Before I met my Afghan friends I really didn’t know much about Afghanistan, probably as much as the average news reader. So I began reading books and articles on the internet, spoke to journalist friends who’d been there and spent hours sitting in the park speaking with the guys. We queued for donated meals, I pored over collected statistics and facts on refugees and the EU, peeked into their tents (the winter months spent outdoors with the refugees were grim) and met transient Afghans who passed like shadows through Paris and, albeit briefly, our lives.

I attended a night-time rally for protest and action spearheaded by Prix Goncourt winner Atiq Rahimi, a handsome Afghan and writer who spoke with passion into a megaphone, his black beret tipped to one side. Around a bonfire stood perhaps a hundred homeless Afghan youths and amongst them the actress, musician and activist Jane Birkin (her British bulldog by her side) with the fashion designer Agnés B. The good people of Emmaus and Les Enfants De Don Quichotte were also present and together all fought (at the rally, on the television and in newspapers) and then won somewhere for the Afghan’s to shelter as temperatures dropped below zero. I spoke to countless guys, heard their stories as they picked through donated sleeping bags and listened to my particular small group of friends politics on whether to sleep or not to sleep in the shelter provided. I was asked so many times, “why are Afghan’s homeless in France?” I didn’t have the social, economic or perhaps just practical explanation for that yet. To answer that I’d need to get an understanding of the French system and practises of society versus state. Gulp.

Conversely, with each international newspaper article written about Afghan refugees, readers left the same questions again and again in comments boxes. Angry, fed-up and frightened British, Swedish or Norwegian readers wanting to know if these people were arriving to take advantage of their generous social systems. “If it costs 15,000 to be smuggled into Europe then they’re richer than me, I certainly don’t have that kind of cash lying around yet it’s people like me who’re paying for their benefits.” “We’re fighting for their country, why don’t they be men, join the army and do the same?” “Why are they sending unaccompanied minors and if we take them in isn’t it encouraging families to send these poor children?” All valid questions, immigration is a touch stone issue in the UK but it’s not imagined. When living in London I was taken aback many times by the dense population of some council estates that were pan Asian concrete ghetto’s whose scant shops were protected by metal grids. Bangladeshi kids holding the heroin monopoly in their post-code. White-trash wide-boys staging dog fights on the only piece of grass around. Many colours, largely unemployed and living, frankly, in an over-stretched shit-hole. Where was the balance in all of this?

Through the Afghan’s I’ve seen a side to France that perhaps many don’t. Around this story is another of citizens coming together to support and understand strangers who’ve arrived to their doorsteps from a far away land. Actors who have begun charities and charity workers who’ve begun free Saturday morning cinema clubs for the poor, the down and out. I’ve seen people of all nationalities and colour queuing at the offices of France Terre Asile and watched the media mobilise, reacting to cause and having effect. I’ve talked to rich house-wive who volunteer for Medecins Sans Frontiers and Afghan refugees who volunteer as chef’s at local cook-outs; Parisians who’ve hand delivered hot dishes and clothing to the winter shelter as well as men who’re clearly cruising homeless Afghan hang-out in the hopes of catching the eye of a handsome young thing. I’ve explained court hearings to deaf pensioners who question the morality of locking humans into detention centres when they’re escaping a war that links us all. Before this I’d never seen people in a bustling city show benevolence and simply neighbourly concern to tribes of people with different coloured skin that come from a land they know barely anything about. That sounds shocking to me but it’s true. But let’s get this into context, I’d never taken care to look before.

Around this and in my old life I was accused by a drunken friend at a party that I was turning into a muslim (eye-roll) and attended the fashion shows that I’d begun reporting on for various magazines. One hour I was seated opposite Anna Wintour, my eyes blinded by paparazzi bulbs as the lead actress of Avatar swept into her seat at a Givenchy haute couture show. The next I was huddled in the cold listening to descriptions of Bagram and extremist grooming techniques, trying to decode fact from opinion or understanding how a person could come to solidly believe that Osama Bin Laden is a an Arab CIA agent sent by the Americans. My mind spun on the question of verifying anything that anyone was telling me, from their names to even writing about a country that I had never been to. Back in England I had essentially lived the life a good-time journalist whose dusk-til-dawn party antics and bar bills matched her word counts. For nine years I had interviewed only musicians, actresses, designers and DJs; put simply white, middle-class and hip. My life had definitely changed. To what and to where?

I’ll freely admit, the whole experience became too intense. An emotional and intellectual fog set in and I stopped writing this blog. I also realised that the Afghans about whom I’d proposed to write an article had life situations and points of view that I had only truly begun to scratch the surface. A time out was in order and instead of continually grasping for my own annoyingly elusive point of view for my article on the Afghan migrants (I’ve swayed from centre left to centre right and back on this subject countless times never mind choking for air under the weight of countless, confusing statistics) I decided just to simply hang out. “What,” I said to my friend Bashir from Logar province, “around all of this, do you like to do?” His answer was to play chess. “What,” I asked my teenage friend from Bajaur, “do you like to do?” His answer was three things: cricket, watching Bollywood and WWE wrestling superstars. Well ok, I said to them, let’s do that.

