Status Updates From The Ungrateful Refugee

Kambiz I believe you.

Someone told me (perhaps they read it somewhere) that refugees
are forced into cement shoes and told, ‘Now you have roots.’ But
being held down isn’t roots. They are told not to move, to build a life
for a year, two years, to learn a culture they may soon leave behind

shouldn’t wanting a better life
be enough on its own? Isn’t being ‘underused’ in your twenties the
greatest tragedy for the mind and the spirit? Why should these men have to spend their lives idle and
mediocre with no hope of accessing their potential? Isn’t a wasted
life also a life that is in danger?

I had never thought of dignity that way

What can I accomplish here when there is such distance between
good people? When a heartfelt gift can twist into a gruesome
reminder of all that you still need? When you’re forced to make use
of it anyway?

But I watched
people and I began to learn the stories: All Love ends. Without a
country, a fire is quenched, another flares. Limbo is temptation itself
– the itch to make life happen.

Consume these lives as entertainment, or education or threats to your person. It is your
choice how to hear their voices…read
as you would a box of letters from a ruin, dispatches from another time that we dust off and readily believe, because the dead want
nothing from us.

Wow, just wow

Why do the native-born perpetuate this distinction? Why harm the
vulnerable with the threat of this stigma? It took me decades to
know: the instinct to protect against competition from a talented
horde.

One face of power: making someone wait. Pausing futures, pausing goals, as long as the wait is politically favourable