BERLIN (AP) – It’s a change of heart that Iraqi immigrant Sekvan Agho never saw coming.
Agho was among the wave of nearly 1.1 million asylum-seekers who came to Germany last year seeking a new life, making his way from his native Iraq to Turkey, then across the seas to Greece before tramping north and eventually making it to Berlin. The thousand-mile journey is grueling – borders to cross, smugglers to pay, trains and buses to scramble for a seat on and miles in-between to trudge on foot in all sorts of weather.
Yet only three months later, the 26-year-old stood in line Wednesday at the German capital’s Tegel Airport, his newly-issued, yellow one-time-use Iraqi passport in hand, getting ready to head home to Kurdistan on an Iraqi Airlines flight.
Agho said Germans treated him well, but the country just wasn’t what he expected. The daily drudgery and boredom as he waited for his asylum request to be processed also didn’t help.
“I’m not saying that Germany is not nice. It is nice, but it’s for European people,” he told The Associated Press before getting on board his flight.