Asad Ali, a Pakistani who attempted six years ago to migrate illegally to Turkey, says that at the time, he would have given his life to leave his home country.
Ali said he tried to travel to Turkey over land in 2017 when he was just 21 — a trip full of treacherous paths on the West Balkan route to Europe — but he surrendered in Iran and was deported back to Sialkot, Pakistan, where his family lives.
While he wasn’t able to see his journey through to the end, he’s alive to talk about it — a fate very different from most