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Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees Writing in Wales - online edition - Page II
Published by Hafan Books, Swansea, 2003 ISBN 0–9545147–0–X Editors: Eric Ngalle Charles, Tom Cheesman and Sylvie Hoffmann Online edition at www.hafan.org (October 2004)
All texts © the authors and editors. Not be used without permission from Hafan Books. For details of contributors and translators, see Page I. Page I - Page II - Page III - Page IV
Bird without Tree
A.K.
Orphan Bird flies in the sky Where to live
Poor Bird looks for somewhere His confused destination gives him the will To live
Wounded Bird needs the Tree where to live Somewhere
Every single bird tries hard to find the Highest Tree To live The Tree found between Mountain and Sea Somewhere Every single bird needs to be protected Somewhere
Orphan Bird flies in the sky Where to live
Poor Bird Crowded by grumblings of unfriendly moods In every place! In every sky! On every tree! Where is the Bird supposed to live?
Wounded Bird Oh! Innocent! Rest! Rest! Keep Hope! Somewhere!
Writing Refugee Other
Isabel Adonis
When I was a little girl in London during the 1950s, my parents knew a Jewish refugee called Nick Gordon. That wasn’t his ‘real’ name, the name of his family. He had changed it. He was from Hungary and he had an English wife called Sheila and a young son called Christopher. They were quite wealthy and I was often chosen from my sisters to stay with them in their flat in Holland Park. My parents were poor. In 1956 my father got his first ‘important’ job teaching in the Sudan and before we left for Africa, Nick and Sheila took us all up the West End and bought us new clothes. I had a royal blue sailor dress with a large white collar and new white sandals with holes in the front in the shape of a flower. Those shoes remained special for a long while, even after they were far too small and the toes cut out for my growing feet. By changing his name Nick had become one of us and not one of them; he had an English wife and he had learnt to assimilate into London society by adopting an English identity. The friendship with my parents was almost certainly based on identification and sympathy – refugee poverty, foreignness, prejudice. My father had left his home in the Caribbean, and my mother her home in Wales. They too were strangers in town. Across the road from us in Oxford Road was a Dr Wistrich and he was a Polish Jew. I know that because I remember my mother saying so. She had a special way of saying ‘Jew’ like she was chewing it in her mouth as if she was savouring her hostility. I was a frequent visitor to Dr Wistrich as I was one of those children who were constantly ill with all manner of curious illnesses. We left Kilburn for Khartoum and I never heard about those ‘refugees’ again. My father was ‘going home’ to his ancestral origins, like the Jews ‘returning’ to Israel after generations of living ‘abroad’. But he didn’t seem to find the home he was looking for. Finally my parents split up. He went back to the Caribbean, and my mother took us girls to North Wales. When I was older, I went to live in Bethesda, where my mother was born. I suppose that in my turn, I was looking for an ancestral home. But from the start I didn’t feel right there; I felt ill all the time. I went ‘back’ to illness, my constant companion throughout my childhood. I struggled to make a life with my two sons and I tried to fit in to what I thought was my place but my place was no place. Illness had been a way of relating to my mother, an identity with her, but it didn’t work with the Welsh community; nothing did. I was always the outsider, the in-comer, exotic, to be pitied, tolerated, resented, feared – a relationship of no relation, the relationship of stranger. When I met my present partner, Bob, I could only just walk. I felt ready to die. Here, for the first time in my life, was someone who would listen to me. I could talk and be heard. I started to feel a sense of my own self and I knew that this was what I wanted more than anything else. I was alive: I could live and be part of life. I knew he was my chance to escape a situation I couldn’t survive. My family didn’t hesitate to show their dislike of him. They did their very best to undermine our relationship. If the Welsh community was isolated, besieged and defensive, my own family was ten times more so. But I began in a faltering way to speak for myself, frightened and besieged by feelings I would rather not have had. Through talking I slowly discovered myself. It was shocking how much of a burden I was carrying and how it was affecting me physically. If I could have foreseen the persecution I was to endure from my family and the community, I don’t know if I would have taken that road. But I had sensed a different life and there was no choice but to continue to reclaim my life. Talking to Bob had made me self-aware: a black woman living in a white town. As time went on I felt more and more black. I became what the community insisted – but when I asserted myself as a black woman, I met increased hostility. I found refuge in writing and it was writing that saved my life even though I had no confidence at all. In one notebook I kept my ‘white’ writing, flat linear prose, and in another my unacceptable black writing, my true feelings. It was a long time before I could see that the two types of writing needed to be together. Eventually I gathered up all my notes and wrote a book called Black Girl, after Richard Wright’s Black Boy. It was as honest a book as I knew how to write then. Everybody said my writing was good but no one would publish it. