Seeking Refuge


Seeking Refuge

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Transcript


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I came from Afghanistan.

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I was quite happy there with my family all together.

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I still remember when I was a kid, the mountains and a lot of dust

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and the houses aren't that rich like in England.

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They're like tents.

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There was some fighting and war and it started to build up.

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They were sort of taking the good areas, they started to bomb there.

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Sometimes when I looked out the window, I felt quite sad.

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So then my grandma had decided all of us go

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to a safer place in Europe.

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By the time we got to the airport,

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I remember they let my grandma in, then me but not my family.

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They said they didn't have passports.

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Then they had to go back.

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We thought that they were on another plane.

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But when we got to England, they weren't there.

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We thought, something must have happened,

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they might be alive, you never know.

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I had nightmares about my mum picking me up from school

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and then when my eyes opened up,

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I realised it was just a dream, it wasn't real.

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Then, every night I was crying, I was always dreaming about them.

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It was like my bones were broken. I felt really hungry, really sad.

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I went to school, I learned new things there.

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It was really frustrating that I couldn't speak English.

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The only word I knew was yes.

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Sometimes I get embarrassed that I don't know the word.

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The thing I was doing was sitting in the corner, doing nothing,

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watching other people play and sometimes people came to play with me

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and then I started to play with them.

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I found new friends.

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I started practising football with them.

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Everyone was amazed by my pictures

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because I was a really good drawer.

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I had something special to show them every day,

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pictures of my family, my mum and dad, me,

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Spiderman, because I like Spiderman.

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Sometimes I would draw pictures of football

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because I like football and it made me happy.

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When I keep on imagining my family, I want them to come here.

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Four-and-a-half years passed and then we had a phone call.

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My cousin said that they saw my dad in the mosque praying

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and then they handed the phone to my dad

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and I started to talk with my dad,

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my mum and dad and then I was more happy.

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My first wish would be for my mum and dad to come to this country

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because it feels like...

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It's actually going to happen but I get upset

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and I wish they could come right now.

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I can't wait for that day.

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The streets would be full of people selling food.

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The food would have...

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If you're selling food on the street, it would have flies on it.

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On the buses, because it's a really small country

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and there's lots of people stuffed in, there's no place to sit.

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If you're sat, even if you're a baby,

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you have to get off the seat for a bigger person.

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Then the streets had dust so if the wind blew,

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it would go in your eyes.

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I don't know why the war started.

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Eritrea, a long time ago, used to be a big country,

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then they split it with Ethiopia.

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Since we split from Ethiopia, we got the Red Sea.

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The war started because they wanted the Red Sea.

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Then all this war happened, lots of people had to get away

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and we didn't have lots of airplanes

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because everybody was moving, moving.

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I remember that we had to leave when I was a young age.

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My dad couldn't come because he knew secrets.

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The guy that's leading us right now is very, very bad

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and my dad wanted to escape but he couldn't.

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They said to him,

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"If you tell people of our secrets, we will kill your wife," and me.

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He told and we had to run.

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I remember that we got on a plane then I slept.

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I knew it was a really long journey and sometimes we took buses.

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I fell asleep a lot of times. Then at the end, we arrived in England.

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It was very hard to fit in with hardly any English.

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I started school and I was very scared cos I didn't have no friends.

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Everybody had groups.

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One day, this boy, who fell out with a group.

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Me and him, we said, "Why don't we be friends?"

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Then we joined other people's groups so we made lots of friends.

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A few weeks later, I came back from school.

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There were lots of ladies in my house. My mum was on the bed.

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I asked her, "Why was everybody crying?"

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She said, "I have something to confess to you.

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"Your dad, he died there." I started crying, then she started crying.

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I told her to stop crying.

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She said, "I'll stop crying if you stop crying."

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We both ended up stopped crying.

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For a few days, I stopped eating.

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I only drank a little bit

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and I couldn't finish my dinner at school.

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Mum came to me and she said, "You don't have to be very upset

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"because, that is why we left home, because it was dangerous."

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I started feeling OK and it is right that we should have come here.

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It got better.

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I made a lot of friends. We don't talk about our lives at home.

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We don't talk about this stuff.

