Berlin

MOHAMED Al-Subeeh was a senior restorer at Syria's best-known mosaic museum, but as war swept deeper into his province, destroying artefacts and threatening his and his family's lives, he was forced to flee.

The 64-year-old from Idlib province never dreamt that he would ever work in a museum again, certainly not in Germany, to which he had fled in a 23-day journey that involved a rubber boat ride across the Mediterranean, endless bus and train rides and hours of trekking on foot.