I escaped from my home, Soran, in the Erbil area of northern Iraq, in 2011 when I was 19 years old. My life was in danger – powerful people had made threats to kill me. I had been told that the UK was a secure place for refugees. I decided to try to get there and hoped the government would grant me protection.
I travelled by lorry across Europe and arrived in October of that year. I claimed asylum and felt lucky to be in a peaceful country. When I arrived, David Cameron was prime minister. Since then, there have been five others. I didn’t really distinguish between them, though – they all caused me a lot of stress.
I was hoping to rebuild my life in the UK, but a few months after I arrived, my asylum claim was refused. I went through a long appeal process, and lived in Home Office accommodation in different parts of the UK for more than a decade.
I was able to learn some skills, including how to be a barber, though my main responsibility was to report regularly to Home Office centres. This is always a terrifying experience, because you never know what might happen when you go through the door: you could be allowed to go back to your accommodation until at least the next visit, or be arrested and sent to a detention centre.
At first, the Home Office asked me to report every three months, but then I was told to report once a month, and then once a week. I love the UK and feel it is where I belong, as I’ve spent almost half my life there, but I never felt treated as an equal, nor was I shown any humanity. We are banned from doing many things – we can’t work or open a bank account.
I was scared and sure it was only a matter of time before I would be detained and then deported back to Iraq.
I decided that the only way to avoid that was to smuggle myself out to mainland Europe. An acquaintance said he knew smugglers who could get people out of the UK in lorries. He ended up paying them a few hundred pounds to get me out.
In January this year, I met the smugglers at an agreed time and location in Dover. Another man was also there. The two of us were told to get into a box in the lorry and to lie still until we reached France. Once the box was closed, it could not be opened from the inside. You can die inside it.
I had never been so terrified in my life, crammed into that tiny, increasingly freezing space, which I knew might never be opened. I couldn’t breathe and could no longer feel my feet.
After they get your money, smugglers don’t care if you live or die. I only had a very small backpack with a spare T-shirt, a pair of trousers and shoes and my phone, so we could call the police to rescue us if nobody opened the box. I kept thinking that if I died in it I might never be found. The other man and I were locked in it for about 12 hours.
Time passed by very slowly. It wasn’t possible to eat or drink anything, or to pee. When we reached Calais, the lorry stopped and the driver unlocked the box. By that time, I felt close to death. My feet had completely frozen. I vowed never to hide in a lorry again.
The driver said to us, “Go, go, go.” And we did. The other man went off to relatives. But I felt France would not be safe for me because some smugglers there have links to the people who had threatened me in Iraq.
I walked through a village trying to find a train station so I could get to Paris. From there, I took another train to Italy. I heard that in the part of the country I’m in now, it is easier to get papers giving you the right to work legally, which is all I want to do. Since I arrived here, my home city has been attacked with drones in the war between Iran, Israel and America, making it even more dangerous to go back.
Life has always been hard for me, and I suffer from depression – though I still love being alive. I do not have a work permit yet and I am struggling to survive here.
My dream is to return to the UK and find a way to have a safe, legal and normal life there: to open a barber shop, pay my taxes and go on holiday for the first time.
As told to Diane Taylor
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