Britain has a long history as a country of refuge for those fleeing conflict, poverty or terror, and this is something we should be proud of. The 1951 Refugee Convention guarantees everybody the right to apply for asylum. It has saved millions of lives. No country has ever withdrawn from it. And yet most of the refugee stories we read about in the media are negative. There is a growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and many politicians fuel these prejudices here in the UK and elsewhere. Refugees are falsely labelled ‘economic migrants’ or, worse, are accused of harbouring terrorists.
I work closely with refugees as a volunteer mentor with Write to Life, Freedom from Torture’s creative writing programme. The charity (formerly the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture) was founded by Helen Bamber in 1985, to provide refugees and asylum seekers with medical treatment, counselling and therapy and to document evidence of torture. I joined Write to Life in 2010 and was immediately struck by the resilience and humour of the group. The stories I hear are about the emotional scars of torture, the pain of leaving behind loved ones and the struggles of building a new life. Imagine the sheer loneliness of sitting in a room for days or weeks on end without anyone to talk to, with nothing you hold dear, nothing that is familiar. No friends, no family. You know you are lucky to be alive, but the solitude is crushing. This is the reality for many of the refugees I know. Some have forged new lives for themselves but the relentless struggle to assimilate, to integrate in a new, often alien, culture takes its toll. Some have been forced to leave their children behind, some are coping with bereavement, some have lost their entire family. Few are able to practise their original occupations – teachers, academics, writers, lawyers, journalists, accountants… Most refugees and asylum seekers are desperate to return home, as soon as the situation in their country has improved.
I first conceived of this project in January 2014, months before the current European refugee crisis. I had just received a copy of A Country Too Far (published by Penguin Australia), a superb collection of fiction, memoir, poetry and essays, co-edited by Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, which aimed to set the record straight about asylum seekers in Australia and protest their government’s treatment of them. Inspired, I sent out a flurry of emails, swiftly got some terrific writers on board and immediately set about trying to find a suitable publisher. My wonderful agent, Andrew Lownie, approached a number of mainstream publishers but drew a blank. I then spent a further year trying the smaller, independent presses with no success. Fortunately, in June 2015 the pioneering Unbound Books came on board and I agreed to crowdfund and pay the contributors’ fees myself.
A Country of Refuge is comprised of short fiction, poems, memoirs and essays. I wanted the writers to focus on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in an attempt to directly challenge the negative press and to cast a more positive light on a situation that, for many, is a living hell. The contributions have exceeded all my expectations: original, enlightening, knowledgeable and profound.
Sadly, there will always be people in need of a safe haven – it is a common plight and a timeless theme which I think Sebastian Barry perfectly captures in his short story that opens the anthology. ‘Fragment of a Journal, Author Unknown’ recalls Ireland’s famine years in the nineteenth century, when tens of thousands of starving people risked voyages across the Atlantic in hazardous ‘coffin ships’. Many disturbing parallels can be drawn between the exodus of the famine years and the current refugee crisis.
I include two heart-rending stories by Roma Tearne, one about Sri Lanka, the other about Iraq, which chillingly illustrate the circumstances that force people to flee their homeland. Marina Lewycka’s ‘A Hard-Luck Story’, narrated from the point of view of a cynical guard at a detention centre, explores the horrific reality for many refugees whose stories are not believed and who are then sent home. In ‘Selfie’ Stephen Kelman’s ambivalent narrator comes face to face with a migrant selling selfie sticks in Rome and wonders ‘if anybody loved this man and told him so before he left. It would seem such a long way to come without love.’ Courttia Newland’s evocative story, ‘The Road to Silvertown’, imagines a time when British citizens might one day find it necessary to flee to a country like Syria by foot and boat. Amanda Craig’s brilliant satire, ‘Metamorphosis 2’, describes a similar journey but from a very different perspective. There is also poignant fiction from Moris Farhi and Sue Gee, provocative tales by Tim Finch, A. L. Kennedy and Rose Tremain, and illuminating poems from Elaine Feinstein, Hubert Moore and Ruth Padel.
