In front of the brick factory on Senćanski road in Subotica, not far from the cemetery of the same name, and right next to the landfill, the Vremena team arrives, following the van of fifty-eight-year-old Tibor Varga. Everyone who follows the news about "asylum seekers" from Subotica knows about him. Many times until now, and especially this fall, he told journalists how the migrants in the brick factory need clothes, shoes, food, water... He visits them every day and brings them necessities that he collects himself or with the help of other people. With a yellow scarf and an old jacket with a zipper that doesn't work, he looks no different from the migrants.
Journalists from Novi Sad, correspondents of Television B92, are already waiting in front of the brick factory. Tibor arranged for us to arrive at the brick factory at the same time - there is not much time.
LOVE IS LIFE: The large yard of the old, run-down brick factory is dominated by the central building behind which a tall chimney curved. The brick factory has not been operating for several years, since it was privatized. The walls and roof are dilapidated, and the winter has ground the weeds. There is a security guard somewhere, but he was not at work that day.
Roman, one of the migrants we meet, leads us to the attic of the main building. By the way, in hard-to-understand English, he talks: he arrived the night before, he doesn't know everything yet, he's from Kashmir, he's 18 years old, he's been traveling for less than two years, he was in prison for a long time in Iraq and Bulgaria, it's good here, the people are good... He takes out a piece of paper (Certificate of Expressed Intent to Seek Asylum) and asks if it says that he must leave Serbia immediately... He refuses the offered cigarette - he doesn't smoke.
We climb the steep metal ladder to the first floor. Three people are sleeping under blankets, the fourth is looking for something in his backpack. The hearth is extinguished between them. Everything is dirty, rusty, broken windows, lots of garbage and dust around. Arabic names are written on the walls in chalk. Osmanthus added the message: "Love is life." I live for my love." i.e.: "Love is life. I live for my love." The one who searched the backpack shows us with his hand that he needs a lighter. He wants to start a fire. One of those who were sleeping gets up, looks at the guests in confusion, gets up and starts to urinate behind a beam, two meters from where he was sleeping.
A little further from the main building is a large hangar where thousands of yellow-gray bricks are still lying in a heap. On top of the pile, bricks are arranged to make something like booths in cafes. Clothes or plastic bags are spread over the walls of the "booth". There is no one. Everyone gathered around the fire in front of the entrance to the main building. There is also a television crew filming a smiling three-year-old girl traveling with her father from Syria.
Only a few gathered have good shoes and thick jackets. Most of them have trembling hands when they look at the journalists. One boy is barefoot in thin sneakers, and his pants are too short. Another pulled a plastic bag under his cap and over his face. Everyone's clothes are dirty.
An elderly man in a leather jacket tells the camera in Russian that he is satisfied with the people of Serbia. His goal is to get to Germany. After filming, "in confidence", he asks the journalist which way Hungary is and how far it is to the border. And he takes out a paper from his pocket and asks what is written on it.
Five people emerge from the dry reeds that surround the brick house and go to the nearby well. They ask the "Vremena" photographer to take a photo of them hugging, and then show with their hands that they are hungry and need money. They take a few cigarettes.
Roman pulls us aside and tells his friend how the previous day the police kicked him out of the bus he was taking to leave Serbia. He mentions that people from the brick factory talk about how some policemen sometimes stop by the brick factory and then ask the migrants for money in order not to deport them. Some interlocutors told "Vremen" about this before, but no one wanted to confirm with certainty what was at stake.
MIGRANTS ARE GOD'S CREATIONS: Tibor Varga
ONE MAN'S MISSION: There are currently about fifty people at the brickyard. These are asylum seekers (those who, like Romano, have a document confirming that they have expressed to the police their intention to seek asylum in Serbia) or irregular migrants (those without any document), mostly from Syria and Afghanistan. Given that there is no asylum seeker accommodation center in Subotica (but not anywhere north of Krnjača), the migrants in the brick factory are out of sight of the state authorities of the Republic of Serbia. Sometimes they are visited by non-governmental organizations and the UNHCR, and in emergency situations by the Red Cross. Tibor Varga is the only one who takes care of their needs on a daily basis.
We are with him in the offices of the "Eastern European Mission", the humanitarian organization where he works. On the floor above us, his colleagues were rehearsing a puppet show in Hungarian during the conversation.
"My life is a long story. I don't know what interests you. I can talk a lot, but I won't," says Tibor with a smile at the beginning of the one and a half hour conversation.
He says about himself that he moved from Subotica to Argentina at the age of five together with his extended family. During that trip, he was also in Dakar, Senegal. He grew up in Buenos Aires and learned Spanish. At the age of 17, he returned to Yugoslavia, finished high school and worked as an energy engineer until 1986. Then he leaves his old life and starts working "for God", first studying theology in Novi Sad.
WINTER: Brickyard near Subotica
In the early nineties, he started working as a translator for some "Christians, Americans" in Subotica. On the so-called In the Monkey Square in Subotica, where the fountain is today, with a guitar and the preaching of God's word, as he says, he leads the youth, drunkards, and the poor to the right path with advice. "Thanks to us, many of them started on a better path." Today they are calm people, they live in the world..." He notes that he is a priest of the Christian church "Golgotha". "It's more of a Protestant movement than a church and what our main specialty is, so to speak, is the interpretation of Scripture: word by word, verse by verse, book by book," he says.
