Syros refugee Anas Modaman, went viral when he stood next to her Angela Merkel and they took the famous selfie in 2015 in Berlin.
Nine years after the selfie with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Anas Modaman has a German passport and does not want to return to Syria, even after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
«I’m from Berlin. I have my life here“, says the 27-year-old who was 18 when he arrived in Berlin during the great refugee crisis of 2015.
His photo with the smiling German chancellor became a symbol of this crisis and the open door policy which Germany then implemented by opening its borders to welcome about one million Syrian refugees. Since then the Syrian diaspora in Germany is the largest in the European Union.
With a Bachelor’s degree in Communication in his pocket, earned through studies funded by working two days a week in a supermarket, Anas Montamani now works as a journalist for the Deutsche Welle radio and television network in Berlin.
«I have an amazing apartment, a very beautiful womanI have everything I need here,” he says.
Anas Montamani lives with his Ukrainian fiancee, who arrived in Germany a few months before the February 2022 Russian invasion.
The two form a symbol pair: Ukrainians and Syrians are the two largest refugee communities in Germany.
Like him, his fiancee works, is an engineer and finished her studies in Berlin.
Anas Montamani left Syria “because he did not want to do his military service”. He doesn’t want to go back because “experienced terrible things.”
“I lost friends. Members of my family died because of the regime,” he says.
Now, after the fall of the Assad regime, in Germany and in other European countries the discussion about the return of the Syrian refugees to their country has been ignited.
Less than three months before parliamentary elections on February 23, Germany’s far-right and conservatives are competing in positions on deportations.
An attitude that was criticized yesterday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Analena Burbock, who spoke of “a lack of realism regarding the situation in the Middle East”.
«I am worried about my friends who, unlike me, do not have a German passport“, says Anas Montamani. “Of course the war is over, but the situation is not safe, we have to see how it develops.”
Although he has more friends in Berlin than in Syria, his parents and siblings still live near Damascus.
He emphasizes that Israel carries out hundreds of attacks against his country. “This can hurt anyone (…) When I called my mother recently, they were hiding in the basement.”
For now, his 50-year-old parents want to monitor the situation. His electrician father repairs generators.
Now, if he wants to bring his family to Germany, it will be much more complicated. Berlin has decided to stop the process of granting asylum to Syrians.
Since his selfie with Merkel, Anas Montamani has become “a voice for people coming from Syria”. His TikTok channel has 50,000 followers.
For his compatriots he became a hero. But he became the target of the German extreme right who faked the famous selfie. He sued Facebook in 2017 to remove the fake images, but lost the case against the American giant.
He never met Angela Merkel again, but she never forgot him. In her memoirs entitled “Freedom” she states that she “still does not understand that they thought that a nice face in a photograph would be enough to motivate hordes of others to flee their homeland”.
For Anas Montamani, it is “amazing” to see his photo in Merkel’s 700-page book. Because “his photo has gone down in history”.