He fled his native Syria at war and lived in camps, before founding his own association on the Greek island of Lesvos. When he saw the exodus of Ukrainians, Omar Alshakal came to help them.
“I understand the fear of these people because I myself come from a war zone,” confesses the 28-year-old bearded young man, of imposing stature.
“I try to help as many people as I can and give them hope for the future,” he explains to AFP, trembling under freezing temperatures at the Siret border post in northern Romania.
He says he passed through Syrian prisons as a teenager for participating in demonstrations against the regime of Bashar Al Asad.
In 2013, while he was transporting wounded to hospital, a bomb exploded on his way. He survived and traveled to Turkey for treatment. He decided with two friends to swim in the Aegean Sea - a 14-hour trip that took him to Greece, the gateway to the European Union, where he dreamed of settling.
After a brief visit to Germany, in Lesvos he founded the Refugee4Refugees association in 2017. “I learned English there, so I could communicate with the other volunteers,” he says.
- Separation -
Excited by the news of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Omar Alshakal organizes himself, seeks ways to support those whose anguish he knows well.
He flies to Romania and heads to the Siret border post, which since 24 February has seen more than 130,000 refugees pass by, the vast majority of them women accompanied by minors.
On the first day, he recalls, “I saw a girl about five years old, crying and calling her father”, forced to stay in Ukraine, where a general mobilization was decreed.
“Looking at her, she said to me: why separate men from women? Why can't men take refuge in a safe place?”
His NGO had rented a shelter two kilometers from the border, where between 50 and 100 refugees could be accommodated.
Wearing a black parka - with the letters of the association - and a gray cap on his head, he unloads, along with several volunteers, a shipment of humanitarian aid.
Food and hygiene products are already stacked in an annex of the establishment, along with warm clothes and blankets.
- A big family -
Its small cospomolite team, made up of about ten people, is called upon to be strengthened, as the needs on the ground are enormous.
“I want to make you feel like I'm in a big family, willing to help each other in these dark days,” he confesses, adding “we'll be together, in joy and sadness.”
Omar Alshakal also wants to go across the border, where he could be “even more useful”.
But traveling with your Syrian passport is not easy. “Already at the Romanian border they asked us why we were there, what we wanted to do,” he testifies.
Will he ever return to his native country? “My life is not here, but in Syria, with my family, whom I haven't seen for almost 12 years,” he regrets.
His parents, a little sister and a brother are waiting for him there. “But for now I live day by day, I don't have personal projects. I just hope that one day no one else needs help, that's my dream.”
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