This is the narrowest crossing point between the European and African continents, where the Iberian Peninsula just stops short of kissing the north of Morocco. This is also the site of a migration crisis that is little covered in the news, and gathering more information about the situation and the people who are struggling there is the main motivation for my visit.
I visited Tunisia between the two terrorist attacks of 2015; just a few days after gunmen opened fire on tourists in the Bardo Museum in Tunis, killing over 20 people, and just three months before at least 37 people were massacred on a hotel beach in Sousse. It was my first time on the African continent.
A New Year calls for a fresh start.
We wander through the apparently infinite rooms of his apartment, surveying increasingly pornographic portraits
We left the war behind the Syrian border and hitchhiked West, into the sunshine.
A few months ago I lay in a tent 10km from the Syrian border, feeling the ground quake as the coalition bombed ISIS throughout the night. From Mahser, the Kurdish village a mere 1km from Kobane, I saw smoke mushrooming out above the besieged city.
One hundred years ago my husband’s grandparents escaped from a genocide.
It’s the middle of December and we’re taking the longest road possible from the North-East to the South-West corner of Anatolia, through East Turkey, or North Kurdistan, or Western Armenia – depending on who you’re speaking to.
A Girl and Her Thumb 