Some of the contributors come from refugee or immigrant backgrounds themselves. In his bitter-sweet memoir, ‘The Dog-Shaped Hole in the Garden’, Hassan Abdulrazzak looks back at his family’s departure from Iraq and their arrival in the UK. Because members of his family were associated with the Iraqi Communist Party, the main opposition to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party, they were forced into exile. They eventually found a safe haven here.
Writing about her family history, Katharine Quarmby draws parallels with today’s refugees and ponders what ‘becoming English’ really means. Nick Barlay, in his account of his parents’ flight from Hungary in 1956, observes that ‘those who flee bullets have only one thing on their minds: how to cross the first border they come to’.
I also invited reflections on the history of immigration. Alex Wheatle’s story, ‘Alfred and Vincent’, based on his father’s experiences, reminds us of a time when Britain actively sought migrant labour. Wheatle describes a period in the 1950s when Jamaican immigrants were welcomed to these shores to help rebuild after the Second World War. Hanif Kureishi’s ‘These Mysterious Strangers: The New Story of the Immigrant’ could just as well be about the paranoia surrounding refugees today as it is about perceptions of the immigrant as a ‘threatening other… a source of contagion and horror’.
The essays in this collection also provide a valuable political context and suggest what needs to change. Kate Clanchy’s incisive piece illuminates some of the horrors witnessed by children who grow up in a war zone and illustrates how, once safe, writing can help them process this trauma. More needs to be done to help vulnerable refugees and this is why Freedom from Torture’s therapeutic work is so important. History often repeats itself and Joan Smith draws interesting parallels between the plights of Anne Frank’s family and that of Aylan Kurdi. Both their fathers, Otto Frank and Abdullah Shenu (Kurdi), tried desperately and failed to find refuge in a safe country: ‘Aylan Kurdi did not need to die, any more than Anne Frank,’ she argues. ‘Seventy years apart, their stories are characterised by the same depressingly bureaucratic response to refugees fleeing fascist regimes. The closing of borders to refugees from Nazi Germany is mirrored in the twenty-first century by legal obstacles which force desperate people into the hands of criminal gangs.’
People fleeing persecution may have to use irregular means in order to escape and claim asylum in another country. The media is quick to expose what it or the Home Office perceives as ‘illegal’ or ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. In her eloquent essay, ‘A Time to Lie’, Noo Saro-Wiwa explores how traumatised refugees are sometimes forced to tell a half-truth or ‘innocent lies’ because they fear the truth will not be believed. She points out: ‘The asylum seeker born out of shoddy bureaucracy often struggles to prove not only their identity but their ill-treatment too. The policemen who dragged them into African prison cells don’t always fill out paperwork. Those same police might not maintain records of a gang rape reported to them by a distraught girl.’ As Saro-Wiwa warns: ‘Today’s paradises could become the purgatories of tomorrow. Which is why it’s best to treat others the way we would like them to treat us.’
William Boyd’s letters about Noo’s father, Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed in 1995 on the orders of Nigeria’s General Sani Abacha, underline the fact that it is often writers, journalists, opposition leaders – dissident voices – who are in the front line and the first to be silenced or forced into exile. The role of artists and writers in effecting change is a theme taken up by A. L. Kennedy in her rousing essay that concludes the anthology. Kennedy observes: ‘True art is not an indulgence, but a fundamental defence of humanity.’ She goes on to argue that writers, in particular, have a duty to respond to the media, propaganda and public opinion as ‘guardians of imagination, of wider thought, of culture’ because, she warns, ‘Imagination is, on all sides, apparently failing. And when it fails, it fails us all.’
Like Kennedy, I believe writers are uniquely placed to challenge pre-conceived ideas and stereotypes because of their understanding of the power of words and their ability to articulate truths. I want A Country of Refuge to demonstrate that ‘art is stronger than propaganda’, compassion a more vital force than distrust. It has been a long journey to get this anthology in the public domain and I hope it will make a positive contribution to the current debate and foster a kinder attitude towards our fellow humans who are fleeing violence, persecution, poverty or intolerance. I’ve found all the contributions immensely readable and hope you do too.
Lucy Popescu
January 2016
‘Look at that one.’
‘Where?’
‘The little one. There. He’s a cheeky one, isn’t he?’
‘Where?’
‘There. Right there. You don’t know how to spot them, you don’t.’
