Kein Freund ausser den Bergen

The Angry Voice of the Interned – Süddeutsche Zeitung The Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was interned as a stateless refugee in early 2013 on the notorious deportation island Manus Island in a detention center operated by Australia. Soon, he became a target of repression and humiliation as the spokesperson for the boat people held under unimaginable conditions. He has written the moving story of his escape and his over six-year-long detention as a series of text messages to his translator. Sentence by sentence. On a mobile phone. Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient songs, the land of mountains [...]. People ran into the mountains to escape the warplanes, and they found asylum in their walnut forests [...]. Do Kurds have any other friends besides the mountains?.