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough; maybe my own ambivalence denied its publication. I still feel frightened; threats from family members still sit on my shoulders. In my imagination Bethesda had always been a healing place; it had a religious significance. I wanted to stand my ground but there was nothing I could do. When my mother died the umbilical cord was broken, and just as I’d left my family I had to leave the town. The day I left Bethesda it was raining and I was crying with relief. I left Bob to load the van and I cleared out of town. Bethesda was my home but I could not live there. Today I miss the few people who were always friendly, I miss the noise of the river in flood, I miss the huge trees in the woods and I miss the mountains like huge cakes with icing clouds. I miss the special tree on the bridge by the river. I don’t want to return. In Llandudno we are all visitors. Issues of identity are less obvious. I’m starting to reclaim my body as I cease to be public property. For years I had felt so marginalised and alienated from myself in the face of opposition that I couldn’t even say “I”. I literally couldn’t own my own thoughts or my body. I write to find a place to be, to speak my own words if only to myself. Writing is my refuge, a place to run to from a world where I often feel alienated and isolated. In The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Langston Hughes talks about the necessity of writing from your race, writing from your culture. Most times I feel as though I’m in a culture of one, that I have no identity, no place, neither West Indian nor Welsh. I write without a place and that is what makes what I say so difficult for others to understand. There’s an uncertainty and a lack of safety about the world that I live in; a not knowing over a knowing. My critics say I should give up writing about myself, give up race, and write about somebody else, real or imagined. My writing, they say, is too personal and profound and my task as a writer is to entertain and please the reader. But I can no longer do what other people want, or think the way they want me to think. In fact the more they balk at my writing the more determined I am to define myself and my relation to the community. It’s important to me and I think it’s important to others. Slowly I am finding a voice and becoming undivided, individual. It’s not a voice that asserts but one that stands on no ground and has nothing to defend. People who live on the ‘edge’, the ‘margins’, appear to threaten the status quo. New ways of looking and defining are required. The mixed race person is in a unique position to question and challenge the notion of identity and race. The term ‘cultural diversity’ seeks to embrace difference and in its turn creates a new racial category. For years I carried the dead weight of culture until I realised that my job was to let it all go. What is new and creative must always nourish society from the outside, and writing from personal experience is a way to challenge this kind of ‘racialised’ thinking. In the beginning of this piece I made a claim to know some refugees. I was attempting to find a way in. The claiming of sameness is what we do. People often say to me, “I had a coloured friend once” or “I had a coloured girlfriend”, as if voicing one’s racial credentials makes one immune from racism. They want me to confirm the identification they have made by speaking as, or speaking for, ethnic minorities, or black women, or whatever. This would give my voice some authority. Without this authority of identity, it is very hard to listen, because one finds one is listening to oneself. To have no identity is to be truly alone, truly individual; perhaps even the identity of ‘outsider’, of persecuted minority, is easier to live with than this.
Two Stories
Andy (8)
The Dragon in the Castle
Once upon a time there was a dragon and he was hungry for food and he didn’t have anything. He flew out on the sky and he found a castle and he found some soldiers. He ate all the soldiers in the castle. Then he found some real food and it was chicken, bread and cheese and then he flew back to his house.
The Soldiers Killing the Good People
One hot day the king wanted to build his face with rocks and he didn’t have anybody to build it. The soldiers said to the king: We will go and look for some people to build it for you. The soldiers found some good people and they started to build the king’s face. The soldiers killed anybody who wasn’t working. They saw a man resting on the ground and the soldiers killed him.
Portrait of a Refugee
Moira Andrew
His bold dark eyes challenging authority, one of his few phrases, “Can’t make me!”
His small lithe body imprisoned in the cold grey classroom for hours on end.
His long clever fingers knotting and unknotting lengths of frayed string in lesson time.
His quick lively mind picking up fragments of English to spit out like venom.
His strong brown hands lashing out at those who cross him, especially women teachers.
Just months ago earning an adult wage under the blistering sun of Somalia.
Imagine the problems, adjusting to a culture where ten-year-olds are children.
Black is …
Rebekah F. (10)
This is what they say: Black is evil, It is dark, The colour is dull.
This is what they say: In black there’s a spark, A spark that’s nasty.
These are words people say, And this makes them sad.
