I have roots in two worlds, but one heart that is beating right here

A story told by Hussein Al-Ibrahim in summer 2025

In winter 2015, at just 15 years of age, I found myself in Hamburg – stranded and alone. I had no family, no idea what to do next – but what I did have was hope. I had fled Syria and travelled via Greece – sometimes on foot, sometimes by train – eventually reaching Hamburg after four long months. I had not left Syria by choice – it was something my family had asked me to do. What an impossibly difficult decision that must have been for them – to force me, their child, to leave my home to have any chance at a future. They just wanted me to be safe – even if that meant leaving everyone behind. I set off on that journey because my family had faith in me.

My first experience of Germany was a refugee shelter where I lived with two or three hundred other young people from all over the world. The people, the languages, the cultures – everything was new and foreign to me, even the other refugees. I was right in the thick of things, just a boy, not yet an adult, left to fend for myself. I felt like a newborn, but with no parents or family to teach me the basics – how to speak, eat, find my way in the world, navigate bureaucracy, wash my clothes, behave properly. All the little things that came naturally to people living here – I had to learn them all from scratch.

Not here to give up!

But the biggest challenge was not the language or the German climate – though the weather in Hamburg really did take some getting used to at the start. What was hardest for me was the never-ending loneliness. With no family or anyone asking me how I was at the end of each day, I spent a lot of time in the company of my own thoughts. Yet, this was the very thing that made me strong. I had to take responsibility and think and behave like an adult at the tender age of 15. There were many times I wished I could just be a normal teenager.

Do you know what was it that got me through? It was the people I met. Friends who became family. Teachers and social workers who didn’t just explain things to me – but really listened. And my inner drive. I told myself over and over: I had not come all this way just to give up.

Since arriving in Germany, I have made my way, step by step. I got my basic and intermediate secondary school leaving certificates and began working toward  university entrance exams – though I didn’t manage to finish them because my family in Syria filled my every thought. I struggled to concentrate and worried constantly about the family I had left behind in a war zone – where they are still living today.

But I carried on. I trained as a public administration clerk in my municipality. The very place I had once arrived in as a refugee – the place where I had settled and now live.

Settled in yet?

Now, I work at the immigration office. This was a conscious career choice.  I wanted to help in a place where I had once found myself years before, desperate and despairing. I know how it is with all the forms to fill in, I know that feeling of dread of what might arrive in the post, how it feels when nobody understands you. And I wanted to make things better for the people waiting in that office today – people standing exactly where I was ten years ago.

My life has changed so much since then. I met my wife in Germany and we even have our own little family now. For me, our two-year-old daughter is living proof that it is not only possible to come to a new country, but you can also make a life and a new home there – with roots in two worlds, but one heart that is beating right here.

Of course, much has also changed with regard to the authorities over the past ten years. There are many more services, more structures in place – but there is also more bureaucracy and more frustration on both sides. I see it every day: refugees frequently feel invisible and civil servants are sometimes overstretched. And along the way, we often forget the most important thing of all – the people. Not the country of origin. Not the papers and the documents. Not the legal status.

What I would love is for us to start treating each other like human beings again – instead of case numbers. We all laugh, cry and have fears and worries – no matter where we come from, what we believe in or what we eat. We are all human. And we are all free, just as our thoughts are free.

And sometimes we fail to see the bigger picture: the person rather than the title, the university degree or the colour of their skin. My dream is for us to all live together in the same world – with respect, openness and a willingness to accept and reach out to one another. Even if that takes effort. Only then can people put down roots and feel at home – not just refugees but everyone.