I got the coat in my hometown of Aleppo. I bought it in the market not long before we left. It’s nice and warm. The shirt is also from Aleppo. I like checked shirts and I like the colour. The shirt and the jeans are both Syrian brands. I bought the little bag a day or two before we left Syria. I kept my money and the important documents in it and wore it under my clothes for the duration of the journey. To keep things safe. I got the card from the bank when I opened a new account about three years ago, but I needed all my money for the journey... I have only about 20 euros left in it. We sold everything we had to pay for the trip. We had to pay 200 dollars for someone to take us to Tunisia, then 700 dollars to get to Libya and 4000 dollars for a boat to Italy. In Italy I got beaten up because I refused to leave my fingerprints. In the end I had to. Why I have the card from the lawyer I don’t know... it was just in the bag. The little incense stick was in my bag so my clothes would smell nice. The SIM cards are from Syria, Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia and Italy... all the countries we crossed on our journey. The little papers are entry documents for Turkey. When we get passport photos made in Syria, we usually get twelve at a time in a little envelope. I needed a few photos for some documents I had made in Syria and I gave one to a friend. The others are just souvenirs now.
Ahmad, 36, Painter / Decorator
The woman in the other photo is my mum. The picture is nearly fifty years old. Both my parents died in the war.