There are more than 5 million Afghan refugees, mostly living in Pakistan and Iran. Some escape these countries and leave for Europe by putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers. Almost 70,000 refugees are believed to be in the UK, and a majority of which reside in London.

Some arrive safely, some get caught by authorities, and some die along the way. This treacherous journey involves passing through most of Europe where they travel by land – hiding in trucks and trains, and by sea –smuggled in tankers. The most popular route is from Pakistan to Iran to Tajikstan to Turkey to Russia to Germany to Calais in France and to Dover in the United Kingdom.

I met four such men who had taken this very route and now live in London. Hakim, Ali, Sohrab and Bashir work in the market outside the Elephant and Castle shopping centre selling call cards, accessories, garments and electronic gadgets.

This market has become their personal oasis. They work almost 50 metres from each other manning their stalls. Everyday they set up and dismantle their stalls. The monotony of this job doesn’t seem to get past them. There is no permanence to what they do and with a salary of 30-40 pounds per day for a 12-hour shift they earn less than the minimum wage.

This market could easily be a metaphor for what life is like for them. Impermanent, no sense of belonging or stability, no family yet they have come all the way here to a foreign country.

But they all know, that this is their home for now and forever. They know that they cannot go back. They have tried to recreate a little bit of home here and the peace that they get keeps them here.

This project is ongoing and is dedicated to their families in Afghanistan. It tries to explore the relationship between fiction and reality. These are stories of a men with a strong memory of their past events vis-à-vis their life now, and how they make peace with what they left and what they have. This fragile gap between life in Afghanistan and London is not one that can be easily restored. But such is life … and sometimes and life is elsewhere.