Lifejackets, Lesvos, 2016. Santi Palacios/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Between October 2011 and March 2013, Aryan Paktin worked as an interpreter for the British Armed Forces. He took the exam at the British Camp Souter in Kabul, and the next day they asked him if he could travel to Helmand province. He said yes. His family is from Paktia province, in the east of Afghanistan. “A lot of Taliban used to be there… they were threatening my family because they knew I was working with the British forces,” he tells me. His parents and two sisters have now moved to Paktia’s capital, Gardez, for safety. But “Gardez is not that much safer,” Aryan says.
“One night, my dad told me, look, if you go somewhere else to live it will be safer for us, and it will be safer for you as well. ‘You have to go,’ he said.”
So far this year, despite the deterrence of the EU-Turkey deal, nearly 3000 people have died in the Mediterranean. In 2015, at least 3771 people died making the crossing. Aryan’s own journey from Afghanistan was typically grueling. “We were treated like animals… Maybe animals would have been treated better than humans there,” he says. “I was scared, but this was a chance… and in my old life they would catch me and they would kill me. So it was done.”