Bashir and I found a speed chess club in Paris. We went and met a whole host of quirky, interesting characters, each there to play ten rounds of chess at fifteen minutes a game. Chess masters, newbie’s, spectacled students from Germany and Lithuania, banlieu boys, retired gentlemen and an elegant Indian banker who spoke Urdu to Bashir at a million miles per hour. Bashir won his first game in fourteen seconds and progressed to his second game while I worked my way through my first pint of beer. Between games he talked chess strategies, how he’d fared against each opponent, his happiness at the opportunity to speak French, how a strict uncle had taught him the rules and how his cousins used to tease him by stealing pieces from his set. “Imagine that this is Karzai,” said Bashir pointing to a piece when I told him that chess had never lit my imagination. “These are his governors, these his chiefs of police, the press and his soldiers. They move across the chess board which we can say is Afghanistan….” I looked at the chess board and this dusty old board game turned into a vibrant tussle of strategy and chase.

Onto Bollywood. Actors Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan (anyone named Khan infact) are huge and very real heroes to my friends. “Khan means Pushtun,” said my Bajaur friends proudly and they talked about the fight for a land for Pushtun’s. I came to know better my friend Imran’s sense of humour, poetic view of life and that he, more than any of the Afghan’s I had met had not just made the journey from Bajaur to Europe as much as jumped into a time machine – more on this another time. I found out that he walked thirty minutes every other day to use free internet facilities in a library that he had found. He said that besides Afghan’s who had arrived from or near his home province on the Af-Pak border, his primary news source was BBC Urdu. I learned that sometimes he had news from home of the war in FATA that either hit international news sources three weeks afterwards or sometimes didn’t hit the news at all. “I saw one western journalist in our area,” he told me, “and he was killed so after that nobody dared come.”

Mostly, as much as he could, he would spend his time watching Bollywood clips. When times got hard he escaped with Bollywood. This nineteen year old is a dreamer who otherwise admires the passionate poetry and romantic passages of the Koran. Bollywood was, still is, his ticket out of daily life: the reminders of death and fighting brought by the news, his daily Catch 22 predicament and the grinding boredom that refugee life brings. Salman Khan’s characters were tough so he could be tough. Aamir Khan was upright and thoughtful, he was too. Shahrukh Khan was a proud, romantic hero and so too he became airbourne, up and out of the cold, forgetting the “problems, many problems” and that Pushtun’s were “living like dogs” in their own land and here in Europe.

So before meeting these lads I didn’t know much about Afghanistan, I had never really paid attention to Bollywood, I had never thought to talk with my old school friends about the lands and traditions of their parents (I barely knew those of my own parents) and I had certainly never played speed chess. That’s all changed forever. And cricket? What does that mean to my friends? Ha, that deserves a juicy blog post all of it’s own.

I delivered sleeping bags and jumpers collected from friends to them. They showed me the tents given to them by Les Enfants de Don Quichotte who tirelessly campaign for the homeless each year. When the snow came Mehrab showed me a card that held credits for five nights in lodgings provided by the charity Emmaus. He said he was saving these stays for when it got really cold. Others told me that if it was really cold then they would club together for a hotel room and nine would sneak in for one warm nights sleep but that that was rare because of the expense. Mehrab told me of another sheltered place where twenty or more guys including Pad would sleep (a tunnel? a derelict building? It wasn’t clear) but said he preferred to stick to his own tent because he had a healthy fear of scabies or other skin infections that arrive when humans living in such shared conditions can catch. A small fact about Mehrab, homeless or not, raining or not, his trainers, jeans , everything, are spotlessly clean.

For a period Imran was in a mood with me because once I didn’t visit them for three weeks. “Why you didn’t come?” he demanded after forty minutes of saying very little. Mostly though Imran kept himself busy and out of the cold so wasn’t around. I’d arrive and Mehrab would say “Imran, computer” meaning that he was at a public library reading the news, watching his favourite Bollywood star Salman Khan, pouring over cricket scores or watching his ultimate favourite: WWE wrestling. (Imran – bless this teenager – believes that all wrestling, even the theatrical type where orange-skinned, costumed beef-cakes smash chairs over eachother’s heads is 100% real). Or he would be “visiting friend” or “drinking tea” or “computer, mosque then visit friend and drink tea.”

