Mohammad's Story

My name is Mohammed Noorzi. 

I am a refugee from Afghanistan.

My father was a senior commander in the Taliban. He was very rich, he stayed away from home a lot. One day, when I was fifteen, I came back to the house in the evening and some of my father’s staff were there. It was strange because they didn't normally come to the house. Then I saw my father’s body. He had been shot. I don’t know who killed him. It could have been the government forces or NATO soldiers.

My father’s brother wanted me to start working with him for the Taliban as a lookout. But my mother didn’t want me to get involved in that. She was afraid I would be killed as well. If I’d stayed they’d have made me work for them, so I left the country. My mother’s brother paid an agent $13000 to get me out of Afghanistan. My father's family will kill me if I go back.

It took six months to get from Kabul to London. We started walking through Iran. The agent and me walked for five days until we found someone to drive us to Turkey. In Turkey we got inside a lorry and drove and drove for a very long time. When we stopped and got out I asked the agent which country we were in but he pushed me against the wall and told me not to ask questions, that it was none of my business. We took a small boat to another country, I don’t know which one, maybe it was Italy. On the other side we found a car. We drove for two days and then got on a train. The train took us to Calais, the place they call the jungle, where everyone lives who is trying to get to England.

In the jungle the houses are made of cardboard boxes. It was snowing. I was so cold. I stayed there for forty days, just waiting for the agent to tell me what to do. At last he took me and some other boys, who were Kurds from Iraq, to some shops on a motorway. I didn’t know the word for it then, but now I know its called a motorway. There were lots of lorries and some of the drivers had gone into this shop, Lidl. The agent opened the door of the lorry and told us to get inside quickly. We hid between the boxes and waited. We stayed in the lorry for a day. When it stopped the agent opened the door and told us we were in England, then he called someone, got in a car and went. I never saw him again. We didn’t know where we were so we walked to the nearest town and asked someone where the police station was. I told the police why I can't go back to Afghanistan. 

The best thing about England is that everyone can study. Studying makes me feel good. In Afghanistan my younger brother can’t go to school, he has to work as a driver.