November 8, 2013.

Northern Europe Beckons to Desperate Syrians

He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and promptly began eating. It was all-important to speak at once, before anyone else came, but now a terrible fear had taken possession of him. A week had gone by since she had first approached him. She would have changed her mind, she must have changed her mind! It was impossible that this affair should end successfully; such things did not happen in real life. He might have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering limply round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down. In his vague way Ampleforth was attached to Winston, and would certainly sit down at his table if he caught sight of him. There was perhaps a minute in which to act. Both Winston and the girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were eating was a thin stew, actually a soup, of haricot beans. In a low murmur Winston began speaking. Neither of them looked up; steadily they spooned the watery stuff into their mouths, and between spoonfuls exchanged the few necessary words in low expressionless voices.

It took Mohamad Simo eight months, $15,000 and five forged passports to get from war-torn Aleppo, Syria, to the sleepy town of Vetlanda in the Swedish countryside.

"What time do you leave work?"

Now the software engineer has refugee status and access to one of Europe's most generous welfare systems. He lives in comfortable state housing, studies Swedish on the government's tab and dreams of opening a chain of coffee shops.

"Eighteen-thirty."

More than a thousand miles to the south, Fares Ayyub is spending his nights with other refugees in a bus station in Sofia, Bulgaria. He, too, was trying to reach Northern Europe. But the civil engineer says he was swindled by smugglers in Turkey, then arrested by Bulgarian police and deposited for months in a detention center in a border town. He is stuck in the European Union's poorest country, unable to work legally.