I felt guilty having a big empty room when so many people were homeless... so I gave it to an asylum seeker
– Jo Haythornthwaite
One is an 80-year-old retired professor of librarianship. The other is a 53-year-old refugee fleeing death threats in Pakistan.
Their backgrounds are very different but Jo Haythornthwaite and Khushi Khan have forged an unlikely bond, sharing a taste in handbags, a sense of fun and... a home.
The pair have shared Jo’s flat for almost four years. Now retired, Jo has hosted 12 asylum seekers since 2010 in her flat in Glasgow, including Khushi, her longest resident.
“I started to feel a bit guilty when I moved into this flat and had two big double rooms lying empty, knowing that some people have nothing,” said Jo. “So I took the plunge and decided to give one of them to an asylum seeker.”
Her most recent and her most “kind” guest, Khushi has lived with
Jo for almost four years aside from a traumatic few months when she was taken to Dungavel Detention Centre near Glasgow and then Yarlswood Detention Centre in Bedfordshire.
“Khushi had been living with me for over a year when she was involved in an incident in town and she was asked to give a statement,” said Jo.
“She hadn’t done anything wrong but when the police realised she was a destitute asylum seeker, they locked her in a room and later she was taken to Dungavel. It was awful.”
Jo, formerly a professor at Strathclyde University, made the two-hour round trip every week to visit her flatmate.
“At least when she was at Dungavel I could go and see her and make sure she was okay,” said Jo. “Next I heard, she’d been woken in the middle of the night, bundled into a van and taken to