‘No one leaves their home unless they have no choice’

As a foreign correspondent, Christina Lamb has reported on wars and genocides, but the migrant crisis has left the deepest impression on her heart. She opens our eyes to the tragedy…

The first Syrian refugee I met in Europe was Dr Ayman Mostafa, a surgeon from Aleppo. He had lost his wife and three-year-old daughter when their smuggler’s boat capsized en route to Italy. His phone was full of pictures of them, which he couldn’t bear to look at.

‘It would be like looking at the sun,’ he told me. ‘It would burn my eyes.’ Meeting Ayman made me look differently at the sea. Until then, I’d thought of the Mediterranean as somewhere for holidays and fun. Now I looked out, picturing him in the water calling ‘Fatima!’ and ‘Joud!’ over and over, and it seemed so treacherous. His story also brought home that the refugee crisis is about people. Back in Aleppo, he told me, they’d had a nice house with pet rabbits – like someone who might live next door to me.

When refugees started flooding into Europe in 2015, I thought, at last, people would take notice and do something. But as more than a million refugees flooded into the EU, it became a major crisis. Governments failed to deal with them, even though the number that arrived that year was less than 0.2% of the EU’S population. Following the refugee trail as a journalist for The

Sunday Times, I saw the best and worst of humanity. I watched governments erecting fences, border guards using tear gas on families, and traffickers cramming refugees into patched dinghies and selling life jackets that didn’t float. But I also saw volunteers bringing food, drink, clothes and phone chargers. I’ll never forget the old widows on Lesbos, whose own cupboards were bare, turning out on to the beaches with tea, biscuits and hugs.

No one leaves their home unless they have no choice. Seeing politicians use words like ‘swarm’ and ‘plague’ made me determined to show that refugees are not just numbers; everyone has a story. Imagine abandoning everything you ever worked for, everyone you know, and taking your children on a boat you know might capsize.

It’s a dangerous journey for able-bodied people, so I was astonished to meet a girl in a wheelchair who was being pushed across Europe by her sister. Her name was Nujeen and she was fluent in English, which she told me she learned by watching American soaps while trapped in a fifth-floor flat in Aleppo. Despite being bumped around, she had a huge smile and made me laugh by telling me she was disappointed European food didn’t look like it did on Masterchef.

It’s people like Nujeen who make my job worthwhile. In the old days, at the end of an assignment, I’d just go on to the next story. Now, with Whatsapp, we stay in touch. One of the people who messages me is Tuba, a 16-year-old Afghan girl whose family had to flee because the Taliban threatened to kill her for learning English. We met in Greece, where they are stranded. When she saw the piece I had written, along with her photo, she messaged, ‘What difference does it make?’ Sadly, she has a point. All I can do is keep writing, and hope that it will.”

“Politicians use terms like ‘SWARM’, but refugees are MORE than just a number”