Jamal and Enayatullah are cousins, young Afghanis who live in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, right on top of the Afghan border. Jamal, an orphan, scrapes a living in a brick factory and lives in the sprawling Shamshatoo refugee camp. His cousin works in his family’s market stall. To give him the opportunity of a better life, it is decided that Enayatullah will be sent to England. Jamal persuades the family that he should be sent along too. The pair join the ranks of the 1 million refugees per year who place their lives in the hands of people smugglers.

Their journey is over land: longer, more tedious and more hazardous than travelling by air, but, crucially, much cheaper. Their route takes them from Pakistan, over the border into Iran, across to Tehran and up into the mountainous Kurdish region of the country, then through to Turkey. It's a well-trodden smuggler's route, originally known as part of the silk road, where car parts, petrol, opium and tobacco are trafficked alongside human cargo.