Besides the fact that Imran is the go-between for Mehrab and I as we learn French and Pashto (so by default he is learning something) Imran says that he refuses to learn French because he will go to England where his uncle and cousins live so what is the point? Conversely however it’s clear that he’s terrified of the journey that this entails, with good reason as many regularly die trying to cross the English channel. And so this boy is stuck. The clock is ticking towards his eighteenth birthday when his asylum application will be judged by all Europeans countries in a different light. One day I make sure he knows his options but at the same time it’s of utmost importance to me that I don’t influence any life decisions he makes. Sometimes he’s insensed by news of drones dropping bombs in his home region, fired up by chatter on the internet. Listen, I say finishing this particular conversation, nobody can decide what road you must take, including the views of those that you read on the internet. He nods his head. Such a world of worry sits on this kids shoulders. Mehrab is his leveller, his friend that lightens the load and I suspect the truth is, after completing their journey from Afghanistan to Europe together – the eight-hour walk across mountains, hold-ups by armed bandits at multiple borders, detention in Iran (thirty people in one room with one toilet), dodging the wrath of the Kurdish mafia, the “colourful” voyage into Greece and Italy – they conquered all of this together and I suspect that the truth is, now they’re at their last destination Imran does not want to make the final leg of his journey to England alone. Mehrab has chosen to stay in France and under the pan-European Dublin II regulations has surrendered his fingerprints and provided his birth certificate at the Paris prefecture so his fate is tied to her. For Imran, I guess the phrase is watch this space.

So, how do I know the story of their journey together? One evening I ask a guy who was a translator in Afghanistan to join us as, after four months of friendship, I want to hear 24 year old Mehrab express himself freely! Wow, after four months I find out that Imran and Mehrab’s lives have been intertwined since Imran was a young boy. After four months I learn that Mehrab’s father was an assistant to a commander who fought the Soviets and Taliban and this is the second time he has been displaced by war, the first being when he was a toddler during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I also learn that, on account of a sick relative the family moved to the Af-pak border where Mehrab became Imran’s neighbour. The pair decided to take the journey to Europe after Imran’s grand-father was a victim of mistaken identity: arrested by Americans but let go that same night when the mistake was realised. Too late however as following the arrest of the true culprit the Taliban sought revenge and punishment for the arrest of what was considered a key member and blew up the grand-father’s house. It was the final straw in a succession of events that led the families of both to conclude that it was no longer safe for their sons to remain, secret good-byes were said and the pair slipped away.

Mehrab continues his account, facts worsen, quite dramatically for him personally (he’s currently on a Taliban death list) but for now the details are his and must remain so until his dossier for asylum has been checked. These two young men left a town on the Afghan-Pakistan border situated in the whole area named the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA) which is the hottest danger spot, the epicentre of the global fight against extremism. These are the no-go terrains and un-governable hidey-holes of the most wanted extremists alive: 29 year old Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud (who appeared sitting next the CIA bomber in the video communiqué to the world), the training camps, the elusive Osama Bin Laden or finally, foreigners arriving to join the Jihad. These characters bring the following into citizens daily lives: spies, informants, suspicion, blood thirsty public executions, night-raids and ariel attacks from the dreaded drones. As Allied forces and the Taliban fight over this strategic territory, if ordinary citizens don’t get out of the way then they’re in the way.

“I came to survive, I didn’t come here because I was poor or to destroy or demolish this country but to save my life,” says Mehrab before moving onto his feelings about his seven month long homeless situation while the French government processes his claim. “I am a human being too. In Afghanistan I didn’t live in such conditions, I had a house, I had hand-made blankets on my bed. I want to live like people do in France. I feel ashamed. The place where I live is horrible, (in a tent under a bridge) I hope they can give me a house and school so that I can learn the language and work like normal people. I have deep wrinkles and dark marks on my face from the worry and the stress, I’m only twenty-four! I like France and gave my fingerprints, I’m not allowed to work but I cannot go home, I am at the mercy of the government, they have a noose around my neck and I must suffer”.

I ask if his religion gives him comfort. “I don’t feel happy in my heart, God can see me so since I came to France I haven’t prayed because I don’t want to pray in such dirty clothes. Once I am clean and happy I will pray. I want to live like Europeans, I don’t want to fight, I hate fighting, I’ve been here for seven months living on the streets and I have never been arrested. Now we have snow, when the police wake me up in the morning they shake my tent and say “hey are you alive?” I’m not the sort of Afghan who will die from the cold, I am strong. What more can I do to stay in this country? I don’t have permission to work, I wish I did then I could work and get my own house.”

I ask what he thinks about the position of his country. “As the world can see there are troubles in Afghanistan, so many people fighting. The USA went to Afghanistan searching for Osama but it is we the Afghan people who are facing the most casualties. Osama did not come from Afghanistan yet we are being attacked. There are so many troops from so many countries in my country, the government tells me that there are no problems in Afghanistan and I could return. If there are no problems then why are the troops there, you can’t have it both ways.”