‘Oh, yeah… Fast, isn’t he?’
‘And cheeky.’
‘He’s into everything. Look at that.’
‘I was looking. You were the one that didn’t notice him.’
‘Is it a him?’
‘Of course. A girl wouldn’t be like that. Girls aren’t into everything. Girls are quiet. Should be.’
‘You can’t tell, though, can you? Not with that lot. I mean, they’re all like that. See? Running about and climbing and getting in everywhere… Whole swarm of them.’
‘They can’t be a swarm – that’s bees.’
‘He’d be in your windows and up on the roof and sitting on your chairs all at once… That’s a fact. I’ve read they’re very strong. Impulsive – that’s the word.’
‘He’s a boy. Boys are like that. Look at his little face. That’s a boy, that is. And there’s his little fingers.’
‘There’s his dirty little fingers.’
‘Well, he’s been playing, hasn’t he? Oh, and here’s Mum… And she’s not happy with him, you can tell. I can tell… A mother knows a mother, no matter what. You can be different as anything, but a mother knows when she sees a mother. And he’s caught on that she’s cross – he’s nervous. Wants to hold her hand. You always wanted to hold my hand when I was going to give you a row, remember? She’ll clout him, I bet.’
‘Well, she can’t give him a row, can she. They don’t exactly speak.’
‘They understand each other.’
‘I doubt it… Ah – you didn’t expect that. Wrong there, weren’t you?’
‘Giving him cuddles instead. Well, that’s sweet. He’s got round her. That’s how you used to get round me – give me the big brown eyes and put up your arms for a hug.’
‘Dunno what you mean.’
‘You still do that with me. Early training, that is. And you get spoiled. Do you carry on that way with Pauline?’
‘Why would Pauline want to give me a row?’
‘I should imagine she’d have lots of reasons. Why isn’t she here, anyway?’
‘Work.’
‘Didn’t want to be with the mother-in-law.’
‘She’s working, I said. They must be strong… Her lifting him like that. I mean he’s got to be a bit of a weight.’
‘She’ll be used to it. And they are strong, aren’t they? I mean, they’re stronger than us.’
‘Stronger than you.’
‘Cheeky boy.’
‘Sitting about and staring at the telly, eating chocolate brazils and mini pizzas… Pauline does spinning and free weights and all that – cardio vascular.’
‘Personal trainer now, are you? And I don’t want to look like a weightlifter. She’ll end up built like a bloke. She’s got mannish shoulders.’
‘She’s got stamina.’
‘Don’t be disgusting to your mother. And what would you want me to have stamina for – cleaning the kitchen?’
‘When do you clean that kitchen?’
‘Cheeky boy… I spoiled you.’
‘Yeah, I’m horrible… I’m a terrible son. Hey, do you think that one’s ill? Him under the blanket. I wonder where they get the blankets…’
‘What, him? Leastways, I think it’s a him. Can’t get much of an idea about him, can we… No, he’s sleeping. I think. And I suppose they feel the cold the way we do. Or a bit, anyway.’
‘Could be hiding – I’ve seen ’em do that. Maybe he’s hiding.’
‘We can see him.’
‘It’s not us he’s hiding from, is it?’
‘I’ve read they creep about. Or someone told me.’
‘We don’t know how they work, do we, I mean it stands to reason they’ve got ways of knowing each other and they’ll have fights with some and like others and there’s mums and kids…’
‘I think people send in blankets and stuff for them to have and do what they want with. I think.’
‘And they’ll fancy each other…’
‘Don’t talk about it like that.’
‘Like what? It’s just nature. It’s just mating. It’s animals making other little animals.’
‘I’ve told you, don’t be disgusting… His mum’s fond of him. She’s carried him all along and up there.’
‘So she’s a mum – she’s his mum. That’s all instincts, isn’t it – with them. It’s the same with anything. When I was six or seven, you remember that cat had kittens and I picked one of them up – just a kid and I didn’t know better – and the mother clawed all across the back of my hand.’
‘And she was a good cat the rest of the time.’
‘Not that day.’
‘Well, she seems fond of him, doesn’t she? His mum. We’re not the same – but you can tell. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Want her round your house, would you? Give her tea. Have her kiddie shitting on your floor.’
