I would like to thank everyone who has helped me along my life journey. But special thanks go to:
All those I travelled with who helped to keep me safe. The staff at the children’s home in Italy who tried so hard to help me. My social worker Nassi; and my caseworker Ryan and all at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit who represented my asylum claim at the Home Office. Zia, my support worker at Kent County Council, who was so supportive and helpful. All the teachers at Starting Point but especially Katy Kellett for believing in me and fighting for me; and Chris Brodie, my mentor, best friend and second mother. Thanks to all the staff at Essa Academy, in particular Mr Badat, Mrs Reid and Mrs Grills for helping me find my political and campaigning voice. Also Mrs Bolton, who I always went to whenever I felt down and upset. Thanks to everyone at Bolton Sixth Form College, in particular Mr Hindle and Mr Ivory, who both taught and encouraged me. And to all at the University of Manchester, especially Dr Julian Skyrme. To Kath Evans at NHS England, who has been an inspiration. To Ciara Steele at Bolton Children’s Services, who first got me involved in youth representation work. To the various youth workers and organizers I have met through different committees, commissions, forums and groups – you are amazing. To Julie Hilling MP and others, for their letters in support to the Home Office.
Thank you to Roya, for all your emotional and moral support, and to Sahrish, for your friendship, thoughtfulness and admiration.
I am for ever indebted to my wonderful foster parents, Sean and Karen, for their warmth, love and support, and for allowing me to share their home and family.
To the inspirational Nadene Ghouri, without whom I wouldn’t have written this book. Her passion and enthusiasm kept me going to the end, helping me through the stress and pain. Thanks also to her husband, Sam Robertson, and everyone at Gladstone’s Library for nurturing us during the writing process.
Finally, thanks to my lovely agent, Brandi Bowles, and everyone at Atlantic for believing in this book and making it a reality.
There are so many others who have been a part of my journey. I am sorry if your name isn’t here, but I hope you know who you are and how important you are to me. I am in debt to so very many people.
Co-Author’s Note
Making his journey over the course of a year, and through eight countries, Gulwali saw more and suffered more than any twelve-year-old child should.
He is not alone. Today more than half the world’s refugees are children.
In 2014, there were 23,100 asylum applications made in the twenty-eight European Union member states by unaccompanied minors (defined as persons under the age of eighteen who enter without an adult, be it a parent or guardian).
As we wrote this book, in the summer of 2015, a UNHCR Global Trends report, ‘World at War’, revealed shocking new statistics which showed that the worldwide displacement of people is at its highest level ever recorded. By the end of 2014, 59.5 million men, women and children had been forcibly displaced by persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations. That is one in every 122 people globally.
If this number of people was a country, it would be the world’s twenty-fourth biggest nation. Around a third of these people have fled their home countries and are refugees.
The reasons why people flee the countries they come from may shift and shape at any given time. What does not alter is the way in which people smugglers operate. It is perhaps simplest to describe the business of smuggling by looking at its structures as though it is a corporation:
At the top level are powerful yet rarely seen national agents, the ‘CEOs’, men who control smuggling in certain countries. They use a variety of aliases. Gulwali only knew his as Qubat. His family only met Qubat once and paid US$8,000 – the amount agreed to get Gulwali as far as Italy. Money was lodged with a third party agreed upon by both sides, and only after Gulwali made it across each border was the next tranche of money paid to Qubat. Agents at this level build repeat business by reputation: it is not in their interests to cheat or to fail. But it must be pointed out that had Gulwali died along the way, no refund would have been given, and payment would still have been required to be made to Qubat in full. I have in the past interviewed many families with dead children for whom this was the case.
Underneath this are the regional agents – the men who control a certain area of a country, akin to senior management level. Malik, the besuited and briefcase-carrying man Gulwali met in Turkey would fall under this category. Men like Malik, who also owned the brothel where Gulwali briefly stayed, are very often where the cross-over between smuggling and trafficking collides, profiteering from both.
