Muslim, Male, Multilingual, and Mobile — I am a recipe for disaster when it comes to crossing borders, and yet, I have crossed a lot of them.’

Meet Khaqan Sikandar, an international student from a third world country, a war survivor well acquainted with UN bureaucracy, fluent in Arabic, Spanish, and French. Khaqan had more doors open to him than he could have hoped for but as he went through them, he found that not many places spread their arms in invitation.

When Khaqan landed in a notorious Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, things took an explosive turn as Lebanon erupted into a full-scale war with Israel trapping him in its deadly jaws. What followed was an unexpected journey that took him around the world – the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia – with life-altering lessons in this journey into adulthood. Lessons that made him confront his identity and Muslim history.

This is the story of how he wanted to change the world, instead, the world changed him