‘Babies mess themselves… Oh, my goodness – he’s big. He’s a big one.’
‘Where’d he come from?’
‘He’s got a turn of speed.’
‘You wouldn’t want him heading for you. He’d tear you in half.’
‘The size of him… You see pictures in magazines and places, but you don’t understand until you see them for yourself.’
‘You’d have a heart attack before he even got to you. Just thinking about it… I bet he’d break your neck with one hand, I bet you he could.’
‘He looked at me.’
‘No, not at you. Don’t be daft.’
‘Yes he did.’
‘He’s just looking at everything, it’s not at you. It’s just… you’re one of the things in the way of him searching about. He doesn’t understand.’
‘He looked at me.’
‘You’re all right – he can’t get to you. He can’t get near you.’
‘Sometimes they get out.’
‘There’s electric fences and all sorts of stuff. We’re safe here.’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t like how he looked at me. That was personal.’
‘It can’t be – he’s not a person – he can’t look like a person looks at you. It’s not like you stared into his big brown eyes and you could tell he was thinking. He’s not thinking – they don’t.’
‘Will you listen – he’s not thinking the way you think, but he’s thinking. I can tell.’
‘You’re scaring yourself. It’s not like he’s going to leap out and grab you, is it?’
‘Don’t say that. Don’t. I shall have nightmares.’
‘Well, that’s your choice.’
‘You wouldn’t like it if he got out and came for you. You wouldn’t like to see that coming across a room at you, would you? See – I’ll make you scared. Pauline would say running away from him was cardio vascular, would she? She’d like it, then, would she?’
‘Well, of course she wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t. Who would? It’s not going to happen, though, is it? That was a joke. I was joking.’
‘They can hear us.’
‘But they don’t know what we’re saying. Anyway, it was on the radio – you have to make yourself look as big as possible and talk as loud as you can and that keeps them back. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand. You have authority and they fear authority.’
‘No, you do that with bears. I read that, too – it was for bears.’
‘It would work on him.’
‘I don’t think so… He doesn’t seem to like his missus much. Or the kiddie.’
‘You don’t know those two are anything to do with him. Might be someone else’s. Might be anyone’s, I expect. I don’t suppose she’s sure…’
‘Shush, I don’t want to think about that… Ah, here we go – food. That’s got them running.’
‘Yeah, we came for a bit of a show and some action. And they’re hungry, aren’t they? It’s like they’re starving. All that grabbing.’
‘The big chap’s got his. In and away.’
‘Instinct – they’re all about instinct.’
‘No, no, there – he’s gone over and handed some of it to the missus and the little one. They’re getting some.’
‘Sharing’s instinct as well. It’s all instinct. You take care of your own. We take care of our own – they take care of their own.’
‘You don’t take care of me.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I? We take care. We have civilisation and toilets. We have families, proper families… Those ones are fighting.’
‘That’s not fighting – not the way they could fight.’
‘Yeah, more of a scuffle. They’re vicious, of course, if they get going. Really nasty. And they’ve all got a temper.’
‘He’s good with the kiddie, though… They both are. Breaking off bits so he can have them. Sweet. You’ve got to say they can be sweet.’
‘Everything’s sweet sometimes. Snakes probably are sweet sometimes. You’re either scared to death or you want to hug everything – that’s how you are…’
‘Snakes aren’t sweet.’
‘Yeah, they can be.’
‘Of course they’re not.’
‘To other snakes. How’d you think you get more snakes? Big snakes make baby snakes.’
‘She’s got you obsessed, that Pauline – all stamina and sex. You didn’t used to be like that. Talking about animals and instincts the whole time.’
‘You should think what you’re saying sometimes, you should.’
‘Or you could take your own advice.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘The dad’s picked him up – see? You can’t say that’s not sweet.’
‘I didn’t say.’
‘And he’s having tickles. I wouldn’t have believed that if you’d told me – a brute like him and he’s swinging the kid about and having tickles.’
‘Don’t say it.’
‘Just like us.’
‘Yeah, except for all the ways they’re completely different. Invite them round for dinner, would you? He’ll make that kid sick – it’s just eaten. You shouldn’t swing an infant when it’s just eaten.’
