“There are not many customers today. It’s cold and terribly windy. Everyone has hidden themselves away and is waiting with their haircuts for warmer days,” says Ramin, whom everyone in the camp calls Mr Barber.

Mr Barber has set up his shop in one of the containers. He has covered the walls with thermal foil blankets. He bought razors, hair dyes, shampoos and conditioners with his last savings. He had been working in Afghanistan since he was a child. When he arrived in Greece on a boat with his wife and a few-year-old daughter, his biggest problem was that he couldn’t work and take good care of them.

Eventually, he took matters into his own hands. He got to grips with his new reality and found his place in it. He opened a barbershop, because the camp changes nothing. Here, too, everyone wants to be themselves. To look the part. To feel dignified.

“My application for asylum has already gone in the bin twice. On the third attempt, we lacked funds and a willing lawyer to take on the case,” says Ramin.

We promise nothing, but we will try to help him. We will come tomorrow.

The next morning we are at his place with the address and phone number of a lawyer who has agreed to help. Ramin had tears in his eyes. He was getting nowhere going from one organisation to the next. He hoped they would help. In the end, he gave up. He is grateful. But ‘thank you’ is not enough for him. He asks us to wait. After a while he returns with warm, perfectly seasoned bread. It’s the least he can do to return the favour.

We do not know what Ramin’s fate will be. Worst of all, he himself doesn’t know. We are keeping our fingers crossed. But seeing the determination with which people here are able to care for a dignified future for their loved ones, we are sure he will succeed.