Today I made a man cry and I feel awful about it. His name is Gholam and he is from Afghanistan. We met in the tent where he is staying with his wife, his five children, while they wait to take the ferry to Athens. They leave in 2 days. They have lived in Iran for the last 30 years. Life was impossible there. They were discriminated against because they were Afghan. Young people couldn’t walk in the street. It was next to impossible to find work and when he did he was exploited. He couldn’t pay for his children’s education. Returning to Afghanistan was not an option. The situation there is “obvious” he said. It took them 20 days to get here, 10 of those days spent in a Turkish hospital where his wife needed treatment for diabetes. His eldest son is sick too. He has blood in his stomach. I asked him if he knew how difficult it had become for Afghans to cross the border into Macedonia and he did not. He didn’t understand how it could be. “In Syria if there is a war, there is a war in Afghanistan. In Syria if there is ISIS, in Afghanistan there is the Taliban.” Then I ask him – the last 20 years have been hard for you – you have not had it easy (or something like that), and he nods and gestures towards his wife and his children and says that he has his family. And then he breaks down. Aziz, who has been translating for me, tells me softly that Gholam is trying not to cry in front of his children, in front of his wife and I feel like a moron for asking him that question in front of his children, in front of his wife. Some tears fall. His wife gives him a tissue. “Everyone, they have this kind of problem,” he says. “Every Afghan, they have this kind of problem. Why is no-one listening to us? Why is no-one hearing our voice?” 

March, 2016