Well-wrought tales of loss and isolation
Refugee Tales Volume III
David and Anna Pincus (Eds) Comma Press, £9.99
Reviewed by Jonathan Wittenberg
APROJECT OF the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, Refugee Tales campaigns against the indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers. At the heart of its work is the story — an ancient and profoundly eloquent form of protest. The present publication is the third collection of tales.
“We hear so many of the wrong words about refugees — ugly, limiting, unimaginative words — that it feels like a gift to find here so many of the right words which allow us to better understand the lives around us, and our own lives, too.”
This endorsement by Kamila Shamsie, author of a story in an earlier volume, goes to the core of what Refugee Tales is about. In this, as in the previous collections, we don’t read about them as a problem, as a threat, an invasive “swarm”. Instead, we hear their lives from the inside, as closely as possible to how they themselves experience them.
The process by which the stories are written is simple and moving: a refugee and an established author are introduced to each other. The latter listens, then writes down the story as he or she has heard it. The current book contains 19 tales, including The Stateless Person’s Tale, as told to Abdulrazak Gurnah, The Dancer’s Tale as related to Lisa Appignanesi and The Listener’s Tale as recounted to Gillian Slovo.
The accounts make chastening reading. They describe not only the terrors that force people to flee their homeland and the cruelty they encounter on the journey but, most of all, the callous disregard with which they are all too often treated by officialdom once they arrive in Britain.
The majority of authors tell the story of “their”refugee simply, “as it is”, without resorting to literary devices:
“That night, in a privately run incarceration facility, sleepless with two other men in a cell that stinks of its toilet, M for the first time hears what he will often hear again in the years to come: the howling of fellow captive human beings who have been told that early next morning they will be on a plane back where they came from, however bad that place and whatever their loves and friendships, their loyalties, brave beginnings, notable achievements and aspirations here in this worsening land.” From The Orphan’s Tale, as told by David Constantine
Rarely does a book testify so painfully to the importance of what all narratives are ultimately based on, the act of listening: “Nobody sat with me and listened to me. Nobody. They didn’t understand what had happened to me.” The Volunteer’s Tale. the stories of refugees, as I discovered when I was privileged to be among the authors. As soon as I met “my” refugee it was apparent that he spoke excellent English; in fact, he had two degrees in modern languages. Why then, I asked him, did he need me to record his story? He was silent, but I think I understood. It requires another person to bear witness, to receive and record someone’s experiences.
“The telling of stories is an act of profound hospitality”, wrote Ali Smith, a patron of Refugee Tales. Sadly, in the current climate it is also a counter-cultural act of validation. The book is therefore a heartfelt and compelling form of protest, a setting down as evidence of the experiences of those whom the media so often vilify and reject.
Our history as Jews should teach us to pay careful and compassionate heed to such testament.
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg (pictured) is the Senior Rabbi at New North London Synagogue and a contributor to the Refugee Tales Project. All proceeds from the sale of the reviewed book will go to Kent Refugee Help and The Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group