I'm Not A Refugee Noha Al-Maghafa
Refugees on the earth.
The name bringing shame to an entire group of human beings and people kind on our planet.
We are living for a reason here on the earth and that reason is not violence, hate, war and brutality.
What is making us feel proud of watching others when they are suffering?
Why is there so much of it going on now in our daily lives?
You might not know the value of your life and your family, unless you feel happy with who you are? Where you are? What you are?
Because it’s not easy to accept and become a refugee when you had a nice house living with your family on a high level: rich in heart, healthy in mind, and united to each other.
Then what happened?
Flee over the borders
Run over the mountain and hills
Escape from war and war and war
From a peaceful life and honorable land and become homeless and stateless as a REFUGEE.
Then you feel you are not a human being anymore because you are carrying another name, despite your family name, which is a REFUGEE.
I am an Iraqi living in the UK for two years – hopefully I will have leave to remain with refugee status.
My name is Beshwar Hassan
A village boy and a musician
From Zumarrah/Mosel of Iraq
I’m a Kurd and a love-chooser, for a peaceful and respectable life.
I was a witness of live bombing on our home.
I was a witness of people who left their baby for their soul to survive.
In a minute, only a minute, the nightmare started four years ago.
Yezidi
Christian
Muslim
Atheist
Altogether, side by side, escaping their homes because of war!
Without any hate!
Without any hope!
Without any recognition!
Without any return.
Sometimes holding each other’s hand to help walking
We left all our memories and fortunes behind.
The strangest feeling is when you are crossing the border from your country to another one, where they don’t speak your language, somehow treating you like a slave or a wild.
A week before fleeing Iraq everything was fine with food, eating, showers, drinking and so on, but only a week after fleeing Iraq, we felt starving, a real starving.
We only ate bananas and apples, biscuits and little water
Days after days went by, one by one, without taking a shower
Our smell was stinky
Our faces had changed
Our lives were in danger
The question was, Where should we go?
From Iraq, to Turkey, then where?
Then what is next?
From Turkey to Greece – oh Greece – the country that I had fallen in love with since I was a child.
But what happened? Some uneducated police force at the border separated us from each other!
That’s when I lost my mother and searched every camp in Europe in the main countries where UNHCR were offering their aids.
I’m still in shock that they could put my small brother into the same prison as me, dark, behind a thin wall, and again with no showers. He was only 12 years old.
Meanwhile, we were transferred to a camp in Greece where police were really helpful searching for my mother for me. Not just me – many of us. We got nice new clothes and hot food and were in a school and drama camp.
Even now, I still owe a captain some money; he helped us to buy food to survive with my brothers.
After the new Prime Minister of Greece ordered to empty all the refugee camps, we were lucky as we could use it as a chance to start for searching for my mother with the Red Cross’ help and the honorable detective of the Greek police.
I found my mother in France after I searched more than 70 camps from Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France
And now we are all together in the UK, living a very peaceful life.
But it’s still not ended, the pain we came through
The traumatic situation is still in our heads.
The crises of refugees, their shouting, their crying, the sound of bombing
I’m still dreaming about riding my horse in our field.
Year by year more people fleeing their homes, their countries
When does it end?
The only solution is recognizing ourselves as real humans
And focusing on what we really need to do, not just by words, but by action.
Action does not mean making violence or traveling to another place
Sometimes you can help at your home
Or involve yourself with the other groups
Without uniting, without listening to each other, there will be no final solution.
Iraq was the main country people were traveling as tourists in 1950 until 1970, before Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The only hope to get freedom was 2003, but it turned to damage the country
Syria and Iraq are not the same any more.
Those people who fled and stayed here or anywhere else aren’t dangerous
We are not bringing war with ourselves here.
Let’s put our hands to each other and raise up our voices
The true power of humanity is only in truly feeling each other.
From my heart, I’m telling everybody, I’m not a refugee.
I’m people kind, (I’m not even saying mankind), because it’s wrong on the earth.
I know there is light in our hearts
That light will be shining among us if we each become a hand-holder, love-chooser.