Is it out of hate? Or the colour of their skin? But white people here Have racism within.
from Britain Through My Eyes
Anahita Alikhani
As we see from the map, Britain is some islands off Europe, comprising four countries. It’s about one fifth of the size of Iran, with a similar population, but no problems with the water supply. It rains so frequently that one grows to hate the rainy, cloudy weather. The islands are green – once in a while, when the sun shines pityingly, an intense emerald green. But mostly it’s cold, wet, stingingly windy, gloomy and oppressive, and the green resembles grey or even black. Unlike in Iran, the weather is not to be trusted. People’s faces change according to the weather. In sunshine they smile, but if it’s cloudy they frown grimly and easily lose their tempers. They never stop complaining about the weather. However, contrary to what Iranians believe, the British are mostly straight-forward, loveable, kindly towards others, patient and polite, at least outwardly. Many experienced charity workers make life easier for us strangers. The way they devote their lives to others regardless of colour or race or religion was very strange to me, having been constantly told that westerners have no time for anyone else, no compassion, forgiveness, generosity or love. I have found a great deal of affection here. ( . . . ) Some young people in the street look very strange. If you look at them they tell you off or swear at you. If they don’t want attention, why make themselves look so odd, even frightful? For them this is what freedom means. They can’t believe that in my country, long hair or short sleeves means a night in a police cell, leaving in the morning with shorn hair, a haggard look, and most likely painful bruises, resulting from a beating. Many of them are highly educated, but uninterested in politics or history. They take their liberty for granted. Only we who have suffered in prison know how valuable it is. It’s just like water: it rains so much here, they don’t know the value of water: for us, it’s life itself. The tv news reports some murder or abduction every night. The difference in Iran is that there, the people getting killed are mostly reporters, writers or thinkers, murdered by the regime’s henchmen. ( . . . ) People love the arts and collecting artworks. Yet there seem to be no important works of this country’s art from ancient times. In the British Museum I could not find one single ancient British brick. Everything in it was brought over from the East in the nineteenth century by archaeologists, whole civilisations packed up in the basement. Perhaps they were right to steal works of art from countries like mine, which had real talent for creating treasures but whose later generations didn’t care about preserving their heritage, or took revenge on hated predecessors – like the famous Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban. If only this government and the Queen were as powerful as Queen Victoria and her governments, those statues would still be safe! And Blair would have been consoling the Queen, telling her that Iraq has wonderful ancient walls, statues and vases, as well as gold and diamonds! Now we must wait and see if the stolen treasures of Iraq’s looted museums turn up in Britain and America. The Queen symbolises British independence. She makes public appearances, pays no taxes, is very rich, lives in a glorious palace, and answers to no one. Sixty million people work to keep her family in luxury. Without the Queen coming to openings or ceremonies, tv would have no programmes, no tourists would come, Buckingham Palace would stand empty, and Britain would be dependent, God forbid! Since none of her tasks require any mental effort, it would be better to choose a Queen among the beauty queens, so beauty would come to be seen as a facet of independence, which would be all the pleasanter. ( . . . ) Unlike in Iran, not many people are homeless here. Even the animals are luckier than animals in my country. There are few stray animals, and no one throws stones at the pigeons or at cats and dogs. The only ‘homeless’ animals here are slugs – ‘snails without homes’, as we say. I feel sorry for them – nobody takes any notice of them, or asks why they lost their homes. I have never seen so many slugs in my life. They always appear after rain. Perhaps Mr X, who wants to become an Assembly Member and is unhappy because asylum seekers are lodged in furnished homes, should be thinking more instead about these poor homeless snails – after all, they get no support from the UN. But perhaps he doesn’t know what the UN is! The government here respects the people and their rights. In my country nobody has any rights, but here even asylum seekers do. I personally am very grateful to the government and the people here. One can be relaxed speaking to the police; one can even get to like policemen. Here people’s talents are recognised and cherished. In Iran they knock you down and force you to stay at home for most of your life. The privileges here are the gift of a free society, where it isn’t criminal to be critical.
A longer version of this text is available here .
Five Poems
Eric Ngalle Charles
My First Language
Oil and water Never blend – One stands up, One beneath.
“Like a gorilla And a monkey Claiming oneness,” – Look closer – “The monkey is monkey And the gorilla gorilla.”
That’s not me. In captivity I eat banana, In the wild savagery.
Contained, Leaving my roots, I was a goat. I had three kids. You – a lion – Had just one, Still devouring mine. I replenish my kind, You wait your turn.
I trespass, Being a protectorate, Not knowing So many distant borders – What’s the difference? Not deserving the treatment.
