Eggplant.place

17d

The forced displacement of people is at an all-time high.

🏳️ Over 120 million people have fled due to war, persecution, or disaster

🏳️ 73% come from 5 countries: Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Sudan.

The EU supports host communities, where refugees contribute by bringing their skills, starting businesses, and enriching cultural life.

Hope begins with support and solidarity.

Because everyone deserves a place to call home.

#WorldRefugeeDay

A caregiver smiling warmly while holding hands with an elderly woman in a wheelchair inside a cozy, cluttered room. A television is on in the background, and the words "Building belonging..." appear at the top. An EU flag is shown in the bottom right corner.

Irena is 57 years old and came to Poland from Kherson after the rockets started falling on the city. "Who would want to leave their home? Nobody. Today everything is destroyed there, I have nothing to go back to," she says.

In Ukraine, Irena was a nurse for 25 years and took care of children with cancer. She is currently completing her nursing studies so that her skills and vast experience can also be recognized in Poland. Since November 2023, she has been working in a nursing home for older people in Gdansk. "I have 12-hour shifts. It's hard and demanding work. It requires passion, but fortunately I will always have it," says Irena.

ALT

A smiling woman in a black apron holds a tray of wrapped sandwiches in a busy, vibrant food market or deli. Behind her, people are preparing food and socializing. The text "...together." is written across the image, with an EU flag in the bottom right corner.

Shaimaa, a refugee from Iraq, prepares falafel as well as other Arabic meals in her restaurant "Ustura" during the opening day in Thessaloniki.

Shaimaa's journey from Iraq in 2018 was fraught with peril, as she made the trip alone with her three children in search of safety. Today, thanks to the support of UNHCR'S BRC Livelihoods programme, implemented by NGO SolidarityNow, Shaimaa has successfully opened her own restaurant in Thessaloniki, where she serves freshly cooked Arabic meals.

The programme played a crucial role in her success, assisting her in developing a business plan, seeking microfinance resources, securing a loan, and finding the perfect location for the restaurant. She named the restaurant "Ustura", which means "myth" in Arabic.

"The entire journey, from the moment I fled Iraq with my children because we were in danger, through our safe arrival in Greece, how my children grew up, and how I managed to open this restaurant - it's all like a myth", Shaimaa says.

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17d

I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea,
because my house is besieged by murderers
And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed and swept,
Spilling salt angry tears on the salt waves…

—Edwin Muir, “The refugees born for a land unknown”
published in Collected Poems, 1921–1958 (Faber, 1960)

20 June is World Refugee Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #refugees #WorldRefugeeDay #asylum #humanrights

Edwin Muir
‘The refugees born for a land unknown’

The refugees born for a land unknown
We have dismissed their wrongs, now dull and old,
And little judgment days lost in the dark.

‘I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea,
Because my house is besieged by murderers
And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed and swept,
Spilling salt angry tears on the salt waves,
My life waste water drawn down through a hole,
Yet lived. And now with alien eyes I see
The flowering trees on the unreal hills,
And in an English garden all afternoon
I watch the bees among the lavender.
Bees are at home, and think they have their place,
And I outside.
Footsteps on the stairs, two heavy, two light,
The door opens. Since then I remember nothing,
But this room in a place where no doors open.
I think the world died many years ago.’

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17d

Use no names. Roads
have been whited out,
redacted. Hone your oldest sense…

—Pippa Little, “For Refuge”
published in AIBLINS: New Scottish Political Poetry (Luath Press, 2016)

20 June is World Refugee Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/refuge/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldRefugeeDay #refugees #humanrights

For Refuge
Pippa Little

Use no names. Roads
have been whited out,
redacted. Hone your oldest sense.
Learn the wind,
memorise where it goes
bearing your odours. The truck-stops
are roofless churches.
Comma-birds on power lines
swollen by rain
fall away.
Comfort yourself,
there will be stars in the dark
travelling towards you,
smaller and smaller.
Trust the earth
with your bandaged feet,
the pockets sewn shut by your mother.
Carry only such things
as snowflakes, eyelashes,
for the future may not make you out.

ALT

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17d

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers…

—Marjorie Lotfi, “Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)”
published in THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK (Bloodaxe Books, 2023)

20 June is World Refugee Day

Photo: REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/idUSRTR40EE6/undefined

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #refugees #WorldRefugeeDay #humanrights #Gaza

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

A Palestinian girl carries a child across rubble from a building that police said was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, in the Burij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, August 1, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly.

Marjorie Lotfi's poem describes the picture in detail:

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

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17d

Frae the broo o’ a brae I saw them gang,
I saw them hirple to a lanesome shore.
I saw them pass abune the ferly seals
Withouten keel and sail and oar…

—William Jeffrey, “The Refugees”
Published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

20 June is World Refugee Day

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #WorldRefugeeDay #refugees #humanrights