Mustafa came as a teenager, but still faces deportation

HE started by hiding under a blanket in a lorry and hopes one day to wield a dentist’s drill. It’s not the screenplay of Marathon Man, but the adventurous life of Mustafa, an Afghan who has become a Dubliner.

The 22-year-old came to Ireland as an unaccompanied minor seeking asylum when he was 15, having left Afghanistan in a hurry, along with his family.

Somewhere along the way — he thinks it was either in Iran or Turkey — his family went in one direction, and he kept going in the other. Travelling in a succession of lorries over three months or more, he arrived at an unknown destination: Dublin.