By Scott Simmie World Affairs

It was the first time Hassen had flown.

People had told him it would be scary, hurtling down the runway in a massive passenger jet, leaving behind the certainty of ground.

“Voom!” he says, gesturing the takeoff with his hand. “Like when you drive African streets, they are more scary. I’m serious!” He laughs with a broad, engaging smile.

The man he was travelling with was both a stranger and a smuggler. Hassen, a 17-year-old from Ethiopia, was the contraband. Both carried false passports.

The young man did not know where he was going, nor what would be waiting at the other end. He knew only that he was in peril in his home city of Addis Ababa, and that his family thought his future depended on leaving.

There was a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam, then a second flight. This one — and Hassen did not know this even as he took his seat on the KLM jet — would be bound for Pearson International Airport.

Before final approach, flight attendants handed out customs declaration forms with “Canada” printed on them. The pilot got on the intercom, said the plane was getting close to Toronto. Toronto. So that’s where I am going. It was around noon on Saturday, June 21, 2014, when the aircraft touched down.

Hassen’s new life had begun.

Read more: Flight of their lives

Source: Toronto Star