A Manifesto of Hope for Immigrants: An Essay

Abstract

This chapter is an essay regarding twenty-first century refugees from a global and literary perspective. The author seeks to highlight perceptions and responses to refugee situations occurring in various parts of the world. The chapter presents a “thousand-mile view” of the present global refugee crisis, while stressing the tragic, personal, and traumatic responses of those who are forced to flee their homeland by circumstances beyond their control. The origin of this essay is the poem “Manifesto for Immigrants”, published by The Crambo, the literary magazine of Kennesaw State University. This essay raises three topics which seem to be common to migrant experiences, regardless of time or place. It is concluded that migrants, while expressing hope in the very act of migrating, have difficulty experiencing a sense of safety, freedom from fear and an awareness of being ‘at home’ in their new environments. Through poetry, these themes can be expressed and shared both by migrants themselves and by those who observe them.

1. Introduction

The late Spanish poet, Antonio Machado (1875–1990 wrote of migrants and refugees he observed in his native Spain, around the time of the Spanish Civil War. In a poem entitled: I Have Walked Many Roads, Machado writes (translation mine) “Everywhere I have seen sad caravans, superb and melancholy…” [1]

It is with these images in mind that the poet reflects on the brokenness of human migration in the twenty-first century. In 2018 I responded to the crisis of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war in small and makeshift crafts, these desperate humans trying to land on Italian shores. The world again witnessed the fear, anguish, suffering, death, and callousness of such tragedies. Amid many global crises involving refugees, this tragedy seemed to stand out, as if to summarize the experiences of all refugees from ancient times to the present. The following is an excerpt of my poem, “Manifesto for Immigrants” [2].

“Where lies the dream once grasped in hands roughened from toil and stiffened by suffering?

Those hands whose reach clawed and fought to come to the freedom place ah yes, the land of the unfree free

Liberty only free to some these stinking cowards and sniveling whiners "the forgotten"

Forgotten are the tired, poor huddled the ones who live in the edges and side alleys of places too terrible to describe.

Whose desperation drives them to undersized craft and treacherous waters over borderlands in the night

Who gave up their souls to the howling coyotes just waiting to devour their last hope

Ground it into the sand as they choked on their own spit

Look about you and be mortified by what you see”

One can only wish that onlookers to the global refugee crisis would be mortified by what they see. Those who have never had to flee their native land have a hard time understanding how the refugee experience reshapes and reforms their relationship to the earth, to what ‘home’ means. To someone dislodged from their home, forced by war, corruption or famine to flee elsewhere, the very ground they find themselves occupying in a new place seems alien. Syrian poet and refugee Abdullah Kasem Al Yateem writes of gathering soil, water and jasmine flowers into small containers which he carried in his pockets during his family’s journey from Syria to safety. His homeland continues to experience protracted warfare, leading to massive movements of refugees throughout the region, reaching into North Africa and Southern Europe.

Other writers in this volume will detail research and analysis regarding refugees in specific places, seeking to understand specific causes and forms of redress in those locations. My focus in this writing is to center the broader experiences of refugees, regardless of place of origin or particular circumstances. I offer the following poems which seek to lift these experiences through the lenses of home, safety and fear.

2. Home

Home not home

The dirt is different

The flowers, water, sky, all strange.

Is this place earth too?

Will it ever feel the same as it did?

Hope is the currency of survival

Between Aleppo and Saigon, Guatemala and Sudan

Hope is a surrogate for home.

In writings and interviews, I have heard versions of this theme repeated universally. My ancestors came from Italian sulfur mines and were told to head for Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, where iron and copper mines were then prevalent. But it was not in any way the same. Climate, mining methods, even the terrain were foreign to them. My grandfather said it seemed like another world, that they somehow were transported to another planet. It becomes a manner of survival, to adapt and adjust. And yet, simply opening the door and stepping outside reminded them that they were not, in fact, home. As far back as in biblical times, refugees recognized this phenomenon.

“We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic;” [3]

The Hebrew people, delivered from slavery under cruel Pharaohs in Egypt according to their Biblical account, found reasons to complain about their situation while on their protracted journey to the Promised Land. To them, freedom, and a future away from slavery did not erase in them the memories of “home”, no matter how horrible their experiences back in Egypt had been.

Cultural, linguistic, and political differences in their new land continue to perplex immigrants, making it difficult for them to develop a sense of “home”. For refugees, whose journeys may include many stopping points and last for many years, these issues are exacerbated. It seems, through the writings and expressions of many migrants, a sense of belonging to the new place is not truly experienced until subsequent generations are born and established.

A misshapen sense of being “home” is especially poignant for refugees such as those Palestinians forced into “refugee camps’ in the 1940s, and whose descendants still occupy those same camps generations later. It strains the imagination to think of oneself as a refugee while still in one’s native land.

Mohammed Arafat, a Palestinian poet, writes of such incongruity in his poem, “A Dream Under The Willow Tree.” [4] Referencing the fact that he had inherited the key to their former home after his father’s death, Arafat refers to dreams about holding that key, of using it to recall the sights, scents and sounds of his home, only to awaken and find himself still displaced.

