If we knew how to carry weapons or wanted to carry weapons we would not have fled Syria. We want peace. We are sick of killing.

We fled a war, and now the European Union is making war against us, a psychological war. When we hear rumours that we’ll be let into Europe, we celebrate. These leaders give us new hope, then they extinguish it.

Why did you open the door to refugees?

Why did you welcome people?

If they had stopped it before, we would not have come. We would not have risked death, me and my children, and thousands of others, to make the crossing.

I’m 39 and Kurdish, from the city of Hasakah. I knew from watching the news that Hasakah was under threat from the Islamic State. Every day last spring, the government would shell the city’s outskirts. Sometimes a stray shell would land near us.