‘How would you know? Pauline won’t give you any kids, you know – she’s too fond of her figure… I could have kept my figure and then there’d be no you… Selfish… She’s selfish. And I’d rather have any of them in my house than your mate Paul. They’d smell better.’
‘Ha, that’s not wrong. But Paul likes you. Since his mum died, he likes you.’
‘But it’s peculiar. I don’t need him coming round – he says he’s mending things, but he’s not.’
‘The old boy under the blanket’s awake, then. That’s some face he’s got on him – been in the wars.’
‘I think they heal fast, though. I mean, we wouldn’t survive it and they just keep on. You can knock them about and they barely notice.’
‘They’re part of nature, like I was saying, that’s the thing. You don’t need stitches and antibiotics and that if you’re nature.’
‘He’s limping.’
‘Taking his blanket with him. The others might get it off him otherwise.’
‘Poor old sod – he’s after a bit of the food and there’s none left.’
‘You snooze, you lose.’
‘I didn’t teach you to be like that.’
‘Everyone taught me that. It’s a competitive world. That’s nature, too.’
‘They seem sad.’
‘What?’
‘All of them. When they just sit and stare out – their eyes. They seem sad.’
‘You’re reading things in again – they’re not sad.’
‘They seem sad.’
‘It’s just the way their faces are. They all look like that all the time.’
‘No, they seem sad. When they don’t look angry, they look sad.’
‘Well, that’s all they’ve got, isn’t it? They get angry and they look angry and then they go back to looking like themselves. They’re not sad. What are you going to do – send them a blanket?’
‘I’d send a blanket to the kiddie. Can we do that?’
‘Soft touch, you are. Have you seen enough, because I’m hungry. Will we go and have lunch?’
‘If you want. They still look sad, though.’
‘I’ve explained it to you – their faces are made that way – they’re not sad.’
I’ll get to my refugee story in a minute but first let’s jump to the happy ending. Well, a sort of happy ending.
The setting is my parents’ house in New Malden, Surrey. I was thirteen and incredibly happy to be once again living in a house with a big garden after many years of country hopping and staying in cramped accommodation. And what’s more, I was super excited about the prospect of getting a dog. My younger sister, who was just as excited, was a junior member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and she had suggested we get a dog through them. All we had to do was pass a routine check. When the day of the inspection arrived, I was the only one present at home to meet the lady from the RSPCA. She rang the bell and my chubby self opened the door for her and I instantly switched to ultra-polite mode, which I always did upon meeting English people. As an Iraqi kid recently arrived in Britain, I was desperate for them to have a good impression of me and my family.
The RSPCA lady had a slim figure and shoulder length black hair. She may have worn glasses or I might have put them on her face in later years as I recalled this episode. What I am sure about is that she carried a clipboard. I don’t recall her name but let’s call her Ann. She looked like an Ann, prim and serious (apologies to all the Anns reading this for the crude generalisation). I showed her around the house as she checked the various rooms and ticked little boxes on her form. As Ann explained about the various dogs they have and which breeds she would recommend, I nodded and smiled and answered her questions with chubby politeness. Everything was going swimmingly. I believe she had ticked all the boxes on her form by the time we had walked across the patio and reached the annexe room that leads to the back of our garage, a room disconnected from the rest of the house containing the boiler. I should have kept my mouth shut as the tour came to an end then escorted Ann to the front door and bid her goodbye. But instead I asked, to her instant horror, whether we could keep the dog in the boiler room.
To my mind this was a perfectly reasonable proposition. My knowledge about keeping dogs came primarily from Disney cartoons that I had watched in Baghdad, Cairo and Algiers. Didn’t Americans, who are sort of cousins of the English, keep dogs in smallish, brown, hut-like kennels in their gardens? Didn’t Mickey Mouse keep Pluto in such a place? To my thirteen-year-old mind, the boiler room, being spacious and very warm, seemed so much better than a kennel in the garden. But the horrified look on Ann’s face told me that I had put my foot in it.
‘A dog needs love, a dog must be treated like a member of the family, he has to live with you. How could you think that keeping it locked up in the boiler room is any way to treat a dog?’
‘Well, we don’t have to lock the room, we could leave the door open.’
