Under the blistering morning sun and a cloud of border dust, Suleiman, 43, stepped off a crowded transport truck and into a country he left 15 years ago.
Once a shopkeeper in Faryab Province, he had sold his house and possessions to pursue a better life in Iran. Now, like thousands of others, he has returned with nothing.
“If I had stayed, maybe I’d be one of the successful ones at home,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead near the Islam Qala border crossing in western Afghanistan. “I sold everything for this journey. I paid almost 290,000 Afghanis to get to Iran. And now they’ve sent us back — no money, no home, no documents.”
