There are more than 80 million refugees in the world, the highest number in recorded history. By 2050, that number will be an estimated 1.2 billion as climate change makes parts of the globe uninhabitable.
I know these statistics are numbing. I know that for people to care they need stories. So let’s put you in this story.
Imagine you live in Ohio. Small skirmishes have recently broken out at the border of Ohio and Indiana. For the most part, any violence has been isolated and brief. You’re not really a political person, and you have faith that the government will squash the fighting soon.
But then you see your neighbour packing up her SUV. She knows people near the fighting, and they say things are different this time. The conversation shakes you, but surely she’s blowing things out of proportion. Sometimes on cloudy nights you can hear the bombs, but your home is where you feel safest. Any day now, you think, this thing will be over.
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Weeks go by. One afternoon, on your way home from work, a thick grey smoke makes it hard to see the road. Not only can you hear the bombs, you can see their flashes, too. Sirens are going off.
The Indiana army is moving in.
They have already bombed the airport and the interstates. Everyone is walking to Kentucky, hoping the camp set up for evacuees is still taking people in.
When you step inside your front door, you frantically take stock. What food should you pack? Do you need cash? Should you find the birth certificates?
You do some quick maths. Kentucky is 147 miles away. If you can keep everyone moving at three miles per hour, you might be able to do that in … 50 hours?
“What about the dog?” your youngest asks. You fill the bowl with all the dog food you have left. You fill two buckets with water. You leave the back door open. “The dog will be fine,” you tell him. The dog will be fine, you tell yourself.
Your partner is shouting, telling the kids to hurry up. To get gym shoes on. All three of them are under 10, but at least the youngest one can walk. But can he walk three miles an hour? Can you carry him and the sleeping bags at the same time?
Don’t panic.
Breathe.
You will keep them safe.
You take one more look around. Books. Plants. Your coffee maker. You know that you can’t take any of that, but you spend precious seconds trying to figure out how you can. You have a feeling that whatever you leave behind you will never see again.
As soon as you walk out the front door, you realize, heart thudding, that you took too long to leave. The military is here. The kids are in front of you, but when you look to your side, your partner is gone. Fat clouds of smoke are rising over your beautiful neighbourhood.
Don’t panic.
Don’t scream.
Breathe.
You said you’d meet up at the camp if you got separated. So you stick to the plan. The plan is all you have.
An hour later, the sun is setting, and the kids are looking tired. You see an open grassy area and drop your things as if they were an anchor. You wonder if this is really happening.
You text your partner, your mom, your sister. No response. You check the news. The army is ransacking towns and killing people indiscriminately. You check your bank accounts – your balance is $0. You google “bank account zero”. All bank accounts in Ohio have been seized by the government. You finally fall asleep.
You walk for days. Everything hurts. Finally, you pass a sign: “Kentucky welcomes you.”
A mile later, you see the line. Hundreds — thousands? — of people lining up to get in. You wait. And wait. And wait.
You reach the front of the line. You provide your ID and birth certificates. You are given two blankets and pointed toward the fenced-in camp. Kentucky doesn’t want you; it has its own problems. The military conflict is unpopular with voters. It’s an election year.
The next day, you are assigned a tent the size of the one your family used for camping trips. Every day you line up for food. Sometimes you are given bread, sometimes rice or lentils. Once a week, you’re handed a tin of tuna.
Three weeks in, your kids stop asking when they are going home. You have seen the pictures of your neighbourhood completely destroyed.
Four months in, they stop asking about their grandparents. You have seen the names of the elderly who could not get out. Your mom’s name right after your dad’s. Buried in mass graves.
A year in, they stop asking about your partner, their parent, your rock, the love of your life. You have seen the videos of the mass execution in the football stadium. Their blood staining the grass.
Somehow, this becomes normal. Food only once a day, water only in bottles. No work, no school. Nothing to talk about, to think about, to dream about.
For two years, you apply to be resettled in a safer country. Occasionally, you and your children are taken to UN tents, where you’re separated and questioned. Were you tortured? Did you support the governor? Where is your partner, your parent? How do you know they are dead? They repeat the questions over and over, trying to catch you in a lie. If one of you contradicts the other in even the tiniest detail, you will be denied resettlement.
And then one day you see your name on the list. Your family is one of the five selected that month out of thousands hoping to leave the camp and start a new life in China. You feel sick with relief and guilt.
The next day, you board a plane. Fourteen hours later, you land in China. A man greets you, speaking in Mandarin. No one in your family understands Mandarin. He smiles. You smile. Is this your first real smile in two years?
He takes you to a run-down apartment. The apartment has two mattresses on the floor, a TV and unfamiliar groceries on the table. He points to his watch, says something you don’t understand, and leaves.
Soon, you will be cleaning office buildings. No one cares about your master’s degree, and the bill for your flight will need to be repaid. Your children will go to a school where no one is prepared to educate them. Sometimes people on the street tell you to go back to where you came from and you will think, If only.
But for now, you sit on the floor with your children. You are safe. You are alive. You are lucky.
For more than 80 million people (six times the population of Ohio), this story is not hypothetical. For them, the haunting hypothetical is whether they will be given the chance to start a new life.
And as long as we continue to turn a blind eye to them, it’s not their humanity we’re betraying, it’s our own.
Believe in Them: One Woman’s Fight for Justice for Refugee Children by Luma Mufleh is published today, World Refugee Day, by Cogito Publishing
