Prisoners of the fourth floor

Those most won’t ever see, because they haven’t left their homes for years.

Most of the mugs in Danuta’s kitchen have lost their handles. She often forgets that she’s holding a mug, and that’s when it slips out of her hand… and crack! When she wants to drink tea, she takes an empty mug and puts it on the table. Then she returns to the kitchen, pours boiling water into a thermos, hangs it on her walking frame, and goes back to the lounge. After all this effort, she does not have any energy left. The only thing left is to sit and watch the daily TV soap opera Na dobre i na złe (For Good Or For Ill).

Illustration by Joanna Karpowicz

“I can see what’s happening to me. I dropped the kettle not that long ago. The water was already cold, but if it had still been hot, I would have scalded myself. So now I don’t have a kettle any more. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed, when I go to pick up a book to read a little I manage no more than a few lines, and my eyes close,” she says.

Next to her lie copies of Augustine’s Confessions and the Catholic weekly journal Niedziela (Sunday).

Danuta is 75 years old, has lean hands, transparent nails and silver-white hair that’s pinned up as if she were a ballerina. She’s so tiny that when she sits at her dining table the furniture appears to be of enormous size. Everything around her seems larger than life… only a reproduction of the Last Supper is so tiny it’s actually hard to spot Jesus huddled among the apostles.

All colours appear brighter against the white-washed walls of her apartment. The lilac of Danuta’s jumper nearly hurts my eyes. The paint flaking off the walker, parked behind her, is intensively blue. The green and red of an angel’s dress instantly draw my attention – her neighbours received this figurine from an aunt living in the US, but they didn’t like it, so they passed it on to Danuta. She accepted the sacred gift in the same way she accepts the curse of old age.

“You can’t see yourself as a victim. Raging against the world won’t do any good,” she says.

When was the last time she went outside? Five years ago? Even then she didn’t know what made more noise, the creaky stairs she had to walk four floors down or her own joints and bones. It’s not surprising – the stairs and she are almost the same age.

“Even then she didn’t know what made more noise, the creaky stairs she had to walk four floors down or her own joints and bones. It’s not surprising – the stairs and she are almost the same age.”

A caretaker used to store her other walking frame on the ground floor. It was a walker with a seat, weighing a whole 37 kilograms. She would grasp it with both her hands and push it to the nearest shop. Sometimes someone offered to help her carry things, but how to respond to such offers when you can see how much hurry people are in? Seen from a walker with a built-in seat, each and every person seems to be in a hurry. She used to be able to traipse to the nearest shop, buy groceries, and go back home. For a healthy, young person the equivalent of this trip would be like climbing a mountain with milk and bread in a handbag.

There is a faded poster on her wall showing mountain peaks covered in snow and Scandinavian fjords, and next to that a framed photo of her granny in a Huculian folk costume. It was taken during a holiday in the Carpathian Mountains. Danuta too used to like visiting the Polish highlands, once upon a time.

But today she no longer dares to go outside. People like her are called “Prisoners Of The Fourth Floor”, being trapped by buildings which lack elevator facilities (due to old Communist Era planning laws). They don’t stand up for their rights because they simply don’t know what those rights even are. State-sponsored care workers know the ins-and-outs of this problem. They’re the ones who take calls along the lines of: “I can’t make it to the shop. I’m too high up the stairs, and the shop is too far below me.”

Illustration by Joanna Karpowicz

Danuta herself asked for help once. She told her social worker on the phone that she had osteoporosis, had recovered from uterine cancer, had been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and that she was aware that it would only get worse. After that one call, a care worker appeared in person at her door. The aim of this visit was clear—to set up a plan so that Danuta would be able to stay living independently at her flat as long as possible. They agreed that she would be visited three times a week by a senior care assistant who would pick up her mail, buy groceries, do the cleaning, do the laundry, and—if necessary—wash her head, feed her, or change her diapers.
One of their initial duties however was to go to the outpatient clinic and get a copy of Danuta’s health certificate.

Receptionist: “This lady has to come and ask for her medical history herself.”
Caregiver: “She never leaves her house.”
Receptionist: “Then someone from her family.”
Caregiver: “She doesn’t have any family.”
Receptionist (outraged): “What do you mean to say she doesn’t have a family?!”

“Is it that strange?” Danuta tries to both defend her right to solitude and justify the course her life has taken. “I didn’t get married, I don’t have children, and my extended family is scattered all over Poland. But I’m not the only one living like this.”

She was born in 1942 – two years before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The tenement house she lived in was completely destroyed by the retreating German armies. Until the 1970s she lived with her parents and grandparents on the outskirts of Warsaw. Cold running water was their sole luxury. When her father died, and her grandmother required increased attention, they moved into the building in which she still dwells.

She worked in the Manufactory of Communication Equipment, then the “Wamel” Factory of Electrical Machines, in the Revenue Service, and in the Savings Bank. She has plenty of experience of loss. First she lost her mother and granny, then her job. Later on, she started losing the feeling in both her legs. The problems with walking began in 2000. Muscular degeneration. She was on a waiting list for hip replacement surgery, but her orthopedist finally crossed her off of the list because he considered the surgery unnecessary. Now she can only battle the pain.

She is sick and alone. The only walk she can take is from the kitchen to her balcony. No one brings her down the stairs or drives her to the park. She waited for two years for a place in a sanatorium, but when it was finally her turn to go she gave it up because she couldn’t get to the facility on her own. Not that long ago her walker got somehow stuck in the kitchen; she pushed it once, twice, a wheel came off, then she fell. She crawled through the room, reached the phone, but she didn’t have anyone to call, so she spent two hours climbing up upon her bed.

A month ago she decided to move out of her prison. Now she is trying to get used to the idea of change. She thinks of it as a holiday. When you leave for a month, there is a lot to pack into suitcases, but even more to leave at home. This time is different. She will be allowed to take her small chest of drawers made of dark wood and an old armchair. The chandelier will be of use to someone else – she will give it away, because she will not be back from these holidays, having finally applied for a place in a nursing home.

“Every organism gets old. You have to reconcile yourself with that fact when there is no other choice,” she says. “I’m deeply religious, and I know that there is more to life than the pursuit of pleasure. Everything, including pain, is the fate awaiting us all.”

Wooden stairs and celadon handrails. Pictures of cats and crocuses hung on the third floor of the staircase. On the second, there is a sticker “We wait for freedom.” It’s not certain that she will notice it as she leaves her home for ever.

Warsaw’s population keeps getting older – one-tenth of all those residing in the capital is more than 70 years old. Help for them can be found in each of the eighteen Social Welfare Centres. When one can no longer live on one’s own, it’s possible to ask for a place in one of the city’s fourteen nursing homes (seven of them for the chronically sick).

The Warsaw Office for Help and Social Projects finalized recruitment for a two-year project called Zaopiekowani (Lookedafter). Elders had rarely asked for help before. A “telecare” system was also introduced. Each participant was given a device to measure their temperature as well as heartbeat. The device informs appropriate services when something undesirable happens. A senior can press an alarm button and call the police for help. The cost of this program was a few hundred thousand euros.

In Poznan the telecare system is used by more than 250 people, and the aim is to provide this service to 550 other people in need of it. The same project in Warsaw covers 40 seniors – the number of those who are over the age of 70 exceeds 230,000.

Irena has been working in a social welfare centre for 21 years and asked for her name to be changed before speaking to me.

Before she begins telling her stories, she takes me to meet Alicja, another “prisoner” who has been living on the second floor for 59 years. In 2019 she will celebrate her 100th birthday – on the same date as Poland regained its own independence an even century ago.

She is wearing silver earrings, a ring with a gem, a silk neckerchief, sat at her table like an empress.