Tibor says that his job is to work "with people who are rejected by society or have somehow fallen away from society themselves". Due to circumstances, today he is also the protector of migrants. "I started visiting them three years ago." There are them from Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh, Libya... I haven't been to all those countries, but they all came here."
The conversation is interrupted by a woman he introduced as his wife. By the way, she is a Hungarian language teacher and has only recently been working. "We have seven children and she didn't have time for work before."
ABOUT PEOPLE AND ANIMALS: "Migrants are God's creatures like everyone else," he says. "Just now I was telling them that in Europe there is an animal police, a police that takes care of animals." The state pays that police to watch over animals that are allegedly mistreated... I agree that animals should not be mistreated and tortured, but taking care of animals while there are so many human beings who are not taken care of at all is incomprehensible to me. When will someone be punished for what these people are suffering? I'm just asking a question. I don't want to punish anyone. I believe that a human being is more important than any animal, which of course does not mean that I don't love animals... The world has turned a little upside down. The wrong things are valued."
He immediately notes that he is not a politician or a critic of politicians, but it is incomprehensible to him that everyone who should deal with this needs a "decision from above". "I've said it many times: I can't go back home to a warm place, lie down and not think about those I didn't help." Often my family suffers because of this and it is a great wisdom - how much time should be spent working and how much time should be spent taking care of the family."
He cannot calculate how much food, shoes and money he gave to the people from the brickyard. "I don't know how I finance all that I do for them." That's a good question... I've lived like this since 1986. I promised God that I would do what he wants, and he provides everything I need for that work. There is one biblical verse that I have been following all these years: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" (according to Matthew 6:33). I work for God. He is my boss and he promised to pay," says Tibor with a laugh, then adds: "People do human things, but God only does miracles. What is happening in my life are miraculous things. Today a man came and rang my doorbell. He brought money. I didn't ask. He found me himself and just gave me the money and left."
HOW TIBOR FED THE PEOPLE: "There is a proverb that I really like, but I don't know if I can translate it well into Serbian: 'You can't shovel God.' This means that no matter how much you shovel away, God adds so much that you cannot catch up with him. My job is to give, and God keeps adding to me that I have something to give. However, a person can give in different ways. You can throw it away, you can give it and then leave, and you can look into the eyes of the person you are giving something to and be a little more interested in him. Not because you have to write an article, but because you empathize with them and because that person has value like any other."
Does Tibor talk about religion with migrants?
"I tell them that I am a follower of Jesus Christ, which they understand." I approach them in the language of Kuran. There are a lot of words about Jesus Christ there. It says that his name is Isa Mesih. Messiah means the anointed one... They don't tell me anything about it. At least not in front of me. Probably because they are abroad, and I am the only one who helps them."
He says about the migrants themselves that they are not aggressive, that he never felt that his life was in danger with them, that they are not arrogant, that they contact him when they finally arrive where they are going. However, he also says that sometimes they are a "wild gang".
"When I share food, it's chaos. The only way to get them to line up is to tell them that nobody gets anything if they don't split into groups and sit down. After that, I take one person from each group and give him a sack of food, which he then distributes to his fellow members of the group."
"Sometimes they protest, but then I tell them that this bread was sent to them by God and that they must respect it." Last time I did it, they fell to the ground like they were cut... Suddenly they all sat on the ground. They fell silent and I was able to share the food. Some journalists from Hungary were also there, so they were surprised... There is a story in the Holy Scriptures from which I applied that system with groups. How did Jesus perform the miracle of feeding 5000 people? He arranged 50 of them in groups..." Tibor smiles again.
When he talks about migrants, he mentions that they are open to conversation and friendship, but also that they are heavily burdened by the past. "They run away because they know it's the only possibility to save their lives." They are not running away just because they are looking for a better life. They are running away from life's danger. That's why they don't care if they sleep in the mud, outside, in the cold... All that is less than what they are running away from."
"And where are they running to?" Well, that's an irony. Christian Europe is in crisis. She lives only on what the previous generations made her. That is why everything is collapsing and that is why Europe is dying out. An example of this is that today we live in a constant chase for money. You will also lie for the sake of money... Then you will find yourself in unreality because you know that you yourself are not real because you lie all the time, and you also know that others are lying to you. You're sick of life. One does not have to be religious to think about it. When will the questions come to him, why all this, why I live, what is the purpose of life and why you are not what you should be. That's the point. If you don't know the answers to those questions, life will catch you on the wrong foot at some point. These people in the brickyard are currently looking for the meaning of life in some new places because they didn't find it where they came from."
At the end, Tibor shows us in which direction Belgrade is, shakes his hand and adds with a smile: "I wouldn't want to make a vow, but I don't think I'll talk to journalists that much anymore." I spend all my time just talking about this and I have other things to do. I left home early this morning and I didn't cook lunch.'
The project "Looking at European law: Refugees and asylum seekers" is financed by the European Union (through the EU Delegation in Serbia) through the "Strengthening media freedom in Serbia" program. The publication of this publication was made possible with the financial assistance of the European Union. The content of the publication is solely the responsibility of the weekly "Vreme" and in no way reflects the views and opinion of the European Union.