I look up from my note-book and see Mehrab wiping tears from his eyes. The translator and I are fighting the same urge. The Afghan translator adds, “I can say, for the mistake that Mehrab made (details not included in this blog for reasons already given), if he stayed in his town he would be killed or beaten and given the choice by extremists to join them. The problem is that if you say no then you have to give something in return, for example, used as a shield or shot” I ask what he means by being used as a shield. “They will attack the Allies or whoever is the target then hide behind you and your family or you will be asked to blow yourself up, you have to give something, that is the choice. Now that he has left they are saying that the responsibility must be taken by his brother, that’s how it works.” I look at the hands of my translator, fingers on both are scarred from torture by the Taliban who would have killed him or done the same had he not done the same. His sin? Translating for the Allied forces. These extremists only accept clear absolutes: you’re either with them or against them.

Jahandar spent weeks trying to persuade Mehrab to take the journey to Calais with him. In a quiet moment I asked Mehrab what his thoughts were on the subject. Knowing no English he explained by way of pointing at items and play acting (like charades) that the press covering Calais frightened him and that since his dossier of application for residency is in Paris he should stay put. The vibe of his thinking was, since he had already spent seven months in Paris and had taken great care not to do anything to jeopardize his application he was worried about rocking the boat. Regardless, Jahandar raised his campaign of persuasion almost hourly, trying each and every way to get Mehrab to agree. “It is just for you that you want him to be in Calais, it is not for the good of him,” reasoned 17 year old Imran in English.

Jahandar left Paris and returned a couple of times but finally left for Calais without Mehrab. As this process happened winter began approaching fast and it became apparent that continuing our French lessons on a park bench was going to tricky. Citizen groups local to the area in which these boys sleep plus charities started holding frequent meetings in anticipation of the cold, it felt like a race against the forces of nature. Shelter had to be organised for these boys, estimated to be around just 150 in Paris and found fast.

December. Freezing. One day, in a big coat and hat, Mehrab was the only guy waiting for me which would prove interesting as not only does he not know any English but his first language is neither Pashtun nor Dari but a language that is indiginous to a tribe of just 500,000 Afghans in the East of Afghanistan. “You’re teaching him French?” a wise-guy had joked while Mehrab pretended to playfight him, “he can hardly speak and write our language let alone English or French, this guy knows nothing,” he laughed slapping the bench, “you will be sitting here for years!” Secondly we are usually with Imran who speaks English but he was away emailing his family. Well, I know the Pashtu word for tea so we went for some black tea and to mull things over.

There is a tiny place where all the guys congregate to eat cheap Halal food and drink the sour yoghurt-like drink, the name of which eludes me. This no-frills eaterie feels like a pit-stop for an infinite number of road movies starring the fascinating variation of faces that come from Afghanistan. The quiet Hazara with their Asian features and neat rucksacks; the cheeky team of teenagers who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan (“I have never been to Afghanistan but I am Afghan!” one told me proudly). The twenty-somethings (from Jalalabad, Kandahar, the Waziristan borders…towns, villages, valleys, mountains…) of which is a huge handsome giant of a guy named Pad who, they say, has a brother who does body building in Pakistan; stand behind him when a biting gust of wind hits and you’re protected from the cold sting by his huge frame!

Then there are the tall thin youngsters with light brown hair, green eyes, perfect posture and (I don’t know why this seems to be unique only to them) brightly coloured ski jackets. These young boys yet too young to shave are hypnotic to watch as they sit eating their food silently like boy princes, incredibly poised in comparison to the other teens who need no excuse to begin playing MP3′s from their mobile phones and ping around like jumping beans until Pad rises from his seat like a giant, using only his height to demand calm. “Hey!” answers one such jumping bean to Pad one day, “you can’t tell me what to do!” An instantaneous chorus breaks out as every twenty-something in the room looks up from his food to protest this behavour, shooing him out of the room by motioning their hands. “Who can eat with your noise?” asks one. “Get back to the street refugee!” quips another and the whole room laughs. The teenager leaves full of bravado and comical back-chat. The Hazara resume their quiet, private conversations and the little princes continue to survey this and all passing scenes in regal silence.

So, back to our cup of tea and what to do? Hmm. Mehrab says, “beer?” Ah, I say and I write down on a piece of paper “gauche, droite, aller tout droit, arrete, aller” and we spend some time working it all out. It’s bloody freezing outside, impossible to stand still so the game is that Mehrab directs me in French to various spots that we know then I direct him in Pashto. After twenty minutes we’re freezing so I get him to direct me to the warm bar to get a beer. Amazing how fast the human brain can learn new words when your toes and fingers are turning to icicles and there’s a nice pint waiting in a warm bar at the end of the days lesson.

I arrive to the park, find Mehrab and the boys. Who pops up but Jahandar, the lad I had taken to the hospital. Hey look at you, I joked as the young man who stood before me had almost completely transformed! The old Jahandar, dirty, exhausted, stinky, limping and emotionally burnt out from his days sleeping in the make-shift tents in Calais had turned into a new person in fresh clothes (from the local charitiable associations in the area) all clean and all smiles. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “my foot it’s good, it’s good. I spent the last three days with this guy (points to Mehrab) and I’m telling you, this guy is funny.” As he continues I note that this is the second person to tell me, when they arrived to the streets in Paris, pint-sized Mehrab (24yrs) took them under his wing, shared blankets and information but perhaps more importantly lifted their spirits with his chilled demeanour, quick sense of humour and ability to keep his group safe and away from the dangers that can lie on the streets.