Once again this seemed like sound reasoning, judging by cartoon kennels whose doors were non-existent, but it only made Ann more furious to think that I was seriously contemplating the idea. I tried to back-pedal by saying, ‘Look, it will be fine for the dog to live inside the house with us,’ and here I really should have deployed a full stop and ended the sentence. It could have saved the day.
‘But the thing is, my mum is worried about it leaving hair all over the new furniture so I just thought this might be a good solution.’
That was it for Ann. She scribbled furiously in her sheet, so furiously I thought the pen was going to pierce the plastic clipboard like a knife.
‘I’m recommending that you be denied the right to have a dog. Furthermore, I will make sure that your house remains on our blacklist for as long as possible.’ My memory from that point on is hazy so it might be an exaggeration to say ‘and with that she stormed out’, but then again, it might not.
I realised that day that it was going to be a long, hard struggle to learn all the rules of my new homeland.
My dream of owning a dog started back in Baghdad in the late 1970s. My parents and I lived in my grandfather’s house. Three storeys high with a 180 degree garden, it was the perfect playground for a young child. The sky was almost always blue and the roses fragrant like no other roses that I have encountered since. My father grew up with a smart dog that he loved called Cyro. Alas, the dog was poisoned but stories of his escapades made me want to own a dog and Dad was contemplating buying one for me.
In the Iraq of the late 1970s, life was extremely good for middle-class families like my own. Dad worked as a sociologist in a research centre and Mum as a paediatrician. The oil boom meant that salaries were high and the dinar was worth around two British pounds. My aunties would spend the summer visiting London to buy the latest fashions, which they found highly affordable. My parents used any excuse to throw lavish parties. The adults would celebrate my birthday by getting gloriously drunk and dancing till the small hours to the latest Boney M records. In the summertime we would sleep on the flat rooftop under a canopy of dazzlingly bright stars and I would pester Dad to name the various constellations.
A change took place that didn’t seem so significant at first. The old president stepped down and a man I had never heard of called Saddam Hussein took his place. At school they made us sing songs dedicated to him. At home, my parents were cautious to speak of him though at the time I was not aware of it. Later I learned that people were arrested and disappeared because children had let slip their parents’ low opinion of the new president at school. Soon after he assumed power, Saddam began to crack down on members of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) who were the main opposition to his Ba’ath Party. I didn’t know this at the time, but my family were associated with the ICP. Family members who were active in the party began to flee. When I would ask why this uncle was heading to Moscow or that auntie was heading to Prague, I would only get vague answers. Then one day, men with serious moustaches came knocking on our door. Would my father care to join them for a little chat? Mum’s face grew ashen as the hours passed slowly and Dad hadn’t returned. I knew something was wrong, but no one, not my mother, nor my grandmother, would tell me why Dad was suddenly taken away.
When he returned, Dad wouldn’t tell me who those men were or what they wanted and life seemed to go back to normal. As summer approached we went to the open-air cinema where I saw Lady and the Tramp and became lost in dreams of owning a spaghetti-eating dog. When I broached the subject with Dad, he seemed less enthusiastic about it than before. He was holding something back.
First grade was over and I was looking forward to what I thought would be another lazy, hot Baghdad summer where I would run around the house in my underwear, wielding the wooden sword that our local carpenter had made for me and scratch the inside of our horizontal freezer to scoop handfuls of ice with which to cool myself. And who knows maybe this would be the year when we would finally get a dog.
Then out of the blue my parents announced we were going abroad. Wait a minute, why is Dad selling his beloved red Mercedes? Does it cost that much to go on holiday? We took a cab to the airport and all the adults, Mum, Dad and Grandma, were visibly tense. I thought going on holiday was supposed to be fun. Their tension increased with every step: as we entered the airport; as we had our passports checked; as we got on the airplane. Finally when we took off, I heard them breathe a collective sigh of relief. My father kept pestering the stewardess for more and more whisky.
