Review
Comment
Migration
4 min read

Listen to their stories: five good reads by refugee writers

The very least we owe refugees is the courtesy of listening to their stories. As World Refugee Day approaches, Krish Kandiah calls us to go beyond the headlines and recommends five good reads.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two young brothers sit next to other, the younger looks to the elder.
Hamed Amiri, author of The Boy with Two Hearts, with his brother.

I heard them calling out to me as I walked down the street.  

“Hey Paki, why don’t you go black to your own country?!”  

I carried on walking. I was 14 years old, and I had heard it all before. In fact, I couldn’t remember a day when I didn’t face a similar verbal barrage at some point. It didn’t get any easier. It always hurt.  

When you are told something over and over again, you can start to believe it is true. But I wasn’t from Pakistan. None of my family members were from Pakistan. I had been born in the Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. I had a British passport – as did my parents.  

That group of people on the other side of the road were making judgments about me that were entirely wrong. I had to remind myself – like I did every day: they were the ones who were out of place, not me. They were the ridiculous ones, not me.  

I flashback to that moment sometimes as immigration persists as a top news story. Most days in the media I hear someone say today’s equivalent of “Hey Paki, why don’t you go back to your own country?!  The derision is there, the bigotry, the racism, the aim to exclude and to humiliate, the false assumptions and preconceptions.   

It’s time to hear the other side of the story. Who are the refugees that are coming here? Why are they coming? What has happened to them to make them stay in a country that is not always as welcoming as it should be? How does it feel to be an asylum-seeker or refugee in the UK right now? For refugees who have faced not just verbal abuse but physical assault, threats of torture and death the very least we owe them is the courtesy of listening to their stories. 

As we approach World Refugee Day on 20th June I would like to recommend you to spend some time listening not just to the polarising rhetoric but those about whom they are talking. The best way is to spend time in person with those who have been forced to flee their homes. The second-best way is to read books written by or about refugees. The following are some of the most powerful I have read recently:   

The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarly 

A book cover shows a the head and body of a person silhouetted against a dusty sky.

This beautifully written book will not only give you fresh insight into life in Afghanistan but will help you understand why there are unaccompanied asylum-seeking young Afghan boys in the UK. Gulwali explains his dangerous childhood in Afghanistan and why his family paid to have him taken out of the country. This book draws you into the world of a young boy proud of his heritage but fleeing a war zone that ripped his family apart. Gulwali’s journey takes him from the mountains of Afghanistan with his grandfather to a rollercoaster of a life in the UK and how he became a carrier of the Olympic torch and an outspoken advocate for refugee rights. 

The Boy with Two Hearts by Hamed Amiri 

A book cover collage shows two brothers above an outline of one of their heads against a desert background

I saw this gripping tale of Hamed and his family performed at the National Theatre in London. It begins with Hamed’s mother Fariba taking the brave decision to give a public speech against the injustices of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban issued an execution order against her which would likely have led to her death. The family sell their possessions and head out of Afghanistan to get anywhere they can to safety. There are added complications to their already challenging circumstances as Hussein, Hamed’s older brother needs urgent life-saving heart surgery. It’s a nail-biting story of love and loss told with grace as the family travel across seven countries to find sanctuary finally in Wales.

My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden 

A boat used for smuggling migrants is paraded in a protest. Death notices of dead migrants are attached to the side
A boat used for smuggling migrants is paraded in a Berlin protest. Dead migrants are commemorated by death notices attached to its side.

Sally Hayden did not plan to write a book about the world’s most dangerous migration route but when she received direct social media messages from refugees imprisoned in a Libyan detention centre her life was turned upside down. This gritty story has won numerous awards for outstanding journalism and opens up readers eyes to the desperate situation faced by asylum seekers in the Middle East and Europe. Sally writes with great precision and detail and offers a candid and challenging picture of life for those forced to flee from countries such as Sudan, Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan.  

You Don’t Know What War Is by Yeva Skalietska   

A book cover shows an illustration of a sunflower against a blue background.

Yeva Skalietska, aged 12, was sleeping soundly in her bed at her grandmother’s house when suddenly she was jolted awake by a noise that sounded like a car being crushed into scrap metal. She soon came to realise that a rocket attack was taking place in her home city of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her gripping tale of those first few weeks of the Russian invasion told from a child’s perspective somehow brings home the reality of war in a most chilling and urgent way. It made me consider how my children would have dealt with all she had to go through. 

No Place Like Home refugee book festival

If you would like to hear refugee authors such as the ones above telling their stories in person, the ‘No Place Like Home’ Literary Festival is taking place on World Refugee Day, 20th June, St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square. A full list of speakers, and tickets,  subject to availability, can be found in this link.

