SHARIF

“My family in Bangladesh was in dire straits. I loved going to school but I realised I had to get busy.”

There are so many kids from every corner of the world who forsake their meagre safety nets, venturing into adversity armed only with their bare hands. Sharif is one of them, at only 15 years old. “I asked around, they said take it easy, just pay”. So the family borrows to the hilt and Sharif leaves. Off to Pakistan by bus, then more money, to get to the Iran border. In Iran the going gets even tougher: “I was the youngest. Dark forests with animals, the desert… I often thought about death.” At the border with Turkey the traffickers change, asking for another payment to embark to the Aegean sea. In Greece Sharif gives up: “I was always crying, I was desperate, I felt endless loneliness.” What saves him is the solidarity among migrants: “There were two Bangladeshi adults, they called me ‘nephew’, they kept saying to me to hold on, that we were almost there.” So off to Macedonia and Serbia, but more money is needed: “I called mum and she sent me another 2500 euros.” In Hungary Sharif and others are beaten by police, the police forces of a country that is part of the EU. He is turned away four times. In Austria he ends up in a juvenile centre, he has no papers, and when he realises he is being deported he runs away at night.

Then, Italy.

Now he is a waiter in a prestigious restaurant in Rome but he cannot get rid of the nightmares: “I keep thinking about the ones who fell while we were walking on the Iran-Turkey border and were left there; to when we drank water from puddles and ate