I learn that Mehrab and the teenager from the Pakistan/Afghanistan border (Imran, 17yrs) had travelled together across Turkey and Iran. Mehrab tells me in Pashto their story of crossing mountains for days in the snow, being held up by bandits in Turkey who fired kalashnikovs over their heads and of being moved back and forth between Turkey and Iran as neither country wanted to deal with them. Most if not all of my Afghan friends have the same story to tell. “Say this line is the border yeah cos at the end of the day that’s what it looks like” says Jahandar drawing a line in the dirt with his trainer highlighting some of the comical yet scary situations people experience. “The soldiers are screaming at you with guns to cross the border so you do it but there’s nothing there! You don’t know where to go! So people just sit down on a bank ten metres away from this line looking at the soldiers.”

Why did you leave Afghanistan, I ask Jahandar. “So my step-brother is high up in the Taliban,” he begins, “if I ever needed money when I was a kid he’d give it to me. One day he comes to our house, I was maybe fourteen or less and he stays for two days bringing with him two armed guards who stand outside our house while he’s there. He’s saying to me, you should join us, you’ll get money, food, training, this is what we’re doing you should join us”. When he left I spoke with my mother and she said, Jahandar you’ve got to get out of here. Secretly we went to my uncle and he agreed, it was time for me to leave and leave fast so that was it, gone.” If you had stayed in Afghanistan I asked, what would have happened to you? Jahandar’s humour is similar to mine so a comical grimace that doesn’t signify good things is enough for me. I see.

I’m alone with young Imran for a short time and he tells me that he had argued with Mehrab a day ago. Imran says bombs had exploded in his village days before it hit the media. His family house had been hit but nobody had died. He was angry, frightened for his family and so frustrated that he had shouted at Mehrab to give him five euros so that he could go home. Mehrab had scoffed and scolded the skinny seventeen year old and said, “What can you do? You’ll be taken by you don’t know who and made to fight for you don’t know what, how will that help?” Imran shook his head as we walked. We reach our destination, he digs his hands into his jean pockets and shakes his head with a grin that says, my world is a joke. I say nothing but I know that Mehrab was protecting Imran from his own hotheadedness. And the reality is, at 17, he cannot join the Pakistan army and so would be conscripted into the Taliban, no negotiation. The subject turns to cricket. Imran is a big fan and it’s one bright light in his life. “There is no cricket in Paris, we’ve played just one time this year.” Funnily enough, I say talking about my ex-pat friends, we’ve been looking for cricket pitches in Paris too. I’ll see if I can find some pitches and get something going for the spring when we can play.

Sunday.

I have arranged to meet another Afghan who worked as a translator for the Allied forces so his English is better than most. I meet him because I know that he knows Mahreb and after four language lessons together I’m curious to know what level of schooling Mahreb may have had so that I can teach him French more effectively. Bahar lays it down in black and white. Mahreb is from a village where there’s little to no education, he’s barely literate, he doesn’t even know real Pashto. OK I say, so I need to take a language pit-stop with Mahreb and go back to really nailing the French alphabet. This guy who looks after his gang of friends is conversely the guy who needs language skills the most. Bahar tells me that it’s his dinner time and we both walk towards the metro station.

It’s 7pm and suddenly I get what Bahar means by dinner time. At the entrance of the park are five long makeshift tables on trestles full of French volunteers giving hot food and drink to the poor (when the trestles are packed away clothes are distributed) There are about 300 people in the queues, the majority clearly Afghan. I’m a little taken aback as I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. Of course I know that these things happen across the globe but because I’ve never sought out anything like this before I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. I see my friends queueing for food. Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that my friends are homeless because they’re so clean and upbeat but as they queued for food that facade fell away. I saw Imran. You’re not eating? I ask. “I ate already, we eat at one of the other places where food is given out.” What did you eat? “Grapes, apples, cornflakes.” Is that it, I ask, no soup? “There was soup and food but it has meat which is not Halal so we can’t eat it.”

