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| One hundred million. Chained by separation. |
A first world problem. A first world complaint.
Last night I received a message asking for responses to "Sanctuary" by lunchtime today. That's tough for me. Usually a word will wander round my head for a week and then some kind of response might fall out on a page. Nevertheless thoughts arose as distractions in meditation and I wondered whether to write last night. And that's the point at which Windows decided to update, scuppering my plan. Isn't my privileged first world life difficult?! So many problems and hardships and the immense stress of computer updates. So many things to complain about.
This morning I've tried to write. Most of the thoughts from last night are gone now, lost in a maze of peculiar dreams. I had a spare hour to sit down with a keyboard and see what happened. What happened is mostly not to do with sanctuary at all. I honestly find my response this morning simplistic, almost banal. One photograph from a refugee camp, one conversation with an asylum seeker, one shared moment of humanity tells much more than my words.
I have no experience of being displaced. I have no experience of working with those who have been displaced. Like most people I don't claim to have any answers to what is a growing problem that will almost certainly continue to grow globally especially as climate chaos increases. I sincerely think the words of others have far more weight than anything I could write.
Nevertheless, these are my words. I'm posting them largely because it's an easy way to get them to the person who asked for them, definitely not because they carry any authority or any of the wisdom that comes from experience. I might have refused to write at all except I know that the project that this may be a very small part of has refugees, asylum seekers, displaced people at the centre and it's organised by a charity that places the voices and experiences of such people at the apex of importance when discussing the issues, educating, campaigning and doing everything else it does in working in this area.
It's a privilege to be asked, not a divine right for a western white woman who may not be comparatively rich in her own country but who is fabulously wealthy compared to much of the world's population. I've been watching a video series about life in South Sudan. My life is carefree compared to the lives of South Sudanese people. Windows may update. I may only have an hour to spare this morning - and I'm running late. But I don't have to walk miles through flood waters infested with venomous snakes just to find enough wood to sell that I can eat. And I don't have to keep doing it if bitten. Nobody is trying to drown me. I have no answers for those people either.
................
They told us of Archimedes,
Inspiration, naked in a bathtub.
They told us how water is displaced
By a crown of power or by a person.
They never told us how power
Could displace a person.
One person flees a home
One hundred million displaced.
We scattered petals on the sand
For those lost, defeated in the desert,
Threw petals while crossing the Tyne
For those drowning each day.
One hundred million scattered
One hundred million scared
One hundred million seeking
The simplicity of what I take for granted.
Today, in freedom and peace, I ride a
Metro train to Tynemouth and smile at art.
Shatila refugees brightened our coast.
Palestinians from a short-term camp for
short-term problems outlasting a generation,
Two generations and still their numbers grow.
Five million now packed tight in deprivation
Ten million more subsisting beyond the camps.
I am closer to the one percent than to the
Two percent who fled from floods, governments,
Guns, paranoia, persecutions, and all
the crimes our species finds so easy to commit.
At least for now.
Hate-crimes increase while writers, religions,
The blind in spirit encourage the hate and
Government ministers threaten to strip human rights
From those like me.
One day we too may have to flee.
I am not the one hundred million seeking sanctuary,
Not the rainbow homed, torture scarred, homosexual.
Not one of those displaced internally,
Fighting for lives unwelcomed on their own land.
I cannot, must not speak for them,
Impose my safety on theirs in a land of Hassockfield IRC,
Forced evictions, and threats of deportation,
Or think my white western woman idealism
Has any clue what it is to run from bullets and brutality.
Yet I want for myself what they want for themselves.
Safety, acceptance, a place to call home, community,
Eyes of compassion not suspicion
The open hand not the fist
Freedom to be, to create, to worship or not worship.
We seek space to breathe deeply, to find healing,
To have our dignity enshrined in society and law.
Sanctuary is no complicated thing
It’s essence an agreement to find our commonalities
To see the beauty in our differences and
To accept that stranger and friend can be the same word.
I am not the one hundred million.
While they may want to return home,
I am already here.
They face wars, civil and international.
Violence, imprisonment, death, disease.
They cannot return.
I need only turn a key in a door
To be free in centrally heated peace.
Revamp slavery act to halt the tide of migrants
Quicker deportations to halt the surge of Albanian migrants
Channel migrant crisis out of control
The words of the front pages today.
Migrant. Migrant. Migrant.
No beds. No fresh air. No toilet doors. No compassion.
The words of a front page yesterday.
But how many of us care? Truly care?
Is it health, hopelessness, or merely selfish complacency
That means that even I do sweet FA?
One hundred million displaced
And I’m just another pointless keyboard warrior.
At least for now.
One day I too may be forced to act, campaign, offer myself.
No government can force compassion.
Perhaps it will flow like the petal strewn Tyne
Out of the depths of my own despair at the next headline.
There will be more headlines.
The one hundred million increase every single day.
Every one, more important than words in a newspaper,
More dignified than any thought or phrase on this page.
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