As the war in eastern Ukraine reached its peak in 2014, 157 of the 442 people seeking refuge in Portugal were Ukrainian. In 2015 at least 368 Ukrainians followed suit, making up around 42.4 per cent of all asylum requests in Portugal that year. Only a few of them are granted refugee status, but almost all receive at least some humanitarian protection. Emine Shykhametova was one of them. This is her story.
Cátia Bruno New Eastern Europe, March-April edition 2016
It was around 11pm when Emine Shykhametova left her home in Yalta, southern Crimea, never to return. The 29-year old Ukrainian got inside her car with her husband Oleksii and 10-month old baby Masha and drove to Kyiv. They were leaving behind months of persecution, calls in the middle of the night telling them that they were “traitors” and a pervasive fear that one of them might someday “dis- appear”, just as Emine’s cousin had.
Emine tells her story with her almond shaped eyes focused on the same table where the tea she has just prepared is getting cold. Black eyeliner accentuates her Asian-like features, which used to catch the eye of passers-by back in Crimea. Her Tatar origins did not go unnoticed, and in the final few months she spent in her country, many made a point of insulting her on the street.
This was what Emine was leaving behind when she got inside that car, back in July 2014. After a 12-hour ride to Kyiv, some friends in the capital opened their doors so that the runaway family could take a bath and get some rest. “After that, we went to McDonald’s, because we missed it”, she says with a small laugh. Their next stop was the Maidan square, to buy souvenirs like bracelets and traditional vyshyvanka shirts, anything they could get their hands on that could help Emine remember home and the reason she was leaving her whole life behind.