I arrived in the UK when I was just 13 years old and was completely alone.

I spent a year travelling through 10 countries, was sent to jail, had my face burnt with chemicals and almost died in the Mediterranean.

Three weeks after all this was finally over, I found myself in front of five strangers who were tasked with assessing my age. They were so careless they didn’t bother to spell my name right or get the month and day of my birth correct on their form. They were in charge of my future.

I grew up in eastern Afghanistan along with four brothers and two sisters. My father was a doctor and my mother was a housewife and midwife. We had a good life. But when the US invaded Afghanistan, our province became a war zone. We often had to run for our lives to escape the bombs and rocket attacks.



When the war officially ended, we were still caught between the Taliban and the government. My father had been killed by US forces, so the Taliban tried to recruit me and my older brother to fight in their “holy war”. I was only about 10 or 11, but the option they gave us was fight or die. The government, meanwhile, wanted us to be informants.



Instead, my mother took the decision to send us away. She saved me but she also lost me, because 10 years later I am not the same Gulwali she knew. We said goodbye in Peshawar, Pakistan, and she handed me and my brother over to traffickers, telling us to stay together and keep hold of each other’s hands.



Almost immediately the agents separated us. I did not see my brother again for 14 months. We travelled on every form of transport; walking through the night, often hungry and thirsty, sometimes sleeping in bunkers or chicken coops. The traffickers didn’t treat us like humans; we were just commodities. The worst point was crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece. I had never seen the sea before, but I was on a boat built for 20 people loaded with 120 people. We were on it for 50 hours with no food and water, and by the time we were rescued it was sinking.



The journey was like snakes and ladders. I was arrested and sent to jail in Bulgaria before being sent back to Turkey. In Iran I had to run away from a police prison. What kept me going was faith and the hope of finding my brother. I came to England because I had heard that was where he was heading. It took me more than 100 attempts to get on a lorry in Calais. The police would try to arrest you and I felt humiliated and worthless. That’s how I burned my face – I tried to jump on a lorry loaded with chemicals.



Refugees queue for food at the camp in Calais. French authorities have said they will shortly close the camp, where up to 10,000 people live. Photograph: Action Press/Rex shutterstock

Eventually I made it on to a lorry carrying bananas. We survived because the refrigerator wasn’t turned on. I finally got to the UK. After being arrested and sent to an immigration centre I had my age assessment. They asked me questions about my family background, my journey – even silly questions about the province I came from in Afghanistan. After three or four hours they announced I was not 13 but 16-and-a-half.



They said I couldn’t have travelled so far when I was still so young, and that I was too smart to be 13. I know I looked older than I was – I still do, but I grew up in a harsh, mountain environment and had been through a long, hard journey. They tried to give me a new date of birth. I was so angry. I felt they were worse than the smugglers – they had been heartless, but they hadn’t tried to change my identity. I was so angry I ripped up the paper the assessors gave me, in front of them.



In fact they refused to believe I was even from Afghanistan, although they never told me where else they thought my home was. It was stressful and distressing: I didn’t know why they were saying all this. Now I know it is because the Home Office have to put you in school and in foster care and give you the legal rights of a child if you are under 16.



Instead they put me in a independent living centre with adult asylum seekers and told me when I was in 18 (which, according to them, was in a year and a half) I would be deported back to Afghanistan. After that, I felt broken inside. I felt hopeless that I had come all this way, through so much hardship, and now people were saying I was a liar; it was so bad that I tried to kill myself twice in the months that followed. Last year they sent 4,000 former unaccompanied minors back, even though there is fighting in 30 out of 34 provinces in Afghanistan.



Finally, by chance, I found my brother. He was visiting London and met some people from my centre, who told him they knew someone who looked just like him. I moved up to Bolton to be with him as soon as I could. There I found an education centre for migrant children called Starting Point. The headteacher there said a few small words that changed my life. She said she believed me. It meant everything.



The teachers at the school fought on my behalf, and I also took matters into my own hands. I went to the Afghan embassy and got a birth certificate and a passport; I went to a specialist doctor to confirm my age. Eventually because I also had my Home Office card with my real name on it, the Home Office had to accept I was telling the truth.



From then on I was put into foster care and allowed to go to school. I got 10 GCSEs and five A levels, and I have just graduated with a degree from Manchester University. Along the way I have written a book, spoken at the UN and carried the Olympic torch. All of those things happened because I was able to get the support and help I needed.



But it is also why it hurts so much when I read the news reports claiming the young people being brought over from Calais under the Dubs amendment are lying. Why do we have this attitude of suspicion towards refugees? These young people have been through trauma and hardship. They are humans. They don’t deserve to be treated like this. Media reports like this just create hatred against refugees and politicians should be ashamed for jumping on the bandwagon.



When I go into schools now I often see 16-year-olds who, to me, look 14, because people from different parts of the world look different. People in the UK are brought up in peace and security, with no responsibility, but these young people may have seen their homes burnt and their families killed.



If these young people are older than they say, even then they should not be shamed like this, with their pictures splashed across newspapers. Could you blame them for being scared the Home Office will deport them back to a war zone if they are over 18? I just wish the authorities could be left to deal with them honestly and respectfully. There is no need for media reports to imply everyone in Calais is lying. We should be proud that we are reuniting young people with their families.



Since I got travel documents I have been to Calais six or seven times to take food and aid and to show some solidarity with the refugees there. After 10 years I think the world has not got better; things are worse. It’s so hard to see the lack of compassion, the lack of action. I was hoping no other children would ever go through what I did, but in Calais I met children even younger than I was when I arrived there. All they want is safety and to be treated like humans.



As a refugee you lose so much. Because I left Afghanistan I was not there when my sister died or when my beloved grandmother passed away. I was not there when my brother got married, and I am not there now, while another brother is planning his wedding. It hurts that despite all this you still have to explain yourself.



Gulwali Passarlay is author of The Lightless Sky: An Afghan Refugee Boy’s Journey of Escape to A New Life in Britain

