Conquering the freezing lorry first, and the theater stage second

Day 06, In a bus

Hossein. Our encounter with him in 2016 really put the issue of unaccompanied minors in our view. Back then we met him in a camp in Northern France, right between two nightly cycles of trying to stop a truck on the local highway and hiding in it for up to a day to stay unnoticed and to so cross the border to the UK. He was traveling all alone; his Iranian mother did not have the funds to flee the war altogether. So, in 2015 she sent him, to enable him to have a safe future in the UK.

I followed Hossein like so many others on Facebook and it took a couple more weeks until Hossein finally left the strained conditions in the French camp for good. I learned later that it took him 16 hours in a freezing lorry, withstanding temperatures around 0 degrees Celsius to reach his destination.

Fast forward to November 2018. Scrolling through our timeline I suddenly saw a familiar face on the article of a local UK news site. Foster parents had taken Hossein in and he had enrolled in college to study theatre. He was awarded student of the year just a couple weeks earlier. And now he was on trial.

The British Home Office had rejected his asylum application and told him that it was safe for him to return to Iran. Yet Hossein feared that he would be executed on his return because of his family’s involvement in politics. When the appeal came around in December, the local community had mobilized in front of the court, the college had released a statement in his support, and thousands had signed a petition to prevent his deportation. Luckily, the judge overruled the decision of the Home Office and granted Hossein a five-year permit to stay.

Through seeing this story unfold, I learned another significant detail about him. In an interview, he explained why he is so passionate about being on stage. He has not spoken to his mother and has no way of contacting her since he left. He hopes that one day she will see him on stage so that they can reunite.

Best, Florian