Jun 25th, 2008
Refugee
Be thou a light to every darkness, a dispeller of every sadness, a healer for every sick person, a quencher for every thirst, a shelter for every refugee, a refuge for every captive. `Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í writings
We have just ended Refugee week here in Bedfordshire. I attended two activities: `The Asylum Monologues’ (Google it in, you will be amazed) and a showing of the film `Turtles Can Fly’.
`The Asylum Monologues’ is a dramatic reading using the words of three asylum seekers here in the UK, telling of the persecution and torture they were subjected to in their own land and the prejudice, suspicion and injustice they have had to face here. I emceed the event and it was so powerful I was overcome. Adults and children are beaten and tortured in their home countries and when the come here for asylum, they are detained, sometimes for years, in prison-like conditions, while they wait to discover whether the government here considers that they are `genuine’ and can stay or `failed’ without a legitimate reason to be here and must go home or even that is `safe’ to go back to their country. They have little or no contact with anyone apart from their lawyers and the detention centre staff. There are a few brave `befrienders’ - not nearly enough. Their lives are pointless and boring and hopeless.
`Turtles Can Fly’ is located in a real refugee camp for Kurds in the north of Iraq. Reportedly the first Iraqi film made after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the story is a `fictionalized’ account of the life of the orphaned children living in the camp among the landmines and artillery shells. The main `actors’ were all physically damaged in some way - one had lost both arms, another a leg, and so on. The psychological and spiritual damage was even greater. Again, a very powerful and moving film.
Both the monologues and the film made me angry at the injustice of it all. What are we - thinking, prosperous, educated adults - doing? How did we let this happen? How did we make it happen? This is the 21st century!
These presentations brought to mind all the evils and injustices that we are wreaking on each in so many parts of the world - and the damage that we are even doing to the earth itself!
They also brought to mind the suffering of Bahá’u'lláh. He Himself was, of course, an exile. He did not flee injustice, persecution and prejudice but was sent away from His homeland as persona non grata, together with His family, including very young children. Before His exile, He had already been tortured and imprisoned on more than one occasion, His children vilified in the streets.
The journeys of exile - there were four - themselves were dangerous, lengthy and either freezing cold or blazingly hot. It took them three months to walk from Tehran to Baghdad - right through the dead of winter. Shoghi Effendi compared this forced journey to the migration of Muhammad, the exodus of Moses and the banishment of Abraham. You can read about them here.
In many cities to which they were exiled, but particularly when they lived in `Akká, Bahá’u'lláh and His family suffered many of the challenges of urban life that today’ refugees and asylum seekers face — poor water supply, overcrowding in the homes they were assigned, lack of sanitary conditions, the unavailability of fresh food, lack of employment, ineffective government. Bahá’u'lláh and His family were also victims of other features of poor quality urban life — prejudice, disinformation, lack of concern for others, fear. Stones were thrown at the nine-year-old `Abdu’l-Bahá by children whose hatred of the Bábís had been aroused by those who were ignorant and feared them. Bahá’u'lláh’s family and many believers were the victims of injustice, arbitrary and corrupt government and inequality. Human rights abuses against Bahá’u'lláh and His family, and hundreds of other Bahá’ís, were legion. In Iran today nothing has changed for the Bahá’ís. The human rights abuses, the harassment, the imprisonment, continue.
Like many people today, Bahá’u'lláh Himself, His family and large numbers of Bahá’ís were made homeless as a result of the persecution directed against them. Bahá’u'lláh knew what it was to have His home seized by others and then destroyed, to have all His possessions taken, to lose everything, to have nothing. His children understood poverty. `Abdu’l-Bahá recalls that after Bahá’u'lláh’s arrest in Tehran the family was so destitute that there was no food to eat. `I was hungry’, He said, `but there was no bread to be had. My mother poured some flour into the palm of my hand and I ate that instead of bread.’
Bahá’u'lláh and His wife Navváb knew what it was to watch their children become ill and have no medicine to give them. Three of their six children died in early childhood, their last-born dying in Baghdad at the age of two.
Bahá’u'lláh was the victim of an arbitrary, corrupt and unjust judicial system. He knew what prison was like, what conditions in prisons do to people. His family, too, suffered imprisonment, and watched their friends die from ill treatment.
There were no social services in Bahá’u'lláh’s time, no welfare system, nowhere to go for material aid. Indeed, the Bahá’ís were, in many ways, the providers of the social services themselves. Both Bahá’u'lláh and Navváb were concerned for the homeless and the poor and were known as the `Father of the Poor’ and the `Mother of Consolation’ well before Bahá’u'lláh’s vision in the Síyáh-Chál told Him that He was God’s promised teacher for this age. `Abdu’l-Bahá was virtually a one man social welfare system in `Akká. Not only did He feed the poor, clean people’s houses, give them clothes (distributing coats each year) and take care of the ill by paying for doctors and medicine, He stockpiled food against times of famine and even took people into His own house to protect them and give them shelter. He was well-known for His alms-giving to the urban poor of `Akká, His distribution of money to the homeless of New York and other cities of America, His concern for those to whom the provision of health and welfare in the cities did not reach. Bahíyyih Khánum, Bahá’u'lláh’s daughter, Shoghi Effendi tells us, `freely dispersed’ food, money, medicine and clothing to the `famished men, women and children’ who besieged the house of `Abdu’l-Bahá in Haifa during the first world war seeking assistance. `All these,’ he says, `had their share in comforting the disconsolate, in restoring sight to the blind, in sheltering the orphan, in healing the sick, and in succouring the homeless and the wanderer’.
If Bahá’u'lláh and His family could, as exiles themselves, serve with love the very people who harassed them and made their lives a misery, how much more could those of us who are `free’ do for those who are seeking refuge in our countries. The ultimate resolution of these problems is, of course, that the people of the world turn towards Bahá’u'lláh and put His teachings into practice. The very purpose of Bahá’u'lláh’s own suffering was to free humanity
The Ancient Beauty hath consented to be bound with chains that mankind may be released from its bondage, and hath accepted to be made a prisoner within this most mighty Stronghold that the whole world may attain unto true liberty. Bahá’u'lláh
While we are waiting for that ultimate freedom, perhaps we can take some small steps towards it by personally acting as Bahá’u'lláh’s family did: serving others, standing up for justice, being a `a shelter for every refugee’.
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