Here I am huddled among over fifty others in the cold fragile skeleton of a boat hoping I am not going to die on this voyage. I am Musa which literally means ‘saved from water’. I hope I am saved.

I am a refugee from Afghanistan, I have a stick thin body and am 10 years old. It is around dawn and is the coldest it has ever been in my lifetime. I feel a shiver run down my spine. I can see the ghostly outline of a country which if I am not mistaken is a place called France. It seems too small and is only an island. I am traveling with my 16 year old sister Hajira … before, she used to be so annoying but now she is just sorrowful like me.

Our parents died in a bomb attack, that was the scariest moment of my life. Seeing the rubble fall on top of them. We did manage to find our mother but she had perished. However, our father was nowhere to be found which was heartbreaking for me and Hajira.

Suddenly I am jolted awake by a sharp cracking sound. I feel the boat lurch on it’s side violently and stop with a jolt. Then I look to the left of me and there is a hole in the boat with water gushing in as fast as a sand storm. I see my sister pushing through the panicking crowd toward me screaming. Everything is a blur from then on… me clinging to my sister as the boat went down, down into the depths of the ocean…

I wake up to find my sister lying next to me on an almost perfect beach. I can see a figure standing on the cliff watching us…