Then I skip, Learning to jump, Like doctor Jack Mapanje, The queue staring at me – I don’t have a face If that’s all I am, As if my mother abused drugs.
Feeling sorry for me With vouchers as in child play, Buying food from Tesco As the fat lady Questions my strangeness And witnesses point a finger. I thought I was a scarecrow. So be it.
Clarify intent, Teach truth in history, Then they may Not laugh at me.
Then you ask, What’s my first language? Ask my granny. Oh no, the generation’s gone, Still confused Which language they spoke. I thought I am Portuguese, Never owning a plantation Of my own, Then I thought I am German, Then I realised The English kicked The kingdom out.
They said I was French – Oh no, Marie! le bread!
Thanks to the queen – Queen Victoria that is – I was given the name Charles. Rumours say he was the great. Maybe I’m a Mormon Tracking a family tree.
Communism never thrived, Blaming the heat.
Here in Wales, Starting with “Bore da”, Still wondering – A first language? Studying English, An adopted tongue, Through life – What makes you think? I know my language, Existing passively, As others came And others left, Surprised why I speak in tongues.
Friends
The tale is simple. What if I had friends, And my friends had friends, What if I knew My friend’s friends, And my friend’s friend Knew my friends? The land would be full of peace And crops would grow where planted. What if my friend’s friend Did not like my friends, And my friends Did not like my friend’s friend? It would just be you and me. Then on tree tops Woodpeckers will sing As the elders sit for the day.
What if you ‘cleansed’ my friends, And I ‘cleansed’ your friends, And it was just the two of us? Let the rivers tell The untold sorrow, The grief of one such land – Then it will be you and me.
What if on your way down You meet my friends, On my way up I meet your friends, Like those in the days Of good old Samaritan, What will be the tale?
Questions
Why, oh why? Like a young girl Using a basket Fetching water for the village.
Stooges since time began, Like an old statue Forever facing west, Blown into a sea That never filled.
Why – ? Mountain high, Segmented by years, As old women stand and gaze, Telling tales of times They were in love.
Shaking heads, Wondering, Is she happy?
Happy she is – Can’t you tell By her wrinkles?
Au Revoir
It was the first And probably the last time She missed work Just to be with me She did not look in my eyes When I looked at her I realised she was crying But she did not want me To notice her tears I had been separated From my mother Quite a few times But there was something Strange about this separation Internally I was elated But seeing one’s mother cry Is never a good sight You begin to wonder How bad things really are When I saw my mother crying For a moment I thought maybe Staying at home Resigning myself to fate Was the best option But it would have been madness She hugged me still avoiding my gaze Then she took my hands into hers And slowly but steadily She gave each of my fingers A gentle bite Paying tribute to an Old village adage Knotting and sealing the fact that As I struggle to climb The thoughts and prayers of My relatives would be with me As mine would be with them I almost burst out in tears But I was embarking on a journey Of which I had no concept The least I could do was cry Instead the combination Of joy and sorrow Within me released itself Through a very faint smile My sister her husband And some friends Who knew my circumstances Stood by amazed By what they thought was Me being courageous Not knowing that whatever Courage I seemed to be showing Was born out of fear Fear of the unknown I was dying with Apprehension and nostalgia But most of all The fear of never being able To see mother again Where I was going Was up to God
Playing With Your White Hair
For Mr Ndanga
First lessons in life – Playing with your white hair, With fingers stroking Like boats breaking Through the tides Of the black sea, Once like the darkness That forever screened the sky.
Our conversation Of love and passion, So to speak, Like you, An Omega. You were a Protestant. What greater love expressed From father to son Than playing with your white hair.
With searching eyes Like those of a young chimp, My relative! – Though I was made of clay.
Behind you I stood, Tracking those lines Leading to your first white hair, A novice, Searching till you fell asleep. Begging to sleep, I tangled your hair, Forming plaits Like a barbed-wire fence, Traps For when you comb your hair.
A merman, From a long journey he came. Dried fish, Sea weeds, And a pair of shoes – Gifts for Christmas.
Never rode an “iron horse”.
With blissful heart You gave us food From your grape vine.
Memory awakens – Dearest Dad, Let me play With your white hair.