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We don't talk about sad things, we talk about good things.

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We don't mention the sad things, we act like they never happened.

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My friend, when I am feeling sad, he always comes up with a joke

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and cheers me up.

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When he is feeling sad, I come up with a joke and cheer him up.

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I was very young when my mum left me. I was three-and-a-half.

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I don't know why she left me.

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People were trying to kill her or something.

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People from the church that we used to go to took care of me.

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They brought me up. I just learned to be my own mother and father.

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I thought that I had no mother or father.

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I knew she was out there somewhere for me.

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You would have 30 children eating from one plate

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and it was a really big plate.

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You only have a small amount of food. Enough to feed one person.

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I did not have anything to eat for about a week.

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The only thing I survived on was water

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and that water wasn't really clean.

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It had snails and dirty stuff inside it,

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but you have no choice but to drink it.

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You would watch other kids walk past you. They would laugh at you.

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There are saying, "You are dumb."

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When people are playing, I would be sitting by myself,

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reading my book or crying and looking at others.

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I left the orphanage

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and then I got put in this big dark lorry with 200 other people.

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They started driving me away.

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Because I was the little one, I was close to the door.

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I saw this lady, she had no shoes.

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All she was wearing was a pair of jogging bottoms and a T-shirt

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and she was running and screaming my name.

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I looked at her and I remembered her face. That was my mum.

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I started crying and I know it might sound strange, but I don't know

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where I got the power, but I jumped from the back of a lorry onto her.

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Then me and her started holding each other, screaming.

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I could not believe it was so real.

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From that point on, everything turned around in my life.

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My mum, she went to the British Embassy and the people gave me

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a visa and we boarded the plane and we arrived in Heathrow.

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My first day at school, it was really tough.

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I mumbled because I was afraid to speak to people.

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I often got anxious and got panic attacks.

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There comes a time where I am sitting there in class

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and I don't understand what is going on.

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There is this click in the back of my mind.

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What if I get home and my mum is not there?

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That is the moment where my heart starts pumping really fast.

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I start breathing really fast.

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Before you know it, I pass out.

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In school, they have created this special group.

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Whenever I am feeling angry, sad or anxious, I go there.

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There will always be someone I can talk to,

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who I can tell what is going on.

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They will try to fix it as much as possible.

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I am really improving my socialising skills.

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I am a fighter and a survivor and no matter how much you go through,

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no matter how much you suffer,

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you are always going to be accepted for who you are.

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One day, you will be like this shining star.

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At the end of every dark tunnel, there is always a rainbow.

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Life, in my country, was quite distressing.

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I didn't attend school because my mother

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was a member of a particular religion that my country doesn't favour.

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I could see other children around me experiencing a normal childhood,

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going to school and playing outside with their friends.

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I felt very different.

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Because, in the UK, being a Christian is not a problem, but,

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in my country, which is a predominantly Muslim country, it wasn't a favoured

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religion or tradition. My mum kept going secretly to church on Sundays.

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When the police invaded the secret services that they were having,

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the whole atmosphere was full of flames.

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It felt like everything was going to burst out.

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My mum was treated very bad from the local citizens

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and she felt like she wanted to escape somewhere.

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We secretly decided to leave. We didn't let anyone know.

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I think my father found someone to take us at the back of a lorry, I think it was.

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We were clutched together. We slept and slept.

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It was very dark so we couldn't see whether daylight had come.

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We lost track of time.

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It was a journey that we didn't know where it would lead to.

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We got to the UK.

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I began to experience the childhood that I had been dreaming about.

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I had friends, played outside very comfortably and safe.

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I had a normal family life.

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But then the decision letter came that we had been rejected

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leave to remain in this country.

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It was the letter that changed everything.

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This one piece of paper changed my whole life once again.

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At six o'clock in the morning, these huge men like monsters,

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they came to our house and put us in a van.

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They took us to a detention centre.

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There is a lot of closed doors banging all the time.

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Huge walls that you can't see from.

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I used to look up over the wall and think,

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"I wish I could fly and just escape."

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I can remember once I held the bars in my hands.

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I couldn't believe that I was in prison in the UK

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for doing nothing, for being a child, for escaping to safety.

