-Do you want to go to the hospital?

-No, I just want to go to Germany

The 47-year-old Khalid pointed painfully at his only kidney, which works at 70% efficiency. He hid in a cave in the forest with three other Syrians, Kassem, Nassir and Abdelrahman. It is the Polish part of the Bialoweza Forest, shared with Belarus, and its 150,000 hectares of lush greenery make it a favorite passage for thousands of immigrants who have illegally crossed the border between the two countries in the past few weeks. The four people are from Damascus and fled the country that celebrated the 10th anniversary of the war in March last year. This is his fifth day walking in the forest, trying to use mobile GPS to guide himself to his final destination, the Netherlands and Germany.

The 25-year-old Nasir did not complain directly because he had almost no energy to speak. He is the worst of this group, staring at the ground, with big dark circles under his eyes and a bandage on his head. "Belarusian soldiers beat me at the border," he said. “When they see immigrants in the forest, they will also let our dogs go,” Qassim added, who was the youngest (24 years old) and added with a smile. Khalid also had a wound on his hand. "It came from a branch and moved forward at night," he explained. No one seeks medical help because they are afraid of being arrested, because the motto here is to move forward, move forward forever, until they meet with relatives who have crossed the border in 2015, when 1 million people arrived in the EU.

Khalid often asks a question: "Madman?" It means "trustworthy" in Arabic, and-after weeks of pure business exchanges, scams, and high prices from the mafia-this is your every Information about a person or organization that you want to know every time you mention a person or organization. Old dog, check the information several times and remember the most important things to reach the destination three times at most.

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He is the only one who wants to go to Germany. The rest went to the Netherlands, where relatives from Wave 2015 were waiting for them. "Due to the destruction and economic situation in Syria, I am leaving now. He is worse than then," Khalid responded. Qasim, who was in Lebanon (the second country with the largest number of Syrian refugees after Turkey), was stopped by the "sea and danger" at that moment. "I was afraid of crossing the sea, so I did not move on. But in Belarus, I continued to say," he added.

The area they are passing through is the Podraski area on the northeast border with Belarus and Lithuania, which is the coldest area in Poland. In this day and age, there is no day that the thermometer will not drop below zero at some point. It is daytime, but all four of them have frozen. They are warm, but not hot materials. 47-year-old Abdelrahman and Kassem covered their heads with coats and hoods; Nasir wore her naked. Abdelrahman doesn't even have gloves.

They come from the Damascus region and have already met in Minsk, which is the point of entry for immigrants. They bought packages including air tickets, visas and accommodation in Minsk through travel agencies in Baghdad, Erbil, Damascus, Beirut or Istanbul. This is a new immigration route created by the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko to launch a "hybrid attack"-as defined by NATO and EU leaders-against the borders of the alliance.

They stayed on the Belarusian side of the border for 11 days, during which time they tried to infiltrate Poland three times, but they were unsuccessful. It's tiring to walk through this forest. Huge logs of oak, hornbeam, and spruce—a type of conifer that thrives here—block the path every few feet, and will slip when the bark falls off. Due to its management method, fallen trees can only be decomposed.

For the past three days, the four refugees have been drinking stagnant water and rationing food until the day before. Today they have run out, but the supply has arrived. They were brought by Kasia Wappa, a member of a network that aims to help immigrants who train residents in increasingly problematic border areas. As food ran out, Syrians contacted the network through a third person.

After submitting their location via mobile phone for more than an hour and searching the forest, Wappa found them. When she appeared with a heavy backpack and two other strangers, the group of Syrians had neither enthusiasm nor fear. It looked more like a mixture of suspicion and exhaustion, lying in the cave not knowing if he was waiting for Godot.

Khalid received the first jar of candied fruit, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Wappa smiled and joked, giving the actors the feeling of Santa Claus distributing gifts to the children. He handed them dry pants, canned tuna, figs, candy, two loaves of bread, external rechargeable batteries and cigarettes. The four began to relax. Some of the commotion was resolved and the conversation became smoother, avoiding being heard by the more than 20,000 soldiers, police, border guards, reservists, and volunteer paramilitary troops deployed by Poland along the border with Belarus.

After a while, some noises need to be careful, everyone lowered their heads. They are false positives. Wappa recommends that you be more inclined: the hole is only about one meter deep, and from a few meters you can see the protruding hood. Besides, this place is not far from the local road.

Let's go back about two hours ago. Wappa is at home and is alerted. He only knew that there were four Syrian men in the forest, and they were not "too bad" because they did not ask for medical help, only food and drinks, he said.

She carefully checked the list of things they needed, and then put them in the backpack. He prepared a thermos with tea — "They always admire it," he pointed out — and went to one of the storage rooms owned by the Internet. This is a remodeled old room with shelves and cabinets in a temporary warehouse. There are mountain jackets, katiuskas, gloves, sleeping bags and many diapers arranged by size. Wappa said there is also a pack of six stacked water bottles and easy-to-transport food, such as flavored drinkable yogurt, chocolate, energy bars, canned tuna... These aids were purchased through private donations from different parts of Poland.

The Polish local militant drove to the area, parked her car at the entrance of the forest-in a place that would not arouse too much suspicion by the security forces-and started searching.

On the way, he discovered the past remains of other immigrants. He examines them for clues, enabling him to put some pieces into the puzzle of the route: whether the clothes are men's or women's, whether there are children's or baby clothes, if they look like a large group of people... a closed black backpack is A tree abandoned, she found a sleeping bag, wet jeans, a sweater and a typical Middle Eastern scarf kufiya. There is also a plastic bag containing garbage. This is a way to help the following. Wapa said everything seemed to indicate that he left her behind because a mafia intern came to pick him up. He no longer needs her on the road.

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