Mr Ndanga is the man who taught me most of the essential skills in life. When I was a young man my mother was involved in a ghastly motor accident – the remote cause of that accident has always been blamed on me. My sister had just been posted as headmistress at a nursery school in Mundemba in Ndian Division. Here she met Mr Ndanga. My sister’s baggage consisted of my little sister Queenta, my cousin Collins and myself. He loved my sister and brought us up as his own children even when they went on to have their own two kids, Evenye and Fonta. His love and attention to us remained the same. He taught me maths, how to write and how to be independent – all this he taught me while I searched for his white hairs. He told me stories of great men and even got me interested in the tragedy of King Lear and the demise of Tzar Nicholas II. To this day I call him father, and he still advises me on most things in life. My stay in Russia put our relationship on hold, and when I first came to Britain I relished the opportunity of writing a letter and chatting on the telephone with him. He is retired now and lives in Tiko, South West Province, married to my sister. He still can’t ride a bicycle – an “iron horse”. Queenta, Collins and I are all away from home. However, I travelled the furthest. – ENC
The Court
Abdalla A. Bashir-Khairi
There was no space, not even a marginal one, to make room for the sad feelings which burgeoned inside me at that time. Nor could I find an answer for any of the tragic questions which were burning inside my mind. All that I could find was a solemn accusation directed by myself against myself. I was driven by the tragedy to the verge of accusing my own mind. I suffered the heat of that experience to the extent of adopting the opposite extreme. Sweeping all of that aside, I began by splitting my mind into many compartments: for the judge, the accused, the jury, some honorable figures, and the audience. But this failed to lead me onto a path away from the cacophony of the dilemma. I narrated this to my friend. He said sagely: “This is the fate of all witnesses of the age.” Astonished, I asked him: “Then I am neither the judge, nor the accused?” As if he had expected my question, he answered: “Witnesses like you never hesitate to become both judge and accused.” I said to him sharply: “But I was defending the people.” At once he solemnly replied: “It is better for you to go back to the witness box – that one, in front of the audience, not facing the jury.” I must confess that, when I took refuge in my friend’s village, I wanted to spare myself the bitterness of lingering in that tragic, crime-smelling city. In doing so, I never expected so much congruity between my intuitions and what my friend later suggested to me. It was as if an invisible courier had conveyed to him what was taking place in my internal court of justice. There is no harm in going back to the original stage of events. There it would be easier for me to realise my deepest feelings. The heat of that tragic experience touched the core of my existence and matured my character. Then the ashes covered my once flourishing national hopes, my hopes that the spirit will bloom in my homeland, and the dawn of peace burst through the darkness. It was within this paradoxical context that my friend inundated me with pearls of wisdom, and goaded me back to the witness box. He said: “Once again I draw your attention to the fact that your diligence and eagerness to harmonise power and wisdom will lead you to assume more complex roles in the court of the age. Condemnation will be your share, and your star will rise – but under the gallows!” When I visited my friend, I was carrying nothing, save the notebook in which I wrote the details of my defense, the very same notebook which I carried to the court. I shouted, pointing my finger towards the chief judge, thus insulting the dignity of such a respected legal institution. I proclaimed, in a thundering voice, that the absence of all factual evidence from this foul-playing court turned it into a cesspit of crime. I lifted the documents I had at my disposal so that all could see them. It was obvious that my behaviour had nothing to do with legal professionalism. My friend could always see that faint veil which was blinding me to the truth. Thus he kept trying to push me back to the witness box, undressing me of the barrister’s heavy gown, and persuading me not to insert my name amongst the noisy clatter of their swords. “A platform in front of the people?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied confidently. I turned round to see it. I saw nothing, save that lonely desk on the floor of the hall. It was partitioning the audience from those ivory towers, within which the illustrious bald-headed judges sat behind a large semi-circular table. They sat sculpture-like, whispering to one another and cold-bloodedly looking down on everyone in the hall. That was provocative to me. So much so that I forgot even the most elementary principle of the profession, the very fabric of my role in representing the sophisticated standards of a respected standing judiciary. At this climax I shouted again, raising my finger and condemning the complete absence of fairness. My finger pointed this time towards the fleet of flesh occupying the middle position in the ivory tower. I had thus achieved the most grievous possible violation of the core of their alleged legality. “This man has lied to God, and the only verdict is death!” shouted a harsh, fanatical voice. The noisome stench of what they had contrived the night before. And this very court, representing a mere stage for the industry of tragedy, ran in accordance with that theatrical golden rule! The last thing I remember was that I posed a question about the meaning of the death announced by the judge, as follows: “Death? Do you mean exile beyond those barriers that block our eyes from seeing further?” I also remember, very vaguely, that my question was followed by a hubbub among the audience. This was then followed by a loud, regular tapping upon the semi-circular table behind which the judges sat. The word “Mahkama” followed, after which, silence prevailed. From within that silence, and all of a sudd | ||