By age 7, Ahmed Abdalrazag knew the smell of death. He knew to run to the basement at the sound of missiles whirring overhead.
Speaking at a temporary exhibit on Boston’s Long Wharf on Saturday, the Doctors Without Borders physician said he also knew, sadly, that he wasn’t alone.
After fleeing Iraq with his family in 1998, Abdalrazag lived in refugee camps in Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, where they spent three years in a refugee camp before winning approval by the United Nations to seek asylum in the United States.
More than 3,000 people from the Middle East and North Africa have died this year attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to the relative safety of European shores, said Abdalrazag, now 33.
“Each one leaves behind loved ones, ambitions, and dreams,’’ he said. “I tell my story on behalf of them, because I am one of the lucky ones.’’
The exhibit, called “Forced from Home,’’ seeks to re-create a refugee camp such as the one Abdalrazag inhabited in Tunisia, said John Lawrence, president of the organization that sponsored the exhibit. It aims to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis roiling the Middle East, Africa, and South America, Lawrence said.
Aid workers from Médecins Sans Frontières, the French organization known by its American name, Doctors Without Borders, guide attendees through the interactive exhibit, which runs through Oct. 23.
At the start, visitors are given an identification card with one of five countries in political crisis: Afghanistan, Burundi, Honduras, Syria, and South Sudan. They are told to imagine a life without physical or emotional security, and then to choose plastic cards that represent items they will carry — baby bottles, guitars, pill bottles, and passports — and eventually shed as the expenses of their journey accrue.
One stop features an inflatable raft built for eight people. Visitors on Saturday sat in the raft overlooking Boston Harbor while aid worker Mélanie Barthezeme, 33, of Toulouse, France, recounted a tale from a colleague. Barthezeme said that, while on mission in the Mediterranean, they discovered one such boat adrift filled not with refugees, but their corpses.
“People have been pushed away because of violence, because they simply cannot stay at home,’’ Barthezeme said.
At another stop, visitors see the living quarters of refugees from camps in places like Mogadishu, Somalia, and Domiz, Iraq, where thousands of displaced Syrians await the end of a brutal civil war. Homespun mats line the floor of a two-family tent sent from Domiz. The 10-by-10-foot space would have been used by parents and their kids as they slept, played, ate, and cooked.
“You very quickly stop viewing them as statistics,’’ Lawrence said.
Amanda Burke can be reached at amanda.burke@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @charlie_acb.