Migrant smuggling – reportedly a $7 billion global industry today – is defined by the UN and Amnesty International as ‘procurement for financial or other material benefit of illegal entry of a person into a state of which that person is not a national or resident’. On the other hand, human trafficking is characterized by exploiting another human being against their will. The UN definition of human trafficking includes the recruiting, transporting or harbouring of people by means of force.
The next level on the rung is effectively middle management: the guest-house owners or men who can offer specialist logistical solutions, such as a fleet of cars. Black Wolf falls into this category.
Underneath that is the operational level, the myriad networks of smugglers, boat captains and drivers who are paid to move people from place to place. This is where things become increasingly unstable and most often go wrong, and where migrants can be at their most vulnerable.
At the very bottom of the smuggling business are people like Serbest, the man who provided Gulwali with a horse and guided him over the border into Turkey for the second time. Gulwali has a great deal of sympathy for many of the people he met who worked at this level, because so often they were fighting to survive in situations of great povery and conflict in a way not dissimilar from himself.
Names and certain details throughout the book have been changed to protect identities and some characters have been omitted. We have sought to be as accurate as possible, but it must be stated that these are the sometimes hazy memories of a twelve-year-old child. Dates and times blurred into one another on the road. Gulwali had a sense of the months based on the weather, but his journey took him from high mountain passes to stifling basements, making it hard for him to tell at times.
What are described as detention centres in the book may have been prisons, and vice versa. Often it simply wasn’t clear to him where he was being kept, only that he was incarcerated. Many of the support services that were available to Gulwali in the UK no longer exist due to cuts. Starting Point has closed down.
Gulwali, like most Afghans, is a natural linguist and picks up phrases quickly. As he says: ‘I had to, in order to survive.’ His English developed rapidly because it is the common language used across Europe by many police and officials in their attempts to communicate with migrants. However, at certain points within the book, we have taken small liberties with his understanding of language in order to maintain the narrative.
We simply could not include every story, every voice or every person he met along the way, as much as we would have liked to. There were many characters who sadly remain unheard or unwritten about. Above all else, Gulwali and, I hope, this book will give voice and a human face to the refugee crisis. The very fact that this book exists ensures that these people have not been forgotten.
At the time of writing – August 2015 – over 2,000 men, women and children are known to have drowned in the Mediterranean this year alone. The unofficial figure may be far higher. Their story ended in the way that Gulwali’s book begins. Gulwali could so easily have been one of them, his voice snuffed out in the depths of a cold sea.
I leave you with that thought.
Nadene Ghouri, August 2015
Note on the Authors
Gulwali Passarlay was sent aw
ay from Afghanistan as a young boy, fleeing the conflict that had claimed his father’s life. After an extraordinarily tortuous journey across eight countries, Gulwali arrived in the UK a year later and has devoted his new life to education. Now twenty-one years old, he is set to graduate from the University of Manchester with a degree in Politics. Gulwali is a member of many prestigious political, aid, and youth groups, each a stepping stone to his ultimate goal: to run for Presidency of Afghanistan. In 2012 he was invited to carry the Olympic Torch.
Nadene Ghouri is an award-winning journalist and a former correspondent of both the BBC and Al Jazeera English. She is a former writer in residence at Gladstones Library and is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Favored Daughter, and Born Into the Children of God. Nadene has also advised several major charities and the UK Foreign Office on media and peace-building communications across Africa and Asia.
Picture section
1 Selling tailor supplies at my stall in the bazaar, aged 8.
2 As an apprentice tailor aged 10, with my brother Nasir.
I am wearing clothes I made myself.
3 A familiar landscape: Laghman Province, Afghanistan.
Credit: Naveed Yousafzai
4 With my brother Noor (left), my uncle and cousins, 2002.
5 Afghan passport photo 2008.
Kent Social Services were disputing my age at the time.
6 With foster carer Sean. This man has been one of my greatest inspirations.
7 Carrying the Olympic Torch for my adopted homeland was the most amazing day for me. Burnley, June 2012. Credit: Capture the Event
Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2015 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Gulwali Passarlay, 2015
The moral right of Gulwali Passarlay and Nadene Ghouri to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
Map copyright © Jamie Whyte, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 178 2398448
E-book ISBN: 978 178 2398462
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