Tuning into BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera every evening, you are brought face to face with a gut-wrenching and a harrowing human tragedy.  Hundreds and thousands of vulnerable and dispossessed people are fleeing their strife torn and civil war ravaged countries in the Middle East and North Africa to seek sanctuary and asylum in more prosperous western and northern Europe on a daily basis.  Devoid of either hope or any kind of legitimate documentation, these people, possessed by frightening audacity, are literally putting their lives at risk in order to get to the Promised Land.  Those migrants who are leaving the shores of North Africa are crossing the Mediterranean and landing in Italy, even though scores of them are dying every month either by drowning in leaky overcrowded boats, or being claimed by sea sickness.

  What has really astounded me no end is the kind of treacherous journey undertaken by those from Syria and Iraq.  Moving entirely on foot, these thousands of men, women and children are first crossing into neighboring Turkey, from there sailing in boats like tightly packed Sardines further west to the Greek islands.  From there on, the journey begins once more on foot, this great mass of humanity marching northward into Macedonia and then into Hungary; their aim being to cross the border to Austria towards west, and then to their final destination of either Germany, France or The United Kingdom.  In that long and arduous journey, they endure all kinds of hardship, from being robbed by the criminal gangs to beating by the police and security forces. It is nothing short of a surreal sight to see all kinds of men, women and small children’s marching down the road with a desperate determination.  Some are escaping persecution by the state and some are running for their lives, from possible genocide. Small children sitting on the shoulders of the elders, frail women some of them pregnant trying to heave their bodies willing them to keep moving until they reach were they want to be. I guess this was the exodus they talk about in The Old Testament.  Even if these people get there, there is no guarantee that they will be able to build a better life for themselves. But their hope lies in the fact that may be, just may be if the fear of death and persecution goes away, they might have a shot. To be fair to the countries in the European Union, they are trying to accommodate as many migrants as possible, but that generosity is fuelling another kind of resentment among the people in the host country.  Some leaders like Erdogan of Turkey and Putin in Russia are taunting the European government that it was there policies along with the U.S that resulted in the crisis in the Middle East & in North Africa in the first place, so it is their moral obligation to help these refugees. On the other hand the European leaders are saying that if the rulers in those countries had put their house in order, this humanitarian disaster would not have erupted.  I don’t know who is right or who is wrong, neither do I have any solution to offer. But every night I am depressingly mesmerized to see this human catastrophe beamed in my living room.