How a bicycle can change a refugee’s life

We often talk about cycling as a lifestyle choice but for refugees bikes are a tool for moving around and a key that unlocks healthcare, support and employment, reports Sean Russell

A painting by Comfort Adeyemi, who says cycling transformed her life (Odunayo Comfort Adeyemi)

Wissam Haddad is tall and skinny and has an impish smile and bright eyes. I met him by the red brick railway arches in Deptford, south London, one cold, sunny morning in late November. He held out his hand for me to shake and introduced himself confidently and seemed excited to tell me his story and talk about cycling.

We walked along the arches as the occasional overground passed by overhead and he told me he lived in Hackney, and we swapped stories of the borough; about where to buy the best Turkish bread and which places were nice to cycle in. We looked into each of the little businesses and studios within the railway arches and eventually we found a workshop filled with bicycles, tools and tyres and a team of mechanics who welcomed us in from the cold and let us sit down at a table to talk.

Twenty-eight-year-old Haddad, who prefers I don’t use his real name, hadn’t ridden a bike until he arrived in the UK in January 2020. He felt it was unsafe to do so in Damascus, where he is from, and so never learned. And, while London has its problems when it comes to cycling, he was able to learn to ride here safely and in doing so found a certain type of liberation that other bike riders will know.