“So what if I don’t go out? Thousands of people don’t. My neighbours are no longer alive, but when they were here, they didn’t go out as well. For how long now? I don’t remember,” she says, and then launches into her own story of ageing.

“Six years ago a care assistant tried to walk me down the stairs, but she failed and pulled me back. And that’s how I ended up trapped here. In the meantime, I had two strokes. A pretty weak one and a serious one. Paramedics drove me to the hospital. I was supposed to stay longer but – honestly speaking – I preferred to come back home as soon as it was possible. What do I do during the day? I wake up at 4.30 am. I wash myself, make my bed, pray, do a crossword, I read magazines: Przegląd, Agora, and Newsweek. Mrs Basia comes to visit. She’s a caregiver. Apart from that, I look out the window. Oh, here I can see a tennis court and a park. When lindens and jasmines bloom, I can smell them. Back in the day you could spot wild hares and grouses, but they’re now gone. Sometimes I get up and go to the staircase to look out from a different window. Little birds fly close to me. Little larks, woodpeckers at times. I throw them some lard. My daughter-in-law drops by, my son might give me a call.”

“Six years ago a care assistant tried to walk me down the stairs, but she failed and pulled me back. And that’s how I ended up trapped here.”

“But it’s a fairly good situation, she has family,” Irena whispers to my ear. Some framed photos stand on a shelf: her mother and father separately. Her father has a moustache. Then her son and daughter-in-law. In the middle stands the only one in colour, which is from her grandson’s wedding.

“My grandson is all grown up now. I didn’t even go to his wedding. And he’ll have a daughter soon. He took a loan to buy a house outside of Warsaw, so he rarely visits. Of course, I’d love to see the house. I’ve seen it only in photographs. But, after all, I won’t ask them to carry me down the stairs. Yes, they have a car, even two. They’re young people, it wouldn’t cross their minds that I’d love to go outside. Mrs Basia always encourages me to stand up for myself, says I should demand and articulate my needs. She repeats that my grandson is a big man, that he could carry me on his hands. But how could I ask that he take me outside? What would it look like if I intruded on their privacy?” she bemoans.

“Obviously, we spend Christmas and Easter together. We celebrate Christmas Eve on the 23rd of December, and we eat Easter breakfast on the Holy Saturday. You ask me why?! We do it all one day earlier than the calendar dates, so they can then have proper celebrations in the comfort of their own home!”

Irena sighs.

“I could move to a small room in my son’s house, but it’d be bothersome. For some time, I had horrible diarrhoea. I cleaned up after myself. I prefer to be here because I’d be a stranger there, after all. The only worry is to die peacefully, not to bother anyone… You see, it’s awful when you’re unwanted, and you’re still kept alive. And you’re aware of the former. But you never know when it will come. That’s what I’m afraid of most. I have thrombosis. At any time, I might, you know…”

We leave.

“Have you noticed that she doesn’t rage against her fate?” Irena asks while we are still at the staircase. “This is typical – elderly people round her take it for granted that this is how it has to be. In any case, to whom should they complain? And what good will it do? Her home will be passed down to her grandson—he should take care of her. He should carry her downstairs. Or maybe she could swap the apartment for one on the ground floor, so that she could step outside her own door? She thinks only about him, not about herself. Believe me, elderly people are of no use to anyone.”

We sit on a bench in a park which smells of blooming jasmines in June. Irena complains about outsourced companies hired by social services to take care of the seniors. There are no clear rules when it comes to requirements in becoming a caregiver. Having a basic education is enough. Many companies participate in a tendering auctions, where price is the most crucial factor in winning contracts. Social welfare centres often offer around 18PLN (a bit over €4) for an hour of caregiver’s work, though caregivers are then paid no more than 6PLN per hour (less than €1.5) because they are employed under temporary contracts.

Last year Tomasz Pactwa, director of the Office for Help and Social Projects, openly admitted in an interview with the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that “care services are the weakest point in the entire social welfare system.” This is the reason why City Hall established a Centre for Care Services (Social Warsaw in English), which has developed uniform standards of elderly care and will supervise their implementation. These will enter into force on February 1 2018. From that day on, each caregiver will be obliged to undertake supplementary training, and to comply with the code of ethical conduct which, among other things, requires them to address all seniors using the traditionally respectful honorific Mr. or Mrs. Moreover, a regular employment contract will become the norm, not a rarity.

“Very often we just can’t manage our employees,” Irena confesses. “A typical example: I know that a caregiver should be at one senior’s flat from 8 till 10 am. I come to check around 9, and she isn’t there. A senior says ‘Well, she was here but has already left.’ I go to the next home, and I hear: ‘She came, brought the groceries, and left… that’s enough for me.’ I rush to the next one, and it’s the same. Elderly people usually cover for our employees because they’re afraid. These caregivers are often the only people who visit them.”

There are obviously exceptions—caregivers who are committed and honest. But it’s rare. Irina continues, saying, “I asked them several times if they had completed a training course. The answer was always the same: ‘No, not a single one.’ The Ministry [of Family, Labour and Social Policy] should understand that care is the most fundamental element in a social welfare system for elderly people. A caregiver has to be qualified and sufficiently paid. For the entire 27 years our social welfare centre has been in operation no one has ever been interested in improving these services. Is telecare a solution? A life alert button will not replace an empathetic caregiver nor an efficient health-care system. Can’t we really afford to take care of the elderly who live in our towns and cities? We watch their lives fading from our eyes.”

At the Office for Help and Social Projects I look through past issues of a magazine titled Głos Seniora (Seniors’ Voice). It was co-founded by the Governmental Program for Seniors’ Social Activity. The program is meant to improve the quality of seniors’ lives through several kinds of activities. It is meant to mobilize, and Głos Seniora does exactly that: it encourages seniors to live life to the fullest. Regular columns like Stylish Senior Women and Senior Gardening are there to help this cause. Every issue features advice on how to take care of one’s health so that someday one’s grandchildren might say: “Our grandparents lived long and active lives.”

I read an interview with DJ Wika—the oldest DJ in Poland—Wirginia Szmy, who was born in 1938 and is an icon of active seniors. Asked how she avoids having mental breakdowns, she answers: “There are periods in which I don’t have the energy to do anything. I’d rather stay at home, but I’m aware that if I stayed two or three days, I’d stay there forever. My routine is it to force myself to be active – to go to the city centre, to the cinema, to the senior club.”

A report created in 2012 by the Institute of Work and Social Affairs (a research facility under ministerial supervision) stresses that equating dignified ageing with physical fitness might exclude those who are sick or require assistance. It says that “focusing too much on physical activeness of seniors (…) might create a false image and excessively positive model of ageing which is deprived of any illnesses and sicknesses. Such an image is not far from the everyday reality of being middle-aged and is not within reach of many seniors.”

Alas, copies of Senior’s Voice rarely reach “fourth floor cells”.

Joanna Mielczarek has been analysing the problems facing the elderly for 13 years. She sees the reality of their lives every Friday when she visits Maria, an octogenarian. And every other day when she directs the activities of the Little Brothers of the Poor Association. She works in Warsaw, Lublin and Poznań. When an open telephone line for seniors was launched in 2013, she worked twelve hours a week. Now she makes at least a dozen calls a day. Often she does it at night when there is no one at the office. Seniors leave messages on her voice mail. They say that they are lonely, that they want to have a friend, that they want to go for a walk. The association sends a coordinator to a senior’s flat to ask about their image of an ideal volunteer. And volunteers are asked what their image of an elderly person is. Around twenty new people offer to help every week.

“Seniors leave messages on her voice mail. They say that they are lonely, that they want to have a friend, that they want to go for a walk.”

