Review: My Journey To Kilis by Abdullah Firoze.

A short read but interesting. It’s about a medical student, Abdullah (the author) who wanted to do an internship working with Syrian refugees in Turkey. He checked out who he needed to contact to make arrangements and find out where he could be needed. He learned about the Syrian refugee camp in Kilis, Turkey. He thought this would be a place where he would get the most experience and probably the safest. His only flaw was limited knowledge of the Arabic language but he was not going to let that get in his way. After a short time all the arrangements had been made for a three week medical stay in Kilis. At the time Abdullah heard that the Turkish city was under border cross-fire and they wanted him to postpone the travel but he was insistent about going there anyway.

On October 28th 2012 Abdullah was at Doha International Airport, headed for Kilis. While at the Airport he decided to start a blog post to share his experience with others and express his thoughts, notes and comments as each day passed and from all this information he used it to write this intriguing book. Once on the plane he was headed to Istanbul, then from there a domestic flight to Gaziantep and from there a bus to the city of Kilis. After that his language barrier was giving him trouble trying to find the hotel where he would be contacting the NGO team. Finally after the help from another student who knew very little English helped him find the guest house where he would be staying.

The next day Abdullah was introduced to a gentleman from NGO who wanted to know the purpose of his mission and what his objectives were. He told the man he wanted to volunteer at some mobile clinics at the refugee camp doing anything he could from assisting physicians to checking blood pressure. The man explains to him that it is very hard to get into the refugees camp as Turkish authorities are very strict about it and that he himself has never visited the camp. Abdullah was frustrated because his hope was to help inside the refugee camp but instead he was taken to a polyclinic which has four departments: Internal medicine, pediatrics, dentistry, and obstetrics & gynecology. This clinic also has a pharmacy that dispensed medication free of charge. He understood that it was going to be a challenge but also, it should be an interesting experience especially not being fluent in Arabic. His contacts in Kilis were still trying to get him into the refugee camp but who would know how long that would take so he just figured he use his time helping where he could at this clinic and he never did regret the experience he had there.

Abdullah learns a lot about the people in nearby villages that they helped and the people who he worked with day after day. In such a short time he became attached physically and emotionally to this new adventure and the time flew by fast that it didn’t bother him that he still couldn’t get into the refugee camp. The story goes on about the patients they helped and how up-lifting it was to be there. The book is filled with medical procedures and what drugs they used and how the patients survived on TLC compared to what a hospital would use in a big city charging large amounts of money….Great story about culture, survival, medicine and students volunteering their time to help and learn at the same time… ( )