Feature: Every Syrian refugee has a tragic story to tell

Raja S., a 50-year-old mother of three, shed tears while telling Xinhua her family's heartbreaking story at a small rundown apartment in a poor central Athens district, where she has been living over the past month with her 21-year-old daughter and one-year-old granddaughter.

Like Raja, every Syrian refugee has a story to tell.

Four years into Syria's bloody civil war, the number of refugees fleeing the country has set a grim record, surpassing four million people, according to the latest data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Eighty percent of the 160,000 migrants and refugees who have reached Greece's shores so far this year are Syrians.

Behind the figures are innumerable family tragedies.

Raja does not know the fate of her husband and two sons, aged 55, 18, and 24. The family was split up at a checkpoint near the border with Turkey three months ago. Women and children were allowed to move on. Men were kept behind.

Her granddaughter never got to meet her father. He was killed during a bombardment.

The family comes from Douma, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants in southern Syria which has suffered greatly since the start of the conflict.

Raja and her broken family, like millions of other Syrians, "lost a home, family, friends, a country, joy and dreams," she told Xinhua.

"Now we carry into our hearts and minds fear, terror, humiliation, nightmares," said Raja.

She fears revealing her identity and face. The teary eyed, grey haired woman explains that she and her daughter used to be very extroverted and sociable. Now they suffer from psychological problems. They live in constant fear.

"It was not always like this. We were like you -- normal, happy people. We were so happy, before the war broke out. We had a house, a family business, life was good," she said.

And then, four years ago, the fighting between government forces and rebels came and her life was filled with blood and pain. The first dead person she saw was a neighbor who was shot in front of her eyes. The list grew longer and longer.

Raja's family tried to escape death by moving in with relatives in another Syrian city two years ago. The massacres reached them there again, so a few months ago they made the decision to continue the journey to safety: first to Turkey and then Europe.

After losing her husband and sons, she joined a group of 60 other Syrian refugees headed for Turkey. They walked for 50 km and crossed the border under gunfire from Turkish forces, she said. Two died, several were injured.

The family stayed with friends in Turkey for a month before reaching the coastline to the Aegean Sea. They desperately gambled their lives to reach the Greek island of Kos on a rubber boat along with 45 other undocumented migrants.

Thousands are perishing each year in the attempt to cross over to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

Raja paid the smugglers at the Turkish port of Bodrum the 1,000 dollars she had in her pocket. The other refugees paid up to 2,000 dollars each, but the smugglers showed "compassion" and gave her a discount to board the crowded boat, which normally had a 10-person capacity.

The smugglers showed a 16-year-old refugee how to sail the boat and let them set off.

"When we protested, the smugglers told us: 'You are not human beings anymore. For us, you are merchandise. You may make the trip, you may not. All we care about is the cash'," she recalled.

In late July, Raja, her daughter, and granddaughter joined the thousands of refugees who have flooded the beaches and parks of Kos this summer, sleeping on the ground, waiting for days for the issuance of the necessary documents to continue the trip to the mainland.

Although Greece has been a transit gateway for migrants to Northern Europe over the past decade, the overstretched mechanism on the Greek islands cannot efficiently deal with the unprecedented influx this year. Greece does not have adequate facilities to accommodate such numbers.

Meanwhile, volunteers are trying to fill in the gaps by providing food, water and clothing to refugees like Raja and her family who stayed with no shelter for seven days on Kos during the identification process before arriving at Piraeus port and now the small apartment in Athens.

They sleep on the floor of the only bedroom. Still, she feels lucky that a Syrian businessman living in Greece for years who owns the apartment is providing shelter, food and medicine for the family.

Other Syrians living in Greece for decades like Mohammad, a 60-year-old professional who is translating during the interview, are also helping her and the newcomers in every possible way.

The language barrier (she speaks only Arabic) does not help when she needs to ask her Greek neighbors for assistance when her daughter is not feeling well.

Her daughter's heart condition is a key reason why she wants to settle in a Northern European country. She knows that debt-laden Greece cannot efficiently help. She has applied for refugee status and is waiting for the documents to continue the trip.

Raja is not optimistic that Syria will return to calm soon enough for her to return home. Her family's future lies in Europe now. She does not expect to see her hometown again. She only hopes that one day her daughter and granddaughter can visit her beloved Syria.

"Much blood has been lost. Two generations of Syrians will not forget it. Our dreams have been butchered," she said talking about the emotional scars.

When asked what the international community could do to help the Syrian refugees, Raja said: "Facilitate our journey to safety. Do not make it harder for us. We will risk our lives to escape death any way. We will leave. Provide the documents, open the doors, help us stand on our feet again." (For safety reasons, the name, age and time have been changed without compromising the reliability of the story.) Endit