“Many of them have a stereotypical image of a warm, kind, elderly lady who sits in an armchair, wears soft slippers, is covered with a blanket, cuddling a cat. But they are truly flesh-and-blood human beings who have their better and worse days,” says Joanna. The aim is to create real relationships that will last for years.

A relationship which is similar to the one she has with Maria who lives on the sixth floor. There is a lift in her building, but it stops at the top of some steps on the ground floor. Although Maria’s legs work well, her eyes do not. She started losing her eyesight gradually, and now she can’t see at all. She managed to learn which button to press, where the railing is, where the stairs begin and end, and how to walk to the shop. But she cannot overcome the mental obstacles hidden deep within. She is afraid of anyone who might be walking behind her. She is stressed because of the possibility of slowing down. A person whose actual presence is uncertain. Not wanting to bother the neighbours, she prefers not stay at home. She awaits every Friday and Joanna’s next visit.

Is her fear of bothering her neighbours an overreaction? Some of the seniors the Association looks after live in five-storey buildings without elevators in the districts of Bielany and Żoliborz. Stairs are often slippery and dangerous, but seniors manage to reach the ground floor. The association asked the neighbours if they could put small chairs on every half-storey. An elderly person would sit, rest for a second, and continue climbing. The idea was accepted in only half the blocks.

In the other half, the conversation went something like this:

Neighbors said: “It’s unnecessary.”
Volunteers: “She has been living here for 60 years.”
Neighbors: “So what? A caregiver can buy her groceries. She doesn’t have to leave.”
Volunteers: “But what harm can it do to you?”
Neighbors: “It’s unaesthetic” or “You could easily see that sick people live here” or “Someone will come and steal them.”

So Maria awaits Joanna’s visit.

“It’s not about buying potatoes,” Joanna explains. “I could do that for her. But the act of doing your own shopping is all about dignity. There’s enough time to carefully select every product she wants to buy. Enough time for Maria to hold tomatoes in her own hand, to touch apples, to decide which are the ones she wants to buy.”

Afterwards they drink tea, read letters, discuss plans for an upcoming week. Joanna always returns to the same topic: she reads out-loud the duties of a caregiver and asks which were fulfilled by the woman who comes to help with everyday life. Every time she reads the list, Maria seems to be totally surprised.

“Her caregiver doesn’t iron because she dislikes it. Doesn’t peel vegetables because she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t cook because she can’t. She arranges doctors’ appointments and vacuum-cleans when she knows I’ll be there,” Joanna reports. “We’ve noticed that caregivers fulfil their duties best when they know that a volunteer will come as well. Because there’s someone who truly cares about the elderly person and who won’t hesitate to stand up for their rights. I try to convince Maria to ask her caregiver to finally start doing what she is being paid to. But Maria is afraid of offending her and that it can only get worse. Besides, the one who comes to help her at this moment has already mentioned that in the past she would always resign when facing complaints about her work.”

The “fourth-floor prison syndrome” affects more than just Warsaw. Social workers say that the same problem is very much a reality in smaller towns, especially the ones industrialized during Communism—these are the places to which the rural population emigrated in the search for jobs. They moved into tiny apartments in hurriedly built tower-blocks. Now they are around seventy years old. Their children long gone, their lives awfully lonely. A report published in 2012 by the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw found that every third elderly capital city resident complains about architectural barriers which make it difficult for them to leave their homes. The most common complaint is the lack of an elevator. Nevertheless, they do not want to move anywhere. Their attitude is still largely influenced by trends and customs — “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“A report published in 2012 by the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw found that every third elderly capital city resident complains about architectural barriers which make it difficult for them to leave their homes.”

In Warsaw’s Praga district there is a place commonly known as the “Neighbourhood of Homeless Lovers.” It was 1956 when workers from fourteen factories (including those from the Warsaw Factory of Motorcycles, Warsaw Automobiles Factory, the Factory of Electric Lamps named after Rosa Luxemburg) decided to establish the city’s biggest housing co-operative and erect the entire neighbourhood themselves. The newspaper Sztandar Młodych (Banners of Youth) reported: “Every honest and emphatic person has his heart warmed by the image of a shelter for homeless love, a kid’s corner, and a decent roof above the heads of our parents.” These were truly heartfelt words, seeing as many newspaper employees also suffered from a lack of available housing allocations. The name “Neighbourhood of Homeless Lovers” seemed too immodest, so it was finally nicknamed the “Youthful Neighbourhood.” Twenty-eight blocks of flats (nine five-storey and the rest three-storey) instantly filled with young residents. Most of them were childless or with children as small as the trees they planted in their own backyards.

While the trees grew tall and proud, most of the lovers hunched over in time. One-fifth of the district’s residents today are above 80 years old. One of them, Stefan Ciechanowicz, is one of the neighbourhood’s architects and still lives in the building he designed.

“We started from the principle that we were designing not blocks of flats but a way of life. We wanted you to move in and live until you passed away in the very same home,” he says.

He also mentions that they planned to build a primary health centre and, right next to it, flats designed for elderly people.

The idea was simple — special accommodation seniors could move into once they had surrendered their previous apartments. They’d stay in familiar surroundings and be under the supervision of a doctor and a nurse.

“You couldn’t imagine anything better than that, could you?” Stefan asks.
The idea never came to fruition. Communism collapsed, and young people weren’t bothered at all. They didn’t imagine that they’d get old.

The lifts turned out to be a bone of contention among the neighbours. It was possible to add them to five-storey buildings, but not to three-storey ones. Estate administrators found out that installing a new elevator shaft would cost around 315,000 Polish zlotys (€70,000), and thus, monthly rent would increase by around 16.00 zlotys (€3.5) per resident. But the residents living in the lower buildings protested against paying for the luxuries that would benefit others. 64 lodgers submitted official letters stating: “I do not agree with the proposals to install lifts founded by money belonging to all residents…”

The building administration abandoned the idea.

And because the neighbourhood is large, rumours started circulating.

A lady dressed in a white tunic, 50 years old, living in a lower block says: “Who told you all that rubbish?! I don’t want my neighbour from the fourth floor to have a lift? Nonsense! The truth is that the administration promised to install lifts just to get votes at an official residents’ meeting. No one even checked if it was possible. They told people porky pies – lies!”

Another lady, with a shopping trolley, 83 years old, reports: “I’ve been living here for 57 years. When choosing my apartment, I purposefully selected one on the ground floor, with a garden. I was pregnant and expected the baby to be born soon. If people bought their homes later or inherited them from their grandparents, why should I pay for their lifts?”

A man in his late 60s with a dachshund lives on the third floor. When he broke his leg in several places, he had to walk the stairs on crutches. But in spite of his troubles, he still sings a classic “bad-boy” song from the early 20th century: W tym jest rzeczy sedno, że jest mi wszystko jedno, już taki jestem zimny drań… (And that’s the heart of the matter, I should care but I’m a rotter, for I am a cold-hearted-cad)…

A young couple gets out of an elegant BMW, a Warsaw Uprising symbol sticker plastered to the trunk lid, along with the caption Pamiętamy (We Remember) on the bumper.

“Yes, it’s true. Residents decided at an official meeting not to install any lifts because it’s costly. No, I don’t know exactly how much…” she says.

I ask her what the seniors who cannot leave their flats should do now only because of the lack of lifts. She answers: “I don’t think that there are people round here who cannot leave their homes because they lack elevator access.”

There sure are.

Most likely it was Weronika who began the discussion on installing elevators. She owns a studio on the third floor. First, she asked her neighbours for medical certificates which she put in an envelope and handed to the administration. The envelope was pretty thick. She keeps a copy of each certificate in a binder. Here is one from the top of the pile: “Marianna, born in 1992: severe osteo-articular degeneration which makes it impossible for the patient to walk…” Next one: “Romuald, born in 1935: considerable mobility impairment…” Another: “Bożena, born in 1935: rheumatoid arthritis, vertigo, blurred vision, mobility impairment…” On every certificate the same statement of fact: “Cannot go outside.” On some of them: “Elevator essential.”