It was only when we arrived in Cairo and settled in my uncle’s flat that I began to understand what had happened. The men with the serious moustaches who came to our house were Ba’ath Party members. They wanted my dad to join their party or else. Dad knew that those who did not comply with their demands could end up at the dreaded Palace of the End where they would be summarily executed. This was the fate of many Communists and, though Dad was not a member of the ICP, our family’s affiliation with the party was enough to arouse the suspicions of the government. Dad had read enough about the rise of the Nazis to realise that a similar thing was happening in Iraq under Saddam. If he had capitulated and joined the Ba’athists, he would soon have to write reports on his friends and colleagues. It was a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So the only way out was to leave the country. Money had to be raised quickly through the sale of the car. The tension at the airport was due to my family not being sure whether we would be on a list of those barred from leaving.
At first, I wasn’t aware that we had become refugees. Our stay with my uncle felt like an extended holiday but Dad could not be a burden on his brother for long and there were no jobs to be had in Egypt. He was offered a university teaching position in Algeria and so, once again, we packed our bags and moved countries. Friends of my parents offered us their flat to stay in upon arrival. It was then that I began to feel the weight of what we had lost. I remember the gloom that engulfed my family on our first night in Algiers. None of us could sleep properly, each lost in thoughts of what we had left behind: the house, the car, the family outings, the parties, the garden, the fragrant roses, the canopy of stars. Maybe Saddam would die of a heart attack, I thought, and we could go back. How wrong I was.
The Algerian kids in the neighbourhood were alien to me as they spoke a mixture of French, Berber and twisted Arabic. I communicated with them in classical Arabic, which is the language taught at school that no one actually speaks. The scene was absurd, like coming across a group of children in Britain who can only play with each other by conversing in Shakespearean English. Later we moved to our own flat in a building that possessed all the charm of a Communist era Soviet block. The roads outside were never finished because every time the council tried to lay down gravel for tarring the road, the kids would steal the stones for fun. So wading in mud on the way to school became the norm. Worst of all, there was a scarcity of books in the country. In Baghdad, I had grown up with an abundance of books: illustrated Western classics, colourful comics and the works of Naguib Mahfouz. At night, I would dream of going back to our house in Baghdad and raiding the bookshelves for things to read, only to wake up realising that I was still in Algiers.
It was my Cairo uncle who finally decided that for the sake of my education and that of my sister, it would be best if we moved to Britain where he had studied in the 1950s. He bought the house in New Malden and I was filled with joy to have a garden again. True, I did not speak English, but I quickly noticed that the bookshops in Britain were filled to the brim and if only I could crack the language, all that knowledge would be mine. My diary entries slowly began to change from Arabic to English. As I adjusted to my new life, I realised that my idyllic Baghdad existence was never coming back. We had fallen out of Eden and it would be best to get used to life on earth.
* * *
In 2013, a lifetime later, I returned to Iraq, but this time to Erbil, one of the safe cities in the north, rather than to Baghdad, which was still dangerous and chaotic a decade after the US-led invasion. As I had never been to Erbil before, the trip did not feel like a homecoming.
Dhow Under the Sun
Having visited Syria before the war, I knew what the refugees I met were missing, particularly those who had lived in the capital Damascus with its ancient alleyways, picturesque cafés, impressive mosques and exquisite old houses, adorned with water fountains and hidden gardens. They too had fallen out of Eden. They too were having to live on earth. However, their earth was a much more inhospitable place than anything I had experienced.
Back in Britain, I felt a renewed sense of gratitude for my life but also a greater anger towards politicians and some strands of the media who play the fear card and press the buttons of the population to make them suspicious of all the refugees arriving on Europe’s shores. The neighbouring countries to Syria that have taken in the refugees are under tremendous strain to cope. Their economies and infrastructure are nowhere near as developed as ours. We cannot walk away from this catastrophe.
Our house in Baghdad is no longer there. It has been demolished and the garden dug up. In my first play, Baghdad Wedding, I recreated the house with words, complete with rooftop access to the stars. If I ever get the chance to return to Baghdad, it will be to a city that I won’t recognise. The Baghdad that my family and I knew lives now only in dreams, stories and the memories we share. The same will be true for many of those who have fled Syria.
Whenever I visit my parents’ house in New Malden, I feel grateful for the safety, opportunity and welcome that Britain offered us. The only thing still missing from the house is a dog. Perhaps the RSPCA ban has been lifted. Or maybe I have grown used to the dog-shaped hole in the garden.