For many of the Moroccan students who were in Ukraine when Russia invaded the country on February 24, aspirations suddenly shifted from acquiring an education to escaping the war. Now, as hundreds of them have managed to return to Morocco, their focus changes again to the fate of their academic future. The answer is not clear.
Salma Tiskanani is one of those who fled. When she enrolled at Kharkiv National Medical University, in eastern Ukraine, a year ago, she never expected that she would be forced to run from bombs before finishing her first year.
“I had to leave Kharkiv on the third day of the war, without planning or preparation,” Tiskanani told Al-Fanar Media. “I broke my left leg in a stampede on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border.”
She left behind her travel documents with the university administration, which made her escape journey tougher at the borders.
Manal El-Hossi, a dental student at Dnipro State Medical University, in eastern Ukraine, also decided to flee in search of safety. She was with a group that traveled from Dnipro to the Polish border. In cold snowy weather, they had to walk more than 40 kilometers of the journey.