Weronika’s flat is full of pot plants, decorative plates and figurines. The bathroom has just been renovated and shines like a pink gem. No sign of dust. A book lies on the table. Its title: Healthy joints, better life.

“I remember our first day here. We had a wooden stool, a small Czech TV set, and a couch for two. My husband and I sat and cried with happiness for half an hour. Did I think back then about any future troubles with being able to go outside?” Weronika cries but quickly wipes away the tears. Then she says with unexpected confidence: “I played volleyball, danced… boys adored me. I’m 77 now, the skin of my cheeks still taut, yet some energy is still inside me. When Zosia, who lives upstairs, sees me on the staircase, she kisses me and asks for these elevators. But there’s nothing I can do.” She cries again and after few seconds stops herself crying any further. “Let’s go to Zosia. I’ll show you what things really look like.”

Fourth floor. Two elderly people: Zofia and Romuald. He has not been outside for four years.

“Romuald keeps falling over and is bruised all the time. He’d love to go downstairs. Yes, I have a wheelchair… but what of it? I can’t manage to use it,” Zofia’s voice trembles. “We used to live in a worker’s hostel. Four of us crammed into a 9 sq.m room. I accepted the first apartment which they offered us. And now…” She shows us photographs of her and her family. “These are my babies. My girls. That’s how I remember them, always smiling. God then took one after another. And my husband’s sick.” She bursts into tears.

Weronika sobs and whispers to me: “You see, the girl does what she can with the last of her strength. Just look at how tidy her home is! She’s suffering from vaginal prolapse because she keeps carrying heavy bags. They wanted to keep her at the hospital, but he’d die here without her.”

“The doctor told me that it’s too late for surgery. That I’m 88. That I have to rest. When I go to the supermarket, I tell my husband: ‘Stay in the chair. When I’m back, I’ll give you something as a reward. Coffee or chocolate.’ Then I leave.”

We go one floor below. An 82 year-old woman with tired eyes opens the door for us.

“Can you please just show your little hands, neighbour?” Weronika kindly asks. She’s holding a potato between fingers twisted like tree roots. “I have an incurable rheumatic fever and a broken spine” she explains.

We move on. Second floor.

“I want to show you what life in a building without an elevator really looks like,” Weronika explains.

Three elderly people sit in a dark room in front of a TV set. Maria (105 years old) is sat in an armchair, her daughter Halina with her husband Tadeusz (both over 70) slumped on the sofa.

“It’s quite a miserable life,” Tadeusz says. “This apartment has become an old people’s home.”

Halina chimes in. “Mum only walks to the bathroom and back. With a walker, of course. Not more than five years ago we were together in our summerhouse. But she fell, and they replaced her hip. Since then she hasn’t been outside at all. She tells me all the time: ‘I’d love to go to the pharmacy with you…’ But she can’t.”

“When we were young, we built the road you see outside our window. We are somehow becoming a part of history now, Miss,” Tadeusz finishes.

The next floor down.

“My neighbour at no. 7 won’t open the door. She’s just been through more spinal surgery.” Weronika rings a bell next door. For a long while there is only silence. Finally, an elderly lady, visibly uncomfortable and confused by our presence, opens the door. She straightens her skirt and buttons up the last button of her shirt. She can hardly stand.

“It’s difficult to walk these days,” she apologizes and doesn’t say anything else.

Weronika sums things up before saying goodbye. “It makes you cry when you see it, doesn’t it? I myself have troubles with sciatica and my spine. My doctor said not to lift more than 2 kilos. If I go shopping, I take my trolley with me and then I drag it up the stairs. When I return home, I’m covered in sweat. This is the life of old people. Tragic.”

But not everywhere. There’s an apartment in Warsaw where it’s possible to see elderly people’s plight from a brighter perspective. It is located on the ground floor of a building equipped with a lift. Hydrangeas grow next to freshly cut grass all across the courtyard. Jan Cieśla and Agnieszka Cieśla, both architects, designed this apartment with the future of their ageing parents in mind – both of whom have always loved the seaside. This is the reason why the walls are painted blue and white – colours they’ve always associated with wavy seas. Vacation pictures decorate the walls, though for now their parents are both well enough not to have to think about moving into this specially-designed space.

“We made a mistake. A P-R mistake. We told them that it’s an apartment for elderly people” tells Jan. It explains why it’s sat empty ever since then. Nevertheless, everyone is welcome to make an appointment, to come and take a look around.

They call the armchair “the command centre.” A little push is enough to move it around. To lift the footrest one has to press a button. Both legs go up, and one feels like lounging on a sunbed. Just as it was back in the days when sunbathing used to bring their parents great joy.

There’s also a couch. The young always sit, while the old usually fall into it – but not here. Seniors will not hit their heads against any walls and will get up easily.

In the bathroom there is neither a bath nor shower cabin, just a comfortable chair with a shower head on the wall. A shower curtain is heavier on its bottom so it will not stick to a wet body. The floor is heated to prevent slipping. And even if one’s legs fail, one can grasp the curtain which works like an ABS system in a car—it will slow down a person’s fall by gradually detaching itself from the rod.

The toilet seat has been specially designed, too. It’s as comfortable as the armchair in the living room (though it doesn’t move). The armrest has a couple of buttons built into it. The first flushes the toilet. The second turns on the bidet with warm water. The third activates a dryer. The forth is to eliminate unpleasant smells.

The kitchen: the height of the countertop can be regulated. Cupboards open with a press of a button.

The hall: big enough so one can easily greet all guests.

The bedroom is equipped with a mattress which adjusts itself automatically to body temperature. The nightstand has a place for a phone which can be charged wirelessly. The curtains open automatically when the sun rises. The lighting changes depending on the time of the day – becoming warmer in the evening, before going to sleep.

Developers, seniors, and social workers make appointments to view the apartment. They look, touch, and ask: “How much does this cost? And that?” The armchair—from which one can command the world—is 8000 PLN, or around €1850. The bed with the mattress: 7600 PLN (€1760). Shower chair: 4000 PLN (€930).

“It’s not necessary to have everything installed all at once. We just want to show that the best solutions for seniors is to live independently as long as possible. In an apartment equipped like this, it is more than possible. Expensive? A nursing home in Warsaw costs more or less 5000 PLN (€1160) for a month-long stay” Jan explains.

He makes the point of stressing that for everyone above 65 years of age a change of dwelling is a nasty shock to their lives. This is the reason why the Ideal Senior’s Apartment—as he officially calls his project—is aimed at younger seniors and those aware of impending old age.

“We should design our apartments in a way that allows us to remain independent,” he says. “Only then will our sense of dignity not be at risk. The moment you are forced to be looked after by others like a child is the beginning of that slippery slope. There can be no doubt that the Prisoners Of The Fourth Floor should be helped, and their lives should improve. But the problem is that they have already entered a vicious circle,” he added before I left.

Halina, 86 years old, hasn’t heard about the Ideal Senior’s Apartment. She worked in the bookshop at the Warsaw University of Technology for half a century. Having retired, she had regularly been meeting her ex-colleagues. Yet for the past two years they haven’t been able to visit her because she lives on the fourth floor. She argues about it with her husband all the time. Despite the fact that he died 28 years ago.