3. Safe

En el sendero de lastimas¹ out of harm’s way

Not pursued, hunted, beaten or maimed

Promises to the children, “hush, we will be safe soon”

Muttered softly among the sounds of shuffling, tired feet

A random political bumper sticker triggers panic “Will ICE come here?”

“Are they after us here too?”

No place is safe

“Estamos a salvo aqui²” unsure whether it is a statement or question

Really, they know

No one ever is.

Behind the news headlines and the videos of refugees is an enduring fear. It permeates the atmosphere around refugees, even among those who have been granted legal residency in their new land. It takes up psychic space in the lives of those who fled terror and war, and in their children and grandchildren. It sits like a dark, hidden predator, waiting to pounce on them once again. There is room for research into how these somatic memories are transmitted to later generations of descendants of the refugees themselves.

4. The Streets of Old Dearborn

Arabic dialects churn the air on East Warren

In the produce market one hears the chatter of voices

An argument over prices here, a request for a special item there

I, blond, green-eyed, bare-headed seeking melons and carrots

The shopkeeper asks, “Can I help you, habibi?” (Imagine him calling me dear)

Kindly, with slightly raised eyebrow.

Women crowding around the bins roll their eyes at each other, watching my every move.

I pay and leave with my little bag of items, muttering a few words in broken Arabic.

“Thank you”

“Excuse me”

I slip outside, whispers and stares tapping against my back,

Wondering whether I should be afraid.

One can imagine that some people would be afraid to walk through a neighborhood such as East Warren in Old Dearborn, Michigan. This area is home to more persons of Middle Eastern Descent than anywhere save the Middle East itself.

Fear is, unfortunately, the one emotion which transcends immigrant and non-immigrant populations. Media reports often distort the picture of immigrants’ experiences. Politicians garner votes through their rhetoric, casting immigrant persons as dangerous or criminal. These words play into the racism and fear of their audiences. The feeling of fear affects the listener’s ability to reason, to perceive nuance and to see individuals rather than groups.

Those seeking refuge in the United States do so for many reasons. Refugees carry with them the physical and emotional trauma of violence in their homeland. Poet and musician Grace Hazard Conkling wrote of refugees crossing Belgium during World War I, parents and children talking to each other as they fled the guns and bombs of the Axis powers. A child cries to its mother “Oh, tell me where we are” [5]. It is a cry repeated frequently among refugees as they flee. This sense of ‘dislocation’ triggers fears as well. Novel places, new pathways, new sights, and sounds become overwhelming to process. Anxiety, distress, even dread move into the essence of each being, producing the same distortions of reason, perception and vision reflected by the non-immigrants they encounter.

It is hard for a settled person to understand what this is like. A refugee flees persecution, war, or poverty, carrying a tremendous load of fear along with their physical belongings. These fears are amplified by the sight of law enforcement officials, curious strangers, impatient shopkeepers, health care workers, the list is exceptionally long. These fears find their way into the written and narrated stories of migrants, often passed down to subsequent generations.

Some former refugees are able, in time, to adapt to all the triggers they encounter each day. Others struggle for a lifetime. Still others, even a generation later, carry the weight of fear in their hearts. I once had the opportunity to work with a group of high school youth from a large American city. These teens were Latinx in background, all had been born in the United States, but many were children of refugees, whether documented or not. None of the youth had traveled far from their urban neighborhood. All had been traumatized by ICE raids in their streets, by gang violence, by drug culture and its consequences. Many lived in fear that one of their loved ones would be seized and deported on the way home from church or school. Our time with them was spent in a rural area at a church camp. One night, we took them to a beach on Lake Michigan for a campfire and some singing. It was common in that area for local residents to drive to the beach to watch the sunset. As sunset neared, the parking lot became filled with vehicles, many of which were pickup trucks and SUVs. While the non-urban youth and adults did not make much of this, we noticed that the Latinx students were uneasy, and seemed afraid. When questioned, they told us that Immigration officers would often sit in trucks or SUVs outside their schools, churches or local stores, in an attempt to intimidate residents whose legal status might be questionable. The students told us that these events often resulted in mass arrests, with agents entering public or religious buildings and sweeping up everyone in sight. Now, we understood why the appearance of these vehicles was so triggering for the students. Their default mode every day, no matter the circumstances, was fear. It seems clear that many refugees and their descendants experience the same fears.

5. Conclusion

As a poet inspired by the experiences and voices of refugees present and past, I have sought to offer a few glimpses into the responses of poets and writers who have been refugees or who have worked alongside refugees. From ancient times to the present, three themes seem to be primary in their expressions of their experiences: Home, Safety and Fear. From my review of the poetic literature about and by migrants, I find that the trauma of departing one’s homeland has unaccounted for costs in daily worries, safety and in a perception of .never fitting into the new culture. It is my hope that readers of this volume are thus able to recognize poetic and literary examples of migrant experiences which may not be reflected in academic research.

Notes

All poetry shown in italics are the sole property of the author.

Translation of the line from Antonio Machado’s poem is mine.