Magda: So how did you actually get here?

Jami: I really love this question.

Ali: We’re really interested, honest.

Jami: I’m not sure you’d believe it, it was, like, serious stuff. First they nearly kidnapped us, there was this huge car chase, brakes squealing, we nearly crashed, me and dad firing shots through the window, mum was really scared and she was screaming. We got through the road blocks and found ourselves here.

Magda: Really? God, it’s like something out of a film.

Jami: Well, maybe I spiced it up a bit … but only so you know that being a refugee is no joke.

Ali: All right Jami, it was a great story, but now tell us the truth.

Jami: Ok. Well the crazy thing was, we couldn’t legally leave Iraq, and if you want to leave illegally you need dosh, so we had to sell everything including our home so we could pay the people to smuggle us over the border. Plus we had to give them our passports, and then they promised that they would get us to Germany. The problem was, we were really naïve, because they dumped us behind some border or other in a wood, told us we were where we wanted to be, and then they disappeared. We got completely lost in the wood, we had no idea were we were, and it was only when we got to some village or other that we realised that we weren’t in Germany. But we still didn’t know where we were. The only thing we knew was that we had to find the police and say “asylum”. After that it went kind of ok, the police put us in quarantine and then stuck us in a detention camp.

Magda: And why didn’t you travel legally? It’s incredibly dangerous what you did.

Ali: What’s this about quarantine, were you ill or what?

Jami: Hang on, you’re too curious, one after the other ….