“When we were assigned this apartment, I asked him what would happen when we get old. He answered: ‘Don’t worry. We will change the place before this time comes.’ Often I look at his photograph and I complain to him: ‘And what? You lie somewhere comfortably, and I have to struggle with living here.’ After the Uprising of ’44 there were only piles of rubble. We went down to the streets and cried. People lived in basements. There was water and electricity and nothing more. Here I have a gas cooker, central heating and lavatory. It’s beyond belief,” she says quietly, but with courage in her voice.

Her hands shake, and every move she tries to make seems to be a separate problem. Nevertheless, she somehow manages to put white-and-red zigzag napkins, cake plates and cups on the table. Then she carefully places some biscuits on a serving plate. “A small fork and a little spoon.” Looking at her, I also want to speak using diminutives. I would say that her tiny sweater has a small collar and little buttons.

When her husband died, she decided to do what the designers of the Ideal Senior’s Apartment advise: prepare for getting old. She changed the tiles for ones that are easier to keep clean; installed plastic-framed windows which she does not have to disassemble for cleaning, and the bath for a lower edged model, easier to get in and out of.

“But I never imagined that my back would hurt so much…” she says, weeping a little again. Still, she finds enough optimism inside of herself to tell me a joke: “After the War, I couldn’t have a bath because I didn’t have one in my home. Now I do, but I can’t get into it. Honestly, I’d really like to renovate this flat, but I don’t have anywhere to go during the building work.”

“Why didn’t you exchange your home for another on the ground floor, ma’am?” I ask her.

Halina keeps silent for a longer while.

“I didn’t expect to live so long after my husband’s death. I was so depressed that I thought the best thing to do was to die too. But I didn’t die, and it’s not that easy nowadays to change apartments – who’d be interested in swapping with me? No one would want to change their life to make it worse.”

She shows me a notebook in which she keeps track of all her doctors’ appointments. The dates are scheduled a few years ahead. Every month she has at least six appointments. Each month has its own page. She’s had surgeries on both hands, a mastectomy and also suffers from back problems – for the past five years she’s regularly been visiting the hospital to get a “nerve block” procedure done; an injection which relieves pain by desensitizing nerves. It helps for a little while.

When she says that she sometimes cannot use public transport because it is too far away from her front door, forced to take taxis instead, Halina starts crying. And immediately apologizes for it.

“You know, the worst sicknesses or diseases are nothing when you compare them to war” she says. Halina had eight brothers and three sisters. All are now gone – she was the youngest. “I tell myself that if everything was okay and there was no pain, then everyone would like to live a thousand years. These things have to happen so that people lose their will to live.”

The Senior Festival took place in September 2017. Nine days, 360 events in nearly 150 locations all over Warsaw. The program included:

– Japanese calligraphy workshops.
– “Smartphones hold no secrets”. Individual computer classes.
– Ballroom dancing with seniors – free entry!!!
– “M like Motivation” workshops for those who want to reach their goals.

“Sometimes our volunteers are older than the seniors they visit,” says Joanna from the Little Brothers of the Poor Association. “Healthy and energetic seniors take care of those less independent because they genuinely understand what it feels like to be alone or when one’s life loses meaning. And besides, many elderly people suffer from depression. They would not go to see a psychiatrist in a million years.”

According to Poland’s Central Statistical Office, in 2016 exactly 646 Poles over 70 years old took their own lives.

Translated by Wojtek Wieczorek / edited by Marek Kazmierski.

Fifty-Six Days of Separation

Part 1: The Scars Left Behind by U.S. Migration Policy

Levis Andino and her six-year-old son Samir look out across the East River to Manhattan in early August. After being torn from his mother’s arms at the Texan border, Samir and Levis were separated for almost two months. (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel Magazin)

A mother and her six-year-old son fled to Texas from the violence in their homeland of Honduras. When they arrived, young Samir was ripped out of his mother’s arms. Two months later, they found each other again, but something had changed.

It’s 1 a.m. when Levis Osorio Andino bolts out of a dreamless sleep. A warden is standing next to her bunkbed inside the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas and shaking her arm. “Wake up 494,” she says. “It’s time.”

Levis sleepily packs her bag and stumbles through the neon-lit corridors. It has been 56 days since she last saw her six-year-old son Samir, who used to hang on her more than any of her other children. In early June, they crossed the Rio Grande after weeks spent fleeing their homeland of Honduras, and the Texan border guards immediately pulled her child out of her arms.

Levis’ arrival corresponded with America’s effort early this summer to pursue a zero-tolerance policy to illegal immigration, a policy which called for families to be separated at the border. Now, though, the government is trying to fix the chaos that ensued.

The last thing that Levis had heard about Samir was that he no longer wanted to leave the home in Phoenix, to which he had been taken.

“Surprise,” the warden says and pushes Levis into a windowless room. “Samir just went to the restroom briefly.” She slumps onto a chair, trembling. Then, there he is, standing in the doorway, hand-in-hand with a social worker, his hair close-cropped, the smile frozen on his face showing the gap between his front teeth.

“Samir, my darling,” Levis stammers. “How are you?”

“I don’t know who you are.”

Levis takes a step toward Samir, but he recoils. She tries again and he starts trying to kick her.

“Samir,” she says, “I love you.”

“You aren’t my mother.”

“If you ask him how he’s doing, he briefly looks up and says: “I’m made of steel.'”

Such is the scene related by Levis as she sits exhausted in front of a plate of rice a couple of hours after her reunion with her son. Born 26 years ago in the Honduran city of El Porvenir, Levis is a pretty woman with almond-shaped eyes. She struggles to find words to describe the nightmare she is living. She keeps having to fight back tears as Samir sits next to her, engrossed in the fantasy world of a smartphone game.

If you ask him how he’s doing, he briefly looks up and says: “I’m made of steel.”

No Moral Compass

The sun is shining onto the cafeteria tables of the Basilica Hotel, a hostel operated by the Catholic Church in Rio Grande Valley. A prison bus dropped Levis and Samir off here in the night, a place located at the very southern edge of the United States, not far from where they landed with their raft two months ago. They are now free, but they don’t know where to go. In October, Levis says, her asylum case will be considered — and at the very least, she won’t be deported before then.

The hostel is normally used by pilgrims, but it has become a transfer station for many of the some 3,000 families that America gradually began reuniting at the end of July. It is a place of humanity in a country that has lost its moral compass.

Nuns hand out donated clothes in the lobby. They help people find their family members and organize bus tickets. They reconnect Levis with her lawyer for the first time in weeks and over the phone, he promises to find her a place to stay, a place to start healing the wounds that this country has inflicted.

For years, the U.S. was a country whose borders were more open than elsewhere. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads the poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. It is a principle that has seemed immovable ever since the country declared independence in 1776 as a country of immigrants.

“For years, the U.S. was a country whose borders were more open than elsewhere. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads the poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.”

But the 45th president is currently in the process of unleashing a wrecking ball on this foundation. In the eyes of the former real estate magnate Donald Trump, people like Levis, who are fleeing from the violence and poverty endemic in Central America, are criminals first and foremost. He calls them drug dealers, rapists or “bad hombres.” Trump believes there are too many of them, and to keep them away, he has promised his followers he will build a border wall.

The zero-tolerance policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April was basically a precursor to that physical barrier, something like an invisible wall. It was a way to scare people away, and much cheaper than a vast concrete barrier. Starting in mid-May, thousands of parents were locked up and their children scattered across the country. Some of them were put into homes while others ended up with foster parents or even in empty Walmart stores.

“The American public, it quickly became clear, wasn’t particularly troubled by the introduction of tariffs on aluminum imports, but traumatized children were beyond the pale.”

But it quickly became clear that Trump had broken a taboo. To many, it looked as though the president was taking the children hostage in order to blackmail Congress into funding his wall. The American public, it quickly became clear, wasn’t particularly troubled by the introduction of tariffs on aluminum imports, but traumatized children were beyond the pale.