Thursday

Mahreb and I spend two hours going over and drawing the French and Pashto alphabet under the watchful eye of Imran and Jahandar who translate and correct because Mahreb can’t speak English, I can’t yet speak Pashto and his Pashto alphabet isn’t so good either. Imran and Jahandar find the pair of us comical. Afterwards we go to eat. Jahandar is joined by two guys who say that they are on their way back to Calais. “France is a bad place,” one says, “there’s no need for me to stay in France because I can already speak English, I’m ready to work and build my life now!” This twenty-two year old guy had an incredibly frustrated and angry edge to his personality compared to my Pashto friends who are always chilled and humourous. He and his friend didn’t look Afghan but it made no difference to me so I didn’t ask. I asked him about living in La Jungle and he told me how they had made cookers from metal bins to make bread. His phone rings and he talks in Farsi as we eat. Five minutes later he apologises. “That was my family, they call to see how I am, they’re worried about me but also they don’t understand how come I haven’t made it to England yet. My father is saying, what’s the problem? Why are you in France? They don’t understand Calais, they can’t imagine what the reality is.” He asks why I left the UK. I answer, because I didn’t agree with going to war in Iraq. This guy laughs. “So let me get this straight, me and him,” he motions to himself and his friend with his fork, “we are from Iraq. So you left England cos of the war in Iraq and here I am trying to get into England cos of the war in Iraq.” He fell silent, his fork repeatedly jabbing his food with increased force, the pressure in his jaw building so much so that when I meet eyes with Jahandar and Marheb we can’t stop ourselves from laughing at him. He laughed at himself too, looking at all of us and shaking his head, “I’m telling you, it’s a total joke”.

While we waited he told me his story. He was 23 and seemed weary and tired of the past eight years spent bouncing around Europe and Afghanistan. He shook his head as he looked down, “I’m lost in Europe.” He had arrived to Paris from Calais three weeks ago. As we talked I realised that his swagger and chat came from having lived in the same part of London as me where he worked as a cook. I learned that the familiar twang I’d noticed immediately in his English accent came from having spent time with a lot of Jamaicans so we reminisced about London. “When I went back to Afghanistan the first time I left it had changed completely,” he said, “it was like the whole place had been bombed, there’s nothing there.” He told me that he’d worked briefly as a translator for the US army but that it made his life very complicated with his fellow Afghans and so he quit and left. Without going into more details I knew that this young man was exactly the kind of migrant that the readers of The Daily Mail absolutely fear and abhor. I asked him to describe to me an average day in his life: kicked awake by the police at 6am, queues for food (once in the morning and once at night), appointments, the park, sleeping in packs for protection. Here’s what it was like, to live day in and day out waiting to be accepted into any country where, his words, he could rebuild his life: “time just blurs into time, it’s limbo, just waiting everyday you know?” He apologised repeatedly for being dirty and asked if I could help him stay in France. I replied that the associations that he had already made contact with (France Terre d’Asile) were better equipped than me but look, I said, you can’t speak a word of French, let me teach you while we’re waiting for you to be seen so at least you have something. I taught him phrases to appease police and a bundle of other phrases like “une bouteille d’eau”, “je comprends”, “je ne comprends pas”, “ou? Quoi? Quand? Qui?” He asked for the piece of paper with our notes, folded it and put it into his pocket.

The doctor called him into the treatment room and I translated what they were going to do. His whole exterior soon dropped once they showed him a mask for the gas he was going to have to breathe while they cut open and treated his foot: panic. The doctor was kind but firm and explained that this was a completely normal procedure, that she had treated much much worse cases and the gas was essential for the pain he was going to feel. Leaving out the ins and outs of how I realised the following, I could see that the fact that he was going to be rendered powerless in a room full of people that he didn’t know, couldn’t understand and in an environment where he knew everybody knew he was a completely illegal alien was freaking him out. The fragility of his situation hit me and I went out into the corridoor and shed a couple of tears which I’m glad I got out of the way as when the treatment began (anyone who has had anything similar will understand!) his pain was excrutiating and the gas made him disorientated. The doctor called me back into the room with a friendly smile, “he thinks we’re killing him so you better come in to calm him down.”

An expertly bandaged foot, a fat box of paracetamol, a tetanus jab and lots and lots of thank-you’s later and we were walking (he, dazed but walking much more comfortably) back to the park. When we were in sight of it he relaxed and showed huge relief. “Thank God,” he said, “When I see the park I feel secure again, I can’t explain it, it’s what I know.” I asked what time the nightly queue for food ended and he said that he’d missed it. He said that he’d also missed an appointment with an old friend who was meeting him on his day off work and might have a lead for somewhere to crash. You know he’ll be back to the park, I said trying to be positive but also knowing it to be true, he’ll come back on his next day off I’m sure. We shook hands and he hobbled off to his place. As I walked towards the metro I realised that I’d made a stupid error at the pharmacy when they gave him his medicine. The pharmacist had pulled out tablets that had to be dissolved into a cup of water three times a day instead of the prescribed gel capsules. At the time none of us thought it a big deal but now I realised that pills simply swallowed with water are more practical for a homeless person who has to actively go out and hunt a cup. Tsk. Idiot. My lesson for the day. This guy has been on the road for eight years my practical side told my more emotional side, he’ll know how to find a plastic cup.

