We are children! We want to go to school! Then why are we being hurt? the Syrian girl Raghad asks the author Alea Horst, whom she meets in the Kara Tepe refugee camp on Lesvos. Among the 7,000 people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran who are being housed here and held by European bureaucracy, there are 3,000 children with little hope or prospect for a better future. Alea Horst visited this camp in February 2021 and photographed some of them, learned about their life stories and recognized their trauma. The misery experienced during the long wait for a positive asylum decision, which sometimes lasts years, and also the fear of being sent back to the home countries. “Whenever I leave there, I think it can’t get any worse. But I’m always wrong,” writes the author, who has since founded a charity.
Alea Horst: Sometimes I paint a house for us. Europe’s forgotten children. With vignettes by Mehrdad Zaeri. Klett children’s book 2022. 80 pages, 16 euros.