E&T Magazine: Refugees and technology - on a journey of self-discovery

Not only does technology allow refugees to build better futures for themselves and their families, it may also inspire them to contribute to the technological world in return.

What Abdullah Al Jaber most wanted to do was to work and forget. Back in Syria, he’d just qualified as a music teacher before he fled in 2015. “I used to play five instruments.”

Two of his uncles and two cousins were butchered during the war in the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. Al Jaber fled with the rest of his family to Turkey and he was smuggled to Greece in an overcrowded boat, to be rescued by the Greek coastguard in 2016. But the internal borders in Europe had closed the day he arrived in Athens, and his dreams of studying in Germany faded.

With thanks to Abdullah Al Jaber who was generous with his story, and subject of documentary Through Abdullah’s Eyes (YouTube)

Read the story on E&T's website