Heroes with iron bodies and extraordinary powers.

Ansar was a journalist, but he had to leave his job and his beloved career when the Taliban took back control in Afghanistan. Here he writes about leaving home:

Immigration is a scary story.

A story with characters so brave they should be called heroes.

So brave they can do anything.

They put a few kilos of necessary cargo in their suitcase, look at their house, street and city for the last time and leave.

Maybe for a few years, maybe forever.

Immigration makes my heart tremble.

Immigration is changing a whole life.

I am amazed when I see friends who decide to emigrate after years of life, after years of working in this company, that organisation, after several years of going to school and studying at university. I am not surprised by their decision, but by their determination. How could they take such a risk and suddenly enter another world and start learning again what they had learned once before. Learn to speak like a toddler, memorise the alphabet, write and read - learn to communicate with people who are not like them.

Searching for a new job, to earn money, which was foreign money for them before, and now they need it to live.

How can old people explain their sadness in another language?

How can they spend Sunday evenings in a cramped, shared house, a hotel room, without their thoughts racing miles away to reach a place called "home and memories"?

How much does he really want to leave?

How strong does he have to be to cross this wooden bridge?

How strange are those who love everything and yet leave it forever?

"Always" is a heavy word. So heavy that sometimes it falls on me like a fat corpse and it becomes impossible to breathe under its huge weight.

It is strange. It's strange how my heart is suddenly so full of dirt.

This life in a hotel room is like hands around my throat.

If you ask me, what does immigration feel like, I will answer like this. There comes a time when suddenly you have to leave the safe embrace of your family and go to the turbulent sea. You do not know if what you are doing is right or wrong. You are taking a chance. Making an effort. You go and throw your heart into the sea. But the waves of problems will bend your back. You have to work so hard to learn to swim in this infinite sea. Problems and sorrows and broken hopes keep crashing in, so constant you could drown even when the sea is far behind you.

Let us not discuss the motive of the immigrant. Let him be the brave hero of his story, ready to fight anything.

Heroes with iron bodies and extraordinary powers.