Just the Start

Even as Levis, despite being locked in a cell, was doing all she could to locate Samir, an increasing number of Republicans began joining the chorus of those who were loudly criticizing the family separation policy. And on June 20, Trump did something he doesn’t do often — he grudgingly corrected a grave error. “This is going to make a lot of people happy,” Trump said as he joylessly signed a decree ending the policy of family separation.

When a judge ordered 10 days later that all families be reunited by July 26, it looked as though the chaos caused by the policy would soon be coming to an end. In reality, though, it was just the start.

Still today, more than a month after the expiration of that deadline, hundreds of children are still in government custody. There is no trace of dozens of fathers and mothers because they have already been deported. Officials are unable to match children with their parents because different agencies are responsible for them. Prior to her release, Levis had to undergo a DNA test to prove that she was Samir’s mother. It is crazy, but sometimes it seems as though it is part of a larger strategy.

“When a judge ordered 10 days later that all families be reunited by July 26, it looked as though the chaos caused by the policy would soon be coming to an end. In reality, though, it was just the start.”

One morning in August, five days after their reunion, Levis and Samir are lying in a double bed in a church library listening to songs from Honduras. The library is located in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York, and Levis is singing along with the music. Eventually, Samir’s quiet voice joins in. Tall shelves of books mute the sound. Their lawyer said they can stay here for a few days.

Some parishioners cook for them while others take them out to show them Times Square. Every few minutes, someone pokes their head in to ask if they need anything. Thank you, Levis says each time with a sheepish smile.

She has tied her hair into a knot on her head and is wearing a black sweatshirt printed with the word “Blessed” in gold lettering. Samir is wearing new Batman shoes. They are getting to know a different, friendlier America — but their nightmare is only just getting started.

“Samir has changed,” says Levis when he briefly leaves the room.

When she carefully tried to pull him toward her on that first night, he just turned away. It was only at dawn the next morning that Samir put his small hand on her cheek like he used to. When he began speaking to her for the first time the next morning, he told her all the English words he had learned in the home: orange, apple, cherry. A short time later, he had a tantrum and began throwing toy cars.

‘Immigrants Are Ugly’

The next evening just before bedtime, he tried to bite her. “I hate you!” he screamed. “I want to kill you!”

He has frequent mood swings, says Levis. He is courser than he used to be, but she avoids getting angry with him. She doesn’t ask about what he went through during their separation, in part because she’s afraid of what he will say.

“Samir, where in your body is love?” she asks him while lying on the bed this August morning. When he hesitates, she takes his hand and taps on his heart for so long that he finally starts laughing.

It will take time for him to develop trust again, she is told by Catalina, an energetic midwife who is taking a walk with them that afternoon on the clean sidewalks in the neighborhood where they are staying — a neighborhood full of apartments that cost a fortune because of their views of Manhattan. Sometimes, when Samir is off playing in a playground, they sit down on a bench. It’s the kind of life that Levis always dreamed of. From the banks of the East River, Catalina points to the Statue of Liberty, holding up her torch out on the water.

“Look,” she says. “She wants to say that immigrants like you are welcome.”

“Immigrants are ugly,” says Samir, squeezing his eyes shut. It sounds as though he might have heard that sentence quite often recently.

“‘Immigrants are ugly,’ says Samir, squeezing his eyes shut. It sounds as though he might have heard that sentence quite often recently.”

The contrast between Brooklyn Heights and her hometown could hardly be greater. Honduras is the second-poorest country in Central America, one of the places Trump described in January as “shithole countries.” A large amount of the cocaine that ends up in the U.S. travels through Honduras. Violent youth gangs demand protection money and they recruit children into their ranks who are often not much older than Samir.

El Porvenir is a humid place at the foot of a rainforest-covered range of hills. The two-hour drive from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa leads through a sparsely settled area where banana trees grow and a handful of cattle graze. Men holding Kalashnikovs can be seen standing in front of gas stations and restaurants along the route.

Lilian Maradiaga, Levis Andino’s mother, is a warm-hearted woman in her 50s. She wears a bracelet on which the name of her only daughter is embroidered. She hasn’t spoken with Levis for weeks, Lilian says as she prepares food for her two grandchildren. On this morning in July, Levis is still sitting in custody.

A Dead End

Luz, her three-year-old daughter, is chasing a couple of chickens in the yard while Jarends, who will soon be nine, naps in a hammock beneath a mango tree. They both now call their grandma “Mommy.”

In the evenings, Lilian lies in bed with Luz and says prayers for “Mommy Levis.” Then she helps Jarends with his homework. Lilian is a teacher in the only elementary school in El Porvenir. Levis also wanted to become a teacher, she says, preferably a music teacher. She even went to university in Tegucigalpa for a few semesters, but then she got pregnant after being raped by a drunk man at a party.

Levis’ mother Lilian stayed behind in Honduras to take care of her grandson Jarends and granddaughter Luz. She works as a teacher in the only elementary school in the town of El Porvenir. But jobs are extremely scarce there and youth gangs frequently recruit young boys into their ranks and demand protection money. (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel)

Levis began taking anti-depressants and went back to university. But then Samir was born after a one-night stand and a few years later, his sister Luz followed. Levis ceased her studies and stayed in El Porvenir. Her life, says Lilian, had reached a dead end. There are a few shops in the town center, but no jobs. Making matters worse was the gossip about her — a woman with three children but no husband.

One evening, Levis took Lilian aside and told her that she wanted to give her small son something better — and Lilian knew immediately what she was talking about. Two of her sons live in Nashville and Levis even visited them in 2015, shortly after the birth of Luz. She worked in a burger restaurant for 18 months and managed to send some money home, which Lilian used to buy a children’s bed. Then, she was deported. Levis said that she wouldn’t meet the same fate a second time.

On March 1, she packed a Bible, her best cloths and a few stuffed animals in an old suitcase. She hoped that her brothers would take her in again, even though they fought frequently the last time she was there. She took Samir along because he had suffered so much when she had been gone the last time. When her night bus disappeared into the darkness, Lilian remained behind.

“I would constantly look at my mobile phone,” she says. “I knew the stories about women being forced into prostitution on the journey or of cartels kidnapping children for ransom money.” Sitting in her living room, Lilian puts on her glasses and opens WhatsApp.

“I would constantly look at my mobile phone,” she says. “I knew the stories about women being forced into prostitution on the journey or of cartels kidnapping children for ransom money.”

She ultimately received incomplete glimpses from a long journey. City names from Guatemala and Mexico, photos showing Levis and Samir puckering their lips for the camera. The last message came on June 1: Mamita, Levis wrote, I’m going to the river. I won’t be answering anymore.

Levis and Samir were part of a vast influx of immigrants. Tens of thousands of Hondurans flee to the U.S. every year, with American officials estimating that some 400,000 of them are currently living illegally in the country. To avoid attracting attention to themselves, most strictly obey the law. They work in construction, like Levis’ brothers, they care for the elderly or for children, or they work in landscaping. They ensure that the lifestyle of the largely white middle class remains affordable.

Part 2: A Frantic Search for Samir

There was a time when Donald Trump also saw the benefit of such people. During the construction of the Trump Tower in Manhattan, he employed 200 Polish workers who were in the country illegally. For the construction of his luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., he used cheap labor from Central America. It isn’t totally clear when Trump began seeing these people as a danger, but during his campaign, he must have realized that his hateful tirades against immigrants had struck a nerve.

In addition to the construction of a wall along the Mexican border, he also demanded that the estimated 11 million people who live illegally in the country be quickly removed by way of mass deportations. Then he became president and his rhetoric became policy. In early 2017, Trump blocked the issuing of travel visas to citizens from seven Muslim majority countries. He then implemented stricter border policies and ditched an Obama-era program protecting 700,000 immigrant youth, most of them from Latin America, from deportation.