And so on with the lessons of the day. Je suis, tu est, il est, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont. Repeat. We follow with ‘avoir’, ‘faire’ and some sentences that illustrate the verbs. By total accident I had picked an incredibly ironic triplet of sentences and Luckman had a great time play-acting their humour against the backdrop of their situation. “Oui c’est ca, j’ai un livre, je suis en Paris and je fait mon lit,” he continued with a smile, “in English this means yes, here I am in Paris, I’m reading my book and then I’m making my bed.” He motions to the sun and the trees under which he reads his imaginary book and pats the park bench when he says the word ‘bed’. We all laugh and I apologise, very embarrassed, I’m sorry guys, I didn’t think! They’re incredibly keen that I learn the Pashto for everything I teach them to the point of comical mishap for example when I taught them the word metro. A silent pause dispersed with exchanged looks came. And then, “actually we don’t have a metro system in Kabul so there’s no word, just train.” These guys have told me just some of their tales of bombings, capture, torture and escape. And of relatives being killed so there’s a dark joke in lots of the phrases I’m teaching them but we all get it, conversely we all get that they need to learn the basics of French grammar to survive. Twenty-four year old Mehrab wants me to go over and over the conjugations of “etre” with him until he feels more comfortable. As we wrangle over the meaning of the words ‘gentil’ and ‘tranquille’ one ventures that tranquille could be used if someone is being aggressive towards them. Definitely I say. Luckman acts out a situation, holds out his hands and says “je suis tranquille, nous sommes tranquille”. Yes, I say, you got it. We’re all tranquille on our bench with our books before later going off to make our beds, no problem.

(Ps. As I write this a huge thunder, rain and lightening storm is passing over Paris. I hope those guys are ok. I know that they sleep together, look after eachother and are pretty street smart. I have nothing to offer them except my language skills. It is what it is. Or, as little Mehrab says, opening his hands up to the purple sky with a smile, Inshallah)

For a start it was a hot day despite the leaves on the trees having turned gold and rusty coloured. From the bench I saw two groups of old Algerian men playing pétanque. Past retirement age they knew eachother and the other retired Algerians sitting on the shaded benches that lined the pétanque terrain which was a well played and, in parts, quite tricky one. Sitting on the bench to my right were four Afghan youths gazing at the scene. One old pétanque player had a special magnet-on-a-string contraption, made for those whose spinal vertebrae don’t like the fuss and bother of bending down to pick up metal boules all day long. Another old man arrived to the pitch with a hop, a smile and loud greeting to his fellow players. I may be late his entrance said but I’m ready to play. To my side was a way way old Algerian with a bottle of beer in his hand, a snazzy black sequinned Fedora on his head, an empty yellow pottery jug by his side and a huge medical bandage on his forefinger. It was hard to understand all that he was saying but he did point a lot with his bandaged finger and coached his buddies as they threw boules at the cochon.

Under the sign that read “Pétanque Club” was a table full of old French men and women playing cards, about six of them and a jolly time they were having too. The pétanque players and the card players would chat and exchange places but when both groups games were going good they were going good and concentration broken only by jibing was in the air. Snacks and sandwiches were taken out of plastic tubs and shared. Across the way on the sports court were six Chinese teenagers playing basketball. Three had purple shirts to denote their team. They were average players, they tried out tricks and missed the hoop more often than scoring but you could see that they were having a lot of fun. I was fascinated with watching them play not least because sometimes, when watching professional basketball, the ball just moves too fast for me to to know what’s happening. It felt so good to watch a game being played at a speed my eyes could trace. I also enjoyed watching the six lads interact: friends. An Afghan of the same age walked along the side of the court and gently kicked them the ball when it fell out of play.

Out in the park, stretched or sitting on the grass were many, many other Afghans and many French, infact I can’t tell you all the nationalities that were on the grass today as there were quite a few. I can tell you that it was sunny, I can tell you that one of the velo police had a really handsome smile, I can tell you that the vibe was relaxed and I can tell you that I was late for my appointment with some newly made friends and had missed them. But I knew they would be back hence why I was killing time at the pétanque pitch. Sure enough, an hour later when I finally folded up my copy of the International Herald Tribune, stood up and scoped out our meeting place, there they were: Luckman, Hamasa and Mehrab with some other little friends too, all sitting on the grass, they too killing time in this small park in Paris that has been nicknamed ‘Little Kabul’. All smiles and my apologies for being late we shake hands and sit on the grass. Despite the heat, the temperature on the ground as I sit reminds me that one season is saying good-bye and it’s opposite will arrive before long. Luckman is listening and humming along to music on his mobile phone with a friend. Hamasa and I talk about his French classes which he finished today at 2pm. Mehrab just grins. Hamasa begins the business of our day quickly. They are to teach me Pashto, one of the main languages spoken in Afghanistan. In return I’m helping them with their French and English. More of their friends join us and they’re all keen to tell Hamasa how my first lesson should proceed. There’s some debate on which kind of Pashto I’m to learn, how many Pashto letters I should learn today and a little passing of the paper and pen goes on before Hamasa settles to write the Pashto alphabet for me.

