Long Way from home

(Photo Source: Common dreams website)

Jadim is a refugee. That is what the international organizations call her. The country hosting her is expected to feed her, protect her and make sure she is comfortable until her home country has some amount of peace. She gets ‘aid’ in terms of food, clothes, a blanket and a shelter. She has a right to get them. Moreover she is now pregnant, so she is feeding for two people. She sees people coming in and out, she heard they are called donors. Every time she sees the stream of vehicles she has to ensure her shelter is clean and she puts on a smile. They are the ones responsible for her stay there and they need to feel they are doing something. It also means extra rations that day, so of course she will put on her best smile.

Jadim has lived in the camp for 2 years now. Despite all the niceties mentioned above, she constantly feels she was better at home, but since she lost her husband and two children to the war, she decided to run. She thought she would be safe. She had to live to make sure their memories are still alive. As for her pregnancy, only she know whose it is. They were so many that night she will have to wait to see the baby’s face to know who the father is. She had only gone to ask for an extra ration for the old woman she lives with, but got more than she had asked for. She did not complain, who was she going to complain to?

She could not complain because this was the third camp she has been for the two years of her ‘refugeeing’. Those people have the power to return her home as a threat to ‘National Peace’. The house she got was a privilege because one of them felt ‘bad’, otherwise her house was a pile of sticks, twigs and nylon paper put together to form a ‘shelter’.

Now another problem has risen. The host country has become tired of giving her and her fellow refugees ‘free things’. The war is still going on, but nobody cares for a refugee.

(Photo Source: Slough refugee support Website)

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