I made some friends from Syria today; twelve bombs land on their city daily. I made some friends from Afghanistan; they have lived beneath the barrels of ISIS snipers. Passing through the mountains of Iran, thousands of dead bodies formed part of the scenery, and thirty of their forty companions disappeared when ISIS gunfire scattered the group. My new friends have spent years studying; they had friends, and family, and homes, and careers, and dreams. Now they have a rucksack.

Every day, civil war is threatening lives and decimating nations in the Middle East, with no reprieve in sight. This violence is forcing thousands of people to abandon all they have ever known and loved; to take up a dangerous and unknown path, seeking a safer – but devastatingly uncertain – future.

I aim to give a face to this problem and a voice to its victims; to counter the dehumanising rhetoric of the press; to bring this crisis home to the UK; to show that the “waves” and “swarms” “arriving on Europe’s shores daily” are in fact sisters, husbands, mothers, friends… Each with their own pains and fears and wishes and worries; their own experience, their own story to tell. This is just mine.