great humanity.”says the athlete, who has already participated in para swimming at the Rio (2016) and Tokyo (2021) Games.

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