At the age of 12, Abdul had to leave Afghanistan because of the war, after losing his father. He fled to Iran with his mother, but as there were no ideal conditions for the Afghan refugees in Iran, he left towards the West at the age of fifteen, with the financial support of his relatives. He traveled through Turkey and then through the Balkans with same age or younger companions. They took the journey mostly on foot, supporting each other physically and mentally.
After a few months and thousands of kilometers, he was arrested at the Hungarian border, and brought to a refugee camp, a part of which was reserved for juvenile refugees. “We didn’t know we arrived in Hungary. Border guards ordered us to get down to the ground, but when it turned out I was an Afghan and arrived as a refugee, they become nicer everywhere.”
Learning Hungarian was a great difficulty at first for him, but in six months he managed to learn so much that he could communicate with the Hungarians without any problems. According to him, if he hadn’t received state support for learning the language, it would have been almost impossible to integrate.
He attended a special high school, where many of the students are either refugees or have applied for refugee status. This host community even managed to build a prayer room in the building, so Muslim students would not have to leave school if they wanted to pray. After graduation, he attended a one year school in tourism. Now Abdul works as an interpreter at several NGOs. At the moment, he is a resident at a follow up care center.
