As far as the media is concerned 25 year old Hesham has ‘made it’ as an asylum seeker in Europe. After a gruelling journey to Europe (involving swimming the stretch from Turkey to Greece) he reached Germany in 2015 and from there his asylum claim was a quick process and he now lives in a one bedroom flat in Duisburg. However, through his audio diaries we learn of the day-to-day monotony of life alone in an alien and at times hostile city. We hear of how he misses each of his 7 family members - one of whom is dead and another missing, while the other five are spread across five different countries. Unable to visit any of them he says he now lives in a ‘virtual world’ - the internet offering his only real interactions with other human beings, and also his only source of information in a culture so at odds with his own.
Diarist: Hesham Moadamani Producer: Jodie Taylor
