to Portugal a year ago. The 21-year-old now lives in Lisbon’s northern suburbs with his mother, Fatima, and two sisters, Rana and Reem, who also work at Mezze. Rafat’s father, who ran a traditional restaurant in Damascus, died in the civil war that has killed more than 330,000 people since 2011.

‘Portuguese are very tolerant’
“All I knew about Portugal was the footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani. I thought it was a rather poor country. My priority was Germany,” Rafat, who did not want to give his last name, told AFP. But he said he is “very happy” to have finished his journey in Portugal, where he hopes to be joined by his older brother, who lives in Turkey with his wife and their small boy.
“We feel good here. ThePortuguese are very tolerant and we have never had a problem. My sisters can go to the beach wearing a hijab without feeling judged,” Rafat said, in hesitant but already very good Portuguese. Many European countries have been resistant to taking in more refugees in the wake of the migrant crisis that hit the continent in 2015, but Portugal has gone in the opposition direction.

The European Commission asked Portugal to take in 5,000 migrants-the majority from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan-under a plan to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from overstretched Greece and Italy to most of the other 28 EU member states. While the quotas have proved unpopular with some former communist eastern European governments, the Portuguese government offered in February last year to double its quota to 10,000.

But