For more than a year, I’ve been coming to sit in the same featureless, white, air-conditioned room. Cheap, stiff, bulky armchairs are positioned against the walls. In the centre is a long glass coffee table covered in refreshments – everything from bottled water to those fruit juices that contain enough sugar to dissolve your teeth. The room is in a Syrian detention camp. And it’s where I meet Shamima Begum for the ten-part BBC investigative podcast and feature documentary, The Shamima Begum Story.