It isn’t always easy to differentiate between what Trump has only said he was going to do and what he has actually done. The idea of blocking the influx of immigrants by separating families first made its way into the media in March 2017. John Kelly, who was secretary of homeland security at the time, mentioned it on CNN. Then the issue disappeared again. But in the Texan city of El Paso, a secret program began — one which looks a lot like a kind of blueprint for what the zero-tolerance policy would later become.

All migrants who illegally crossed the border near El Paso between July and November found themselves the subject of criminal charges. Prior to that, illegal border crossings were often treated as a minor infraction and ignored. Under Obama, it was standard that families, after a brief period of imprisonment together, would be freed to await their asylum proceedings or they would be immediately deported. But the Trump administration realized that filing criminal charges opened up an opportunity. The law allows the state to separate parents from their children for the duration of the proceedings.

“The Trump administration realized that filing criminal charges opened up an opportunity. The law allows the state to separate parents from their children for the duration of the proceedings.”

The El Paso experiment proved successful. An internal government report noted that illegal border crossings had dropped by 64 percent as a result of the family separation policy.

‘We Have to Give Your Son a Bath’

After they were released and reunited, Levis and Samir found shelter in New York, where they are living until their asylum applications are processed. Samir has shown significant signs of emotional trauma. (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel)

Lying on her bed in the shelter in New York and recalling the moment when Border Patrol agents led her into an interrogation room on the morning of June 2, Levis says she knew nothing of these things. The initial reception facilities in Texas are known among migrants as “hieleras,” or iceboxes, because of the low temperatures at which they are kept. She didn’t understand that the guards took her shoelaces because a father had hanged himself a short time before after his children were taken away from him. She was surprised, though, by a cell door on which was written “6-12 years.”

“The initial reception facilities in Texas are known among migrants as “hieleras,” or iceboxes, because of the low temperatures at which they are kept.”

Samir sat on her lap crying.

“We’ve made it,” she told him, her voice calm. “Soon we’ll be free.”

Border guards had intercepted them not far from where her traffickers had dropped them off. They had spent the night in a metal cage wrapped in aluminum foil blankets. Levis was exhausted and could hardly pay attention to the questions.

How old are you? Where are you from?

Suddenly, a guard came in and grabbed Samir’s arm. The boy clutched Levis’ T-shirt.

“Ma’am,” the man said. “We have to give your son a bath.”

Levis tried to stall him. “I’ll do it myself later,” she said.

“Ma’am,” he insisted. “You can’t go into a washroom where other boys are showering.”

Then, Levis says, he tore Samir out of her lap. And Samir screamed louder than he ever had before.

“The kid is spoiled,” the guard hissed. “He has mommyitis.”

Levis stares emptily at the bookshelves. “It all went so fast,” she says. “I couldn’t even say goodbye.”

“They had spent the night in a metal cage wrapped in aluminum foil blankets.”

Levis only began to realize that it was intentional three days later as she was sitting in leg shackles in one of those mass court proceedings that had become a daily occurrence on the border. Dozens of migrants, brought before a judge in a darkened courtroom in the city of McAllen, stood up to tell their stories. One of the mothers in the group said that her child had been ripped straight from her breast during feeding. A father said that his handicapped son was no longer there when he returned from the restroom.

“They were afraid that we would try to defend ourselves,” Levis says.

She was then taken to a different detention center, located some 170 miles (270 kilometers) to the north on the arid outskirts of Laredo. All her hopes were now invested in a flyer that a court-appointed defense attorney had given her as she was being led away. “Dial 699 if you want to find out more about your child,” it read.

Levis’ attempts to call the number proved fruitless. The line was constantly busy, and when she did manage to get through, a slightly annoyed voice told her that it could take some time until the system was able to locate her son. When she heard several days later that Samir was in a home, the voice said: “I am not authorized to tell you in what city he is.”

Howling Like a Coyote

There was no internet in the prison where she was held and when the news came on the TV, an invisible hand would quickly change the channel to a soap opera. Levis was completely cut off from the world outside. It was so cold in her cell that she stuffed scraps of paper into the slats of the air conditioning unit. When she would break into tears at night, the guards would laugh at her, saying she howled like a coyote.

She began wondering if she had done the right thing by promising Samir more and more great adventures as they traveled from city to city on their way north. Or by pretending that the migration prison they landed in for awhile in Mexico was actually a hotel. Had she expected too much from him?

“When she would break into tears at night, the guards would laugh at her, saying she howled like a coyote.”

“When I first sat across from Levis, separated by a pane of glass and speaking over the phone,” says lawyer Ricardo de Anda, “it broke my heart. There was nothing else I could do but promise to find Samir.” (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel)

Ricardo de Anda is a lawyer from Laredo, Texas. Shocked by mass criminal proceedings against migrants who crossed into the U.S. illegally, he left his business card at the entrance to a detention center. Levis called him soon afterward and he helped her track down her son Samir in Phoenix, Arizona.

One morning in June, de Anda is sitting in his legal practice in the center of Laredo wearing a cowboy hat and a pin-striped suit. Below the window is a cowhide sofa while the walls are adorned with pictures of Che Guevara and Abraham Lincoln. In his Twitter bio, de Anda describes himself as an “enemy of the white-right.”

Shocked by reports of the mass criminal proceedings like the one in McAllen, de Anda had left a business card at the prison gates. Levis was one of the first to call him. Dozens of women followed, and the only clue they could provide him with to help him find their children was a so-called “Alien Number” each migrant is assigned upon entry to the U.S.

De Anda found children in Texas. He found them in New Jersey and New York. He tracked down Samir in Phoenix. When the whole thing started becoming too much for him, he issued an appeal on Twitter — one that would catapult him to a whole new level.

De Anda is 62 years old. For the vast majority of his career, he was a small-time, border town lawyer who spent most of his time taking care of his ranch. But now, he suddenly had Michael Avenatti on the phone asking him if he needed a partner.

“Wooowwww,” says de Anda.

My Prince, My Fighter

Avenatti has become one of America’s best-known lawyers, propelled into the limelight by representing the porn star Stormy Daniels in a legal complaint filed against Trump. He has more than a half-million followers on Twitter, where he wages his own private war against the president. It is possible that Avenatti saw the family separation issue primarily as a source of fresh ammunition, but de Anda needed the help.

When they visited Levis the next day, they pushed a sheet of paper through the slot beneath the pane of glass and asked her to write a letter to Samir. Levis sat down on the floor and wrote.

Samir, love of my life,

I hope you are doing well. I am so sorry about what happened. My soul hurts, but I want you to know that I didn’t leave you. I know you are suffering, but soon we will once again sing and pray together. When we get out of here, we’ll go to the zoo like I promised. You always wanted to see the animals, the dolphins and fish, the penguins, even if you always said that you were afraid they would eat you. Oh, and the Spiderman toys that I promised, you’ll have those soon too. You are my prince, my fighter.

I love you.

Two days later, de Anda and Avenatti flew to Phoenix.

“When we told Samir that we had a letter from his mother,” says de Anda, “he didn’t believe us. I assured him that Levis loved him, but he insisted it wasn’t true. Only when he saw the bus that she had drawn on the border of the letter did he begin to thaw. At the end, we asked Samir to draw something. He sketched a woman with muscles and a wand who was the protector of three figures depicting him, his brother and his sister. When I later showed the drawing to Levis, she broke down in such a way that I simply didn’t know what to do.”

