I was ten years old when we landed in Heathrow airport. I’d never been to the UK before. It was late October and really cold – I can still remember the Christmas lights. My parents and three sisters were with me. Only my older brother was missing from the picture-perfect landscape. It felt like we’d made it.
We are Baloch people, from Balochistan in southwest Pakistan. There’s a significant separatist movement in the region, and my family held an influential position locally. Around a dozen of my relatives had been assassinated because of their political beliefs, and many others had just vanished. We were scared the same thing might happen to us. So we packed what we could and fled.
I turned 20 this year. For the last ten years, I’ve felt like I’ve been waiting in the dark. Waiting to be told I am not an imposter in the place I believe to be my home. It’s been a whole decade, but me and my family still haven’t received an answer about our asylum application.