Of the six young men I’m sitting with I could say that all are under twenty-five, probably more around the twenty mark. One of them definitely has a roof to sleep under at night. One of the smartest ones also looks to be one of the youngest, say seventeen. All of them are clean and immaculately tidy but this young guy has that subtle extra layer of dust on his face and hair that confirms he’s sleeping rough. “Today you will learn five Pashto letters,” he says to me. Mehrab raises his eyebrows with a big smile and reiterates by holding up his small hand, “five”. They all have many old and healed nicks and scars on their arms. More than the average boisterous teenager? Yes, I would say. They all look healthy and fed though. My mind also knows this to be the case as, on entering the park, I saw a mobile medical drop-in bus on the street outside labelled, Medecins Sans Frontiéres. I also know for a fact that charities and organisations of citizens in the area are all working to reach these kids with food, clothes and education. The whole group takes interest in what Hamasa and I are doing. I recite the Pashto alphabet after Hamasa, it’s pretty hard for me to wrap my tongue around some of the letters. After Pashto we all do the same with the French and English alphabet. It’s small Mehrab that’s encouraged to sit next to me as we do the French and English parts as he’s the one who knows the least and it’s with him that I made this friends pact to swap languages. At the time of the agreement Hamasa offered himself as the go-between for us both because he speaks English. This whole agreement initially began when I first showed these boys a Pashto-English dictionary I had bought and through their response I could see that it was pint-sized Mehrab that needed it the most. “Can I have?” he had asked me. Tell you what, I replied, let’s share it, we’ll teach eachother. “OK” he said grinning, “OK.” After the Pashto alphabet we go through the days of the week in English, French and Pashto. I draw a picture of the sun to explain Sunday. Next he repeats after me, “je m’appelle Mehrab”, concentrating so hard he cracks up with laughter at the situation. I draw a picture of a snail followed by a picture of Paris and all it’s arrondissements to illustrate how the cities different areas are laid out in its circular form of twenty postcodes. I remember when a French friend first explained this to me when I arrived in Paris and how suddenly the unfathomable city began to make sense. I hoped that it would make some sense to Mehrab too. It did. Not so much my wonky drawing of a snail but the circular layout of the city was definitely understood. “We are in the first?” asked the youngest lad. I shook my head and pointed out our position. Some police walk by and say hello. A toddler in the French family sitting behind us begins screaming, I didn’t look (to me this is France and there are babies everywhere) but Hamasa stops mid-sentence to see what’s happening. The toddler had tumbled and the mother swept her child into her arms. Hamasa watches the mother rock the child then returns to what he was telling me.

Another boy of around eighteen joins us. I recognise him, this young lad with big eyes. I knew him to be a little more serious than his friends, his shoulders were always a little stooped, and that he could speak good English. He watches as our language lessons progress but actually he’s more interested in my newspaper. Hamasa pauses and pointing at the paper asks, “is there news of Afghanistan?” Ok, I said, let’s hear what’s happening in the news today. Beginning with the front page I explain every article in simple terms to six pairs of ears that lean in close. Here they are investigating the groups that attacked Mumbai. Here are spy photos of hidden nuclear sites in Iran. Here Gordon Brown has just given a rousing speech at the Labour Conference. Everybody points out that they recognise the face of Gordon Brown. Inwardly I quickly realise that even if these boys couldn’t understand the details of what I was saying, each of the news stories has an arguably direct impact on their lives. “I am from Pakistan,” said the new boy, “from the border. There we are at war, very dangerous life.” There was a photo of a bombed building in a hot country with women wearing headscarves walking past. “Afghanistan?” said another boy. No, Gaza. He pointed at the bombed building. “Like Afghanistan,” he informed me. On page three there was a story about Afghanistan, about NATO pledging to deploy more troops to the region. Suddenly I got the immediate feeling that these boys were wishing for different news, more regular, basic news of life at home like if, for example, we could read news of Hamasa’s family in the newspaper. We couldn’t. “It’s not yet safe for me to go home,” said the boy from the Pakistan border. No, I replied, I guess not. He turned the page. Here’s some news about Hollywood. “Bollywood?!” No, I laughed. “Who is this?” This, I reply, is Drew Barrymore, she’s an actress. “Good?” Yeah pretty good.

As we turned back to our studies this boy took back my newspaper and restarted at the front page with a furrowed brow. He stopped at one page and, pointing to the section headline said, “business!” Yes, I replied. “Yes,” he repeated and studied the page hard holding my dictionary in one hand. “If you can find a Pashto-French dictionary would also be good,” he said motioning towards his Afghan friends. I told him that I would find an address for a shop and bring it back next time. I didn’t ask him if he was OK reading my newspaper alone or needed help, he was clearly a bright young man who wanted to figure out what he could by himself. I watched him leaning over the pages thinking that I was never that interested in the news when I was eighteen. But then at eighteen I wasn’t alone, thousands of miles away from a home that was an unstable and dangerous warzone. I would like to think that boys growing up in villages on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan have the option of deciding which side they must choose once some deem them old enough to carry a gun. Common sense tells me this teenager decided on neither and voted simply by using his feet.