Mahdi Hashemi
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Ghazni | Afghanistan
Mahdi Hashemi (*2000) fled alone at the age of 15 from near Tehran, the capital of Iran, to Germany. However, his escape story began much earlier; when he was just three months old, his family fled from Afghanistan to Iran with him.
While Mahdi cannot remember the first escape, the second was much more memorable for him. One night, when his father told him to leave early the next morning, everything happened very quickly. On the way, he imagined what Europe would look like. By the time he reached Greece, he was certain that a better future awaited him there, and the kindness of the local people gave him hope for his new life in Germany.
In the meantime, Mahdi is working in Berlin towards his high school diploma and is reflecting on why he felt compelled to apologize for simply breathing air as an Afghan refugee in Iran.
In 2018, Mahdi Hashemi was awarded the Else Lasker-Schüler Poetry Prize.
