IF YOU HAD to leave right now, what would you take with you? There’s no time to think. Danger is at the door; you can hear it coming, feel the fear and all you can do is pick up something – anything – to take with you on your journey. Not that you know where you’re going. You just need to go.
A young Syrian girl called Shahed was just five years old when she grabbed a much-loved doll with straw-blonde hair for comfort, clutching it as her family travelled all the way from war-torn Damascus to the Mediterranean in the hope of safety. My friend, the photographer Kiki Streitberger, met Shahed on the other side and photographed the doll as she catalogued the possessions that refugees had brought with them for an acclaimed and enlightening exhibition called ‘Travelling Light’. ‘She is my friend,’ Shakhed said of the doll. ‘My dad gave her to me. She sleeps in my bed every night.’
A middle-aged man called Ahmad showed Kiki a battered old cigarette lighter with the faded branding of a supermarket he once owned in Damascus: ‘It’s now broken, but I still want to keep it as a memory.’ A teenager called Alaa held onto an asthma inhaler and a copy of their school report: ‘I want to show
people that I’m not stupid. When I come
and ask for asylum this doesn’t mean I am
an idiot and I want people to know that.’ I
find that so touching and so smart and it
echoes with the experiences of young
people I have met in recent years on the
South Coast of England, where I live.
Grmalem ran from his home in Eritrea to
avoid the soldiers who were coming to
abduct him and force him into life as
a slave soldier in a kill-or-be-killed
war. ‘I had no time to pick up
anything,’ he told me. ‘All I had
was the leather belt I was wearing,
but it was precious because on the inside,
out of sight, I had written the phone
number of someone who might help me.’
He now studies fine art in Kent and
volunteers to help other refugees in his
spare time. You can watch him tell his story
in a film we made together to go with a
York Notes study course called Searching
For Home.
I also met Zahra, forced to leave her home
in Iran and who travelled seven thousand
miles to be here because she heard it was
safe, arriving one Christmas morning at
dawn on a rubber dinghy overladen
with men, women and children.
She had been terrified to get on
that boat at Calais, having seen it
taken out of a cardboard box and
blown up on the beach. The waves were
high. Imagine how desperate she had to be
to climb on, but with all her money gone
Zahra had no choice. She was barely more
than a child when she began her journey.
It sounds like something from an epic folk
tale in which the heroine has to travel great
distances, overcome huge obstacles, evade
dangers and show bravery and cunning
to reach a place of safety.
Young people like Zahra are demonised
by those who would turn them away or
even have them drown rather than come
here, but to spend time with her and
others is to have your prejudices and
preconceptions overturned. Refugees
bring their own mental and emotional
baggage, the scars of war and the horrors
they have escaped.
They also bring their hopes, dreams and
strengths, as human beings who are
precious, flawed and loved. They are not
aliens, whatever inflammatory language
our politicians use. They are us.
Zahra brought with her very little other
than a rucksack with a few spare clothes
and a phone. Oh, and her childhood
dreams of becoming a pilot, slipping the
bonds of earth and soaring in the high
blue sky. Incredibly, thanks to supporters
at Kent Refugee Action Network, Zahra
has been able to take flying lessons, the
first of which took her over the very beach
on which she had landed in that dinghy.
At that very moment, unaware of the
symbolism, the instructor let her take the
joystick and said: ‘You have control.’ The
boys around her still laugh at her
ambitions, but this is a woman who has
seen and overcome more challenges in 19
years than most adults face in a lifetime
and to her doubters she just says: ‘Watch
me fly.’
Cole Moreton is a journalist and
broadcaster, and tells Zahra’s story in
full at the end of his new book Everything
Is Extraordinary, a collection of true tales
about his encounters with remarkable
people. You can listen to some of these
stories on Cole’s podcast, ‘Can We Talk?’