Refugees in limbo

"I can't" was never part of Esma Ali's vocabulary. The law school graduate and mother of three worked at the regional authority of Izmir and survived two months in jail there as part of the regime's purge of the public administration in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, before fleeing to Greece across the Evros River border with her children.

In Athens, she spent her days visiting embassies and public services in an effort to gain legal status for herself and her children but never expressed despair or exasperation. For accommodation, she hauled her family's suitcases and other belongings from one Airbnb apartment to the next without complaint.

The only thing that seemed to really upset her was the realization that the reunion with her husband, Mahmet, in Germany, from whom she had already been separated for more than 18 months, would take longer than...