Abir tells me about the second week like she’s back in that moment when everything changed.
“The second week actually was when I discovered that I am alone in a country. I don’t know no one. I’m literally alone,” she says, and her voice drops when she gets to that last part. “So it was a really hard feeling at first.”
She’s 28, been in Germany for nine months now, working to get her Moroccan nursing diploma recognized so she can practice here as an anesthesia nurse. That second week nearly broke her.
I ask what the first week was like, because I need to understand how she got from there to here.
Her face changes. “Actually, it was like a holiday,” she says, and there’s almost a laugh in it, like she can’t believe how different it felt. She’d come with a friend who showed her around, helped her figure things out. “I wasn’t pressed. He helped me a lot through a lot of obstacles, struggles. So I didn’t feel it.”
Then the friend left and she was alone.
“I was asking myself, is what I’m trying to do really worth it?”
I know that question. Most migrants do.
Work surprised her, but not in the way she expected. Back in Morocco, she’d had enormous responsibility as an anesthesia nurse, managing patients and making critical decisions with limited resources. Here, the system is completely different.
“Here it’s really developed and you can really work correctly. I mean, everything is structured. You have everything,” she says. “I felt that the stress I used to have, like to search if I find this or this. But here is everything. You have enormous of things.”
She had less responsibility here too. “When I was in Morocco, I had really a big responsibility. When I came here, actually, it was good. I mean, there is responsibilities, but it’s not that big.”
She pauses there. I wonder if there’s something complicated about that change, about what it means to have less weight but maybe matter differently. But she doesn’t go there, and I don’t push.
She did try to figure out connection, though. At work, she was the only Moroccan, surrounded by colleagues from other countries who’d formed their own groups. The language made it harder.
“So it was a little bit hard. So I tried like my best to integrate, but it didn’t work,” she says.
For a while she thought maybe she needed to seek out other Moroccans, find people who’d understand without translation. But then she reconsidered. “I am here in Germany, so I don’t want to like to meet Moroccans or something. Like, yeah, I would love to, but back then I said, okay, let’s try another place. Maybe at work it doesn’t work.”
She went looking for connection outside of work and found a group called Start With A Friend (SWAF), where people from different backgrounds and cultures could meet. Through that, she heard about EmpowerHer.
“I was really happy when I found out about it. Through this, I met a lot of beautiful women.”
When I ask what that first moment of connection felt like, something in her face opens up.
“It has really a big, big change in my routine. I mean, I was really excited every other week when I have EmpowerHer. So I’m gonna meet girls, I’m gonna talk, I’m gonna be me.”
Be me. That part stays with me. At work, at the store, on the train, she’s performing, translating not just language but herself. But at EmpowerHer, she could just exist.
“I don’t have like friends here. I couldn’t integrate at work in the social way. But through this EmpowerHer, I had some,” she says, trailing off because the feeling is bigger than the words she has for it in English.
I ask what made that connection different from work.
She thinks about it. “I think maybe I’m not sure, but I think we have the same passion. It’s like we are all here to know new people, to know new culture, new things. So we had this passion. So we have the same interests. You know what I mean? So maybe that helped us to connect like easier.”
The age range mattered too, she tells me. “There is this differences in age. It’s really important and really helpful. You learn from them and at the same time they learn from you too.”
What do you miss most about home?
“Mom,” she says, almost like a question, then catches herself and laughs. “Family. That’s the thing I miss actually.”
She talks to her mom every day, her brothers, and her dad.
And then she tells me about the radio show.
Every Sunday, there’s this Moroccan radio series she listens to. Old stories about villages, about traditions, about things that happened decades ago. The kind of programs older people love and young people usually ignore. Her dad used to listen to it.
“I used to hate it. I really used to hate it. It’s for old people telling old stories about every village. It’s like really old,” she says, laughing at herself.
“Now I’m following it,” she says quietly. Then she catches herself. “It’s like, oh, is that my interest?”
There it is. I know that feeling. I used to skip Urhobo music, now it’s the first thing I play. The stuff that used to bore you becomes what keeps you tethered.
I ask if she feels like she’s changing here.
“Yeah. There’s some points that I feel there was some situations that were before so important, and now I can see that this really is nothing. There’s bigger things to think about or to care about. I was at some point thinking big, and I found that there is sometimes I was wasting my time on things that was really nothing.”
Nine months in and she’s already figuring out what actually matters.
But she wants me to understand something. It’s not just Germany that’s changing her.
“This is the thing I choose,” she says, and there’s weight in how she says it. “In my life, most things were like the second chance or the second plan. I couldn’t do what I wanted.” Coming here, doing what she’s doing now, that was her decision. Fully hers. “So it was like the beginning. I feel like this is my real beginning of my career, my life.”
That distinction matters to her. Germany offers her things Morocco couldn’t, not because one country is better, but because the opportunities are different. She gives me an example: back home, her anesthesia license was only valid for two years before she’d have to renew it. Here, once she completes the qualification process, it’s permanent. She can build something that lasts.
“I believe that every struggle comes to something better,” she says.
Getting here wasn’t straightforward. The diploma recognition process, the bureaucracy, obstacles she had to work around. Not everyone back home was helpful when they suspected she was planning to leave.
When I ask what she’d tell someone arriving now, someone in their first or second week, she doesn’t hesitate.
“First of all, you should not expect a lot of things. A lot of people have this idea that when they come abroad or in Germany that they will find money flying around. No. It’s actually a country where you should work, and you need to work hard.”
Then her voice gets more urgent. “The real enemy here is to stay at home. That would be more terrible. You need to use your time. Go out. Discover places. Know people. Work. Do something.”
Nine months in, and that’s what she’s doing. Going out, meeting people, working, trying to make it worth it.