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We had received good news that we would be let out

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and I started living normally once again, but with fear

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that this would happen again and it did happen again.

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They had taken us straight to the airport

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and then we were sent back to our country.

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They didn't welcome us at all.

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They looked at us with hostility and hatred.

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They just thought, OK, why did you go to that country?

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Why did you go to the UK?

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And then, my mum fainted because they had hit her across the head.

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And then, we travelled from place to place, searching out some help.

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But it was obvious that we wouldn't get any help,

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so it was then that my mum decided we had to leave once again.

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And then, she found an agent and then we were brought back to the UK.

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We were taken to our new home.

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The people were very, very kind to us, very welcoming. I felt very safe.

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And I just lived normally, but there was also that fear within me

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that it could happen once again, it could happen any time.

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We had just received a phone call, I thought it was bad news once again.

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But when she said, "I have good news

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"for you, you've been granted leave to remain,"

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I just thought, "Yes, finally!"

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That was the decision that saved my whole life.

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Now I'm living a normal life.

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I have learned from my experiences, of course,

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and I want to become a lawyer so I can help people who've also

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experienced the same thing, because I know this problem will never end,

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people are still suffering everywhere in the world, so hopefully

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I want to become an international lawyer to save everyone!

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I am 16 years old and I am a Kurdish Iranian.

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The reason that we left Iran was that my dad disagreed with

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how things were going, he disagreed with the system.

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And I remember, my father had to leave the country.

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Of course, his life was in danger when he left.

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It was kind of the story of many people

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against the Iranian Government.

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I suppose my father was lucky that he got away,

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because members of my mum's family, because they were Kurdish,

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a lot of them were executed.

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The years that followed, my mum kept getting questioned

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about where my father had gone.

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I remember the night that we were leaving, everyone was really

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kind of sad, I didn't really understand why they were sad.

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But then eventually, when we got to the airport,

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there was that moment I realised that I'm leaving.

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And I was upset nearly the whole journey.

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In Italy, we had to jump over a fence,

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which seemed rather scary to me.

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We got stopped by the police and I was scared of the police dog.

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It was at night, I think we were going through a little forest

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or something, I'm not sure.

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But I remember the dogs barking, that scared me.

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I remember staying one night inside a cottage,

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I think maybe it was around Slovenia, I'm not sure.

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I remember the night that we were leaving, outside the cottage,

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I felt scared because it was at that point where

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I could see the concern on my mum's face.

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To get into England, we got into a lorry from France,

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the lorry was full of iron bars.

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It was the first time throughout the journey where I was really,

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really uncomfortable and scared.

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I really wanted to get off.

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And then, when we finally got over to the UK,

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I remember someone cutting open the back of the lorry,

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kind of like one of these movies where the sunlight comes in.

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Then we came out and I remember the British Border Agency,

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they were really friendly. And then, of course,

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it was around that day that I saw my dad after, like, two or three years.

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And it was the weirdest thing, because it wasn't what you

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would expect, running to your dad, hugging him.

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At first, I didn't recognise who it was.

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And then after a while, he told me how he was my dad and,

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you know, he's missed me so much

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and I remember sitting in the back and my mum was sitting in the front,

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I remember it was that night,

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the whole journey, I just kept looking at him,

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trying to figure out what's going on, who he is.

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And then, slowly, I got more and more comfortable towards him.

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The first few days at school were really hard on me,

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not because of the other students or teachers,

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but not knowing anything, just literally being an outsider.

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That was really scary for me.

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The memory I have was that the school had started and

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they had closed the fences, and at break time my mum came to say hello.

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And then when she did come, I talked to her,

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and then once the bell rang to start lessons again,

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I remember holding on to the fence as if it was some sort of prison.

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You could feel, literally not knowing what someone around you

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is saying, even though they're being friendly, you could tell by

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the smiles and facial expressions that they're being friendly,

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not knowing what their meaning was, it was quite scary for me.

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There was a mixed variety of, um, backgrounds

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and the fact that there were refugee kids at that school

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and this centre where you would go to after school to be with

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other kids was a great support,

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so even though the first few months were really uncomfortable,

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having that sense of atmosphere was a great help.

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