About nine months ago, I was trying to find out how a boat sank in the middle of the Mediterranean, killing most of the 500 migrants who were on board. The story led me and my translator, Manu, to a man called Hashem Alsouki, a 40-year-old Syrian refugee living in an isolated town in the desert outside Cairo.

Hashem, his wife, Hayam, and their three young sons had almost got on that boat. But they were arrested on the beach while waiting to board the dinghies that would have taken them to where it was anchored. They escaped a drowning, but were instead locked in an Egyptian police station for more than a week.

As a journalist, you have the privilege of meeting and learning from many inspiring people. Unfortunately, many of them you never meet again. But for some reason, I stayed in touch with Hashem and his family well beyond the publication of that story. I would visit their flat in the desert every few weeks, and bit by bit we became friends.

To my shock, earlier this year Hashem said he wanted to risk the sea again. I was amazed, given the trauma of his last attempt. But Hashem was adamant: in febrile Egypt, his three sons have no future. In Europe, they might win one.

Hashem did not want to take them with him this time. But he was willing to risk his life in the hope that he would get to Europe, earn asylum and then apply for his family to be reunited with him there. The journalist in me wanted to document this amazing act of heroism, and I will always be humbled that Hashem agreed.

So prior to his departure, he let me, Manu and the brilliant photographer Sima Diab even further into his life, to document his final days in Egypt. Once he arrived in Italy, we dropped everything and flew to join him (an almost farcical privilege, given the lengths he had had to go to to get there himself). Then I followed him alone as he made his way through Europe to Sweden.

Hashem Alsouki with his family in Egypt, the contents of his backpack and his journey through Europe. Photograph: Sima Diab/The Guardian

I don’t have many heroes, but Hashem is definitely one of them. I’m honoured to have got the chance to tell his story, and I hope it shines a light on the travails of not just Hashem, but the thousands of other refugees crossing the Mediterranean this year in search of a better life.