Hamid is waiting for me at the meeting point for the workshop in the morning. He sings. Then he shows me mobile phone photos of a destroyed city and the heads of decapitated people.
He says just one word: Kobane. They are pictures of his city.
Most of his family are still there or have fled to Turkey in the last few days.
More photos follow: his house, his business, his life. He comments: Reposer perdu - It's lost.
People from Syria have their mobile phones full of photos. That's all they have left. As they couldn't take anything with them, everything was photographed. Wedding photos of their parents, the furnishings in their home, their pets. Everything that was important to them. They were goldsmiths, biology professors, graphic designers. They studied, worked, raised their children. They enjoyed cooking, collected records, sewed clothes in their spare time. They celebrated parties, saved up for a new car, made plans for the future.
Now they are sitting in the camp, waiting and looking at their previous lives on their mobile phones.
They are just one thing - refugees.
The Melilla Project
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