‘If there is violence on Europe’s borders, you will see it in its capitals’
“When I’m working with refugees, the part of me I consider human becomes stronger,” he told me.
A lanky, 40-year-old with long grey hair, Khoshsiar explained that humanitarian work was not his background. He studied physics in Tehran and later worked in software sales, but now he occupies a cramped, supply-packed office at the local outpost of Mission Wings. People pass through every day with requests for food and medicine, translation and clothes, psychological support and legal aid.
Men, women and children, most from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, show Khoshsiar the wounds they have sustained along the way: police dog bites, bruises from batons and scars from the razor wire on Bulgaria’s border wall. In recent years, a growing number of people making the journey through the country have endured pushbacks — expulsions that are often considered illegal, in part, because refugees are denied their legal rights to apply for asylum and access reception centres.
“People on the border are the first and easiest target,” Khoshsiar said.
