An advert reads 'The Good Life', overlooking the humanitarian centre in Porte de la Chapelle, in the North of Paris. Photo by Piers Purdy. All rights reserved.
Most of my conversations at the humanitarian centre in Porte de la Chappelle, Paris, started in the same way, with me asking “Where are you from?” In the case of 17 year-old Muhammad, he explained that he was from Afghanistan and that he had walked over 5,500km to get here. Despite us standing in the cold of a December night in Paris, with only a cup of soup to warm us, he was still eager to talk with me in English about his journey: the need to escape the insecurity back home, the racist abuse he received on his travels and how he lost friends along the way.
“Iran is very dangerous”, he told me. One route of the ‘Afghan exodus’ demands walking through desert, over several days and nights with very little food and water, to get to Tehran, the major hub and staging post of smuggling Afghan nationals in the country. “Some of my group died of dehydration in the desert”, he told me, the experience of witnessing his travelling companions’ passing in such a way clearly having made its mark on him. And aside from the perils of fatigue, the Afghan-Iran border is rife with violence. Once described as the scariest little corner of the world, the dangers of people smuggling, ongoing insurgency and trigger-happy border patrol guards do not make this a suitable environment for teenagers. He didn’t seem to want to recount the details.