During their separation, a lawyer representing Levis visited Samir and had him draw a picture for his mother. This is what he drew. The children are Samir along with his older brother and younger sister, both of whom were left behind in Honduras with their grandmother. (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel Magazin.)

The home in Phoenix is a low, brick building with a welcome sign hanging next to the entrance. Surveillance cameras and high fences ensure that the 128 children who live here are unable to leave the premises.

Phoenix is one of 27 sites in the country where the organization Southwest Key Programs operates such homes. De Anda says the company is sitting on a goldmine. For the fiscal year 2018, the Trump administration signed a contract with Southwest Key Programs worth $458 million. To make room for the influx of children, they began buying cheap properties across the country.

The children are tended to by case managers, social workers and psychologists and go to school for six hours each day. In their free time, they can watch TV or play basketball. Former Southwest Key employees, who were no longer able to work there with a clear conscience, say they were not allowed to hug crying children to comfort them. In June, it was revealed that children with behavioral issues in Texas were medicated to calm them down. One 10-year-old boy from Brazil told the Washington Post that a five-year-old from Guatemala who was in the same home had been “vaccinated” several times a day.

Whether Samir was also given medications is unclear. But it is known that during his first week at the home, he cried nonstop. He would repeatedly cry out that he didn’t want to stay there, and when he lashed out, his hands were bound to his chest. De Anda learned about these details from Samir’s case manager, who insisted on using Samir’s second name, Lloyd, when speaking of him — almost as though he were trying to erase his identity.

‘Not My Fault’

After 22 days, de Anda was able to arrange a telephone call between Levis and Samir for the first time. Levis shudders when recalling the conversation.

“Samir, are you okay?” “Yes.” “What are you doing?” “Nothing.” “Listen my angel, this isn’t my fault.”

Then Samir lapsed into a long period of silence. The next time Levis called, he held his hands over his ears before running out of the room. One time, when Levis’ mother called him, he disavowed her.

“You know,” a friendly woman’s voice told Lilian, “when the children arrive here, they change.”

Members of the Brooklyn Heights parish where Levis and Samir are now staying have promised to find a psychologist for Samir. Because as long as he doesn’t open up, his experiences will remain a black hole that is only rarely penetrated by light.

One time when he comes into the library, he is wearing a hat and a large overcoat that he found in a closet. His upper body is bent over a cane. Later, while playing with Legos, he says the costume isn’t just a game.

“We started a family in the home,” Samir says. “There were mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. The other children called me ‘abuelito,’ grandfather, because I took care of the smaller ones. I even grew a gray beard, but I shaved it off.”

When Samir now does something wrong or forgets something, he says: “After all, I’m old.” The role of grandfather is his survival strategy, not unlike the fantasy world he invented and in which he spends hours at a time.

In that world, Samir is a spy, walking through the neighborhood with a magnifying glass scanning his surroundings for suspicious looking people. His enemies, he says, are all-powerful “sea agents” who wear green or blue clothes, just like the people who had control over his life over the past several weeks. These agents from Samir’s fantasy world have set up surveillance cameras everywhere — in the trees outside or in the library lamps. They kidnap mothers and their children and pull them down to the sea floor.

Chain-Link Cages

“Once,” says Samir, “when they chained me up down there, Spiderman luckily came by and got me out.”

In mid-June, the lawyer Michael Avenatti posted Levis’ letter to Samir on Twitter and the tweet received 35,000 likes. Levis knew nothing about it, but she became something of a symbol of a deeply divided country.

“We need to make America America again,” Avenatti said on CNN.

Newspapers began writing stories about an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, illustrated by photos showing children sitting inside chain-link cages. Human rights activists told stories of teenagers changing the diapers of small children. A recording was released on which young boys and girls could be heard crying for their parents.

Americans were disgusted. They began wondering what kind of country they wanted to be. And how much compassion they could afford to show at a time when millions were displaced around the world and the calls for a sealed border were growing louder.

When furious Americans began protesting in front of the homes, Trump said they had fallen victim to a media fairy tale. Just days later, though, he signed a decree putting an end to the family separation policy. “We don’t like seeing families separated,” Trump said with a forced smile.

But he didn’t say anything about what should happen with people like Levis and Samir who had already been separated.

Trump’s attention immediately turned to his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but a judge in San Diego ordered that parents must be allowed to speak with their children on the phone within 10 days. She then ordered that all families be reunited by July 26. It was an order that triggered a kind of disarray that many didn’t think was possible in a country like the United States. There had been a plan in place for separating families. But there was never a strategy for reuniting them.

DNA and Birth Certificates

Whereas the parents were under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, a section of the Department of Health had been charged with taking care of the children. But the databases of the two ministries are not linked. It was left to people working long hours at non-governmental organizations to assemble lists and match up names that they had dug up themselves.

Biographies were analyzed, birth certificates verified, and DNA samples compared. At the end of July, the authorities said that around 1,000 parents were “not eligible” for reunification with their children. In one case, it was said that the mother suffered from a contagious disease. Many parents were the subject of criminal proceedings. Dozens could no longer be found because officials had forgotten to take down their contact details when they were released.

As if they were incorrectly addressed FedEx packages, children were repeatedly sent to the wrong prisons, even though their parents had long since been sent out of the country. Many of them had been forced to consent to their deportation, having been told that it was the quickest way to see their children again.

Levis said she refused to do so.

On July 3, she was transferred from Laredo to the Port Isabel Detention Center. When in the prison yard, she could smell the salty sea air. After she told a psychologist that she wanted to kick down a door, he threatened her with solitary confinement.

Even though Samir hadn’t yet been cleared for air travel for the flight to his mother in Texas, Levis was officially released on the morning of July 17. She handed in her prison uniform and was transferred from Alpha tract to Bravo tract. Because her prisoner ID was no longer valid, her phone privileges had been revoked — and because the computer system listed her as discharged, de Anda was no longer allowed to come in to see her. Levis remained in this limbo for 10 days; it seemed to her almost as though she no longer existed. Then, just hours after the official deadline for family reunifications had expired, the guard shook her awake in the middle of the night.

A ‘Bad Hombre’

From March to May, Border Patrol agents arrested around 40,000 people per month along the Rio Grande. Then the numbers dropped slightly. It’s difficult to say why — whether it was the policy of family separation, the extreme summer heat in Texas or the deteriorating social climate in the U.S.

Even without Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, illegal entries to the U.S. were at their lowest in over 40 years. The question then becomes: How high is the price for Trump’s family separation stunt? What does it do to a country’s self-image when its leaders inflict lifelong emotional scars on thousands of children? How damaging is it to a democracy when the governing elite treats a large minority in their own country as criminals? What does it mean for the rest of the West when such a thing happens in the U.S., of all countries?

The trauma of family separation didn’t end with the expiration of the July 26 deadline. Children as young as four are still facing asylum judges on their own in court proceedings called to rule over their deportation. In August, de Anda and Avenatti flew to Guatemala to personally return a child to his mother, who had previously been deported. Trump is a “bad hombre,” says Levis’ mother Lilian. She hopes that her daughter returns home soon. Jarends, Levis’ oldest son, asks frequently about Samir, with whom he used to imagine they were mighty pirates.

In New York, Samir has received plenty of support from the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brooklyn Heights. Here, he is playing boardgames with two volunteers. In all likelihood, his mother’s asylum application will be rejected. (Photo by Meridith Kohut for Der Spiegel)

Levis and Samir now live around the corner in a new house belonging to the church, a home with a real bathroom. Levis has begun learning English and Samir is set to start school in September. They are the first steps into a new life, but nobody knows how long it will last.

In early June, Attorney General Sessions said that organized crime and domestic violence in countries like Honduras are not grounds for asylum. In all likelihood, the country that Levis has always dreamed of will soon deport her and Samir.