Article
Comment
Freedom of Belief
Politics
War & peace
5 min read

Iranians long for regime change, but weigh up the cost

Dreams are easier to utter than act upon

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Smoke rises from the site of a bomb amid a high wide view of a city at twlight
Tehran.

I received an unexpected response from an Iranian friend of mine this week after asking how he and others were feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis. 

My friend - like many, a staunch advocate of regime change in Iran - told me that despite his long-standing enmity against the Islamic Republic and its leaders, the conflict had if anything brought Iranians together against a new, common enemy. 

For while he and many others would love to live in an Iran that offered them greater freedoms, they are also fiercely proud of their country and, as he put it, will seek to defend it at all costs. 

Both this friend and other Iranians that I have spoken to since the bombs began to fall last Friday have highlighted how Iran’s “territorial integrity” has been breached by Israel, in violation of international law. 

And so while some might perceive an attack on a tyrannical regime and its nuclear arsenal to be an exception to this rule, it should hardly surprise us that those within the country affected may take a different view. 

Both the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the exiled crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi - whom many perceive to be the most realistic leader of any new revolution - have used their platforms to call on Iranians to seize this moment to rise up and reclaim their land. 

Yet, with bombs falling all around them and a weakened regime still known to be capable of brutally responding to any attempts to revolt, such dreams are easier to utter than to act upon. 

Meanwhile, as Tehranis are encouraged to flee their city and some have already seen homes, loved ones or livelihoods destroyed, it may well be that Iranians have other things on their minds at present than attempting to overthrow their oppressors. 

One very present concern for many Iranians at the moment will be the fate of loved ones who remain in prisons as the aerial bombardment continues. 

Tehran’s Evin Prison, for example, is on the edge of District 3, which residents were told they must evacuate on Monday ahead of another onslaught. 

But as the Australian-British former political prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert noted in an interview with Sky News, the prisoners in Evin had no option to flee and instead found themselves locked inside tiny cells, hearing the sound of bombs and rumours of what was taking place but without any real clarity. 

“Nobody's going to have a clue what's going on, and it's utterly terrifying to think that you're locked in a place, you can't flee, you hide, you can't take action to protect yourself, and you don't have access to information,” she said.  

There is not even any guarantee, Moore-Gilbert noted, that these prisoners will be being taken care of by the prison guards, who will no doubt have other things on their mind. 

“There are literally thousands, dozens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people in prison in Iran, most of them Iranian civilians,” she said. “The prison population inside that country is enormous. The conditions are dire in the best of days. Do they even have electricity? Do they have running water? What on earth is going on? My heart goes out to them.” 

Among the many prisoners in Evin are a handful of Christians, detained or serving sentences on charges related to their religious activities but framed as “actions against national security”. 

Like many Iranians, Christians, as a long-oppressed minority, have every right to hope for a change in the country and a future Iran that would better embody the prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah, believed to have found their fulfilment in Jesus, of “freedom for the captives” and “good news for the poor”. 

And yet Iranian Christians must also wrestle with the biblical command to “submit to the governing authorities” and to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. 

It is, then, perhaps no surprise that in recent years, as hopes of regime change have regularly come and gone, that Iran’s Christians have tended to focus their prayers instead on the increase of “God’s kingdom”, as many more Iranians have continued to find new hope in the Christian faith. 

Such hopes, in theological terms, are built on firmer foundations than any dreams for a change in the nature and essence of tyrannical regimes like the one currently still clinging onto power in Tehran. 

And whatever the future brings, when this current crisis is over, the Iranians who have found their ultimate source of hope and joy in Jesus Christ will know that they still have something to hold onto, whatever they may have lost: the promise of God’s presence with them today and a bright future for tomorrow. 

It may be that another revolution is what many Iranians crave, but there is also something revolutionary, I believe, about the prayer that Jesus taught, which leaves the ultimate course of our lives in the hands of God. 

“Your will be done,” Christians have prayed throughout the centuries; and Iranian Christians will continue to pray this whatever the future holds for them. 

It is perhaps little wonder, then, that it is the Gospel message that Iranian Christians have continued to preach, in spite of persecution, and regardless of whichever direction the whims of popular support have turned. 

One of the passages that an Iranian colleague of mine most frequently recites in our team meetings is the call for us to “act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”, and I was reminded of this as I noted the response of British-Iranian bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani to the current crisis. 

The bishop, the bookies’ favourite to be the next Archbishop, prayed simply for the Lord to “have mercy”. 

As a lover of The Lord of the Rings, I am also reminded of the line from Gandalf, when Frodo is claiming that Bilbo should have finished off Gollum when he had the chance: 

“Do not be too quick to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” 

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