Seeking Refuge

I wrote this in September but never posted it:

"In the throes of jet-lag coming back from Hungary, Eli and I spent a lot of time flipping through a hand-drawn world map book depicting continents and countries with cute little drawings of their respective animals, plants, food, and other special characteristics. The book is a "celebration of the world, from its immense mountains to its tiny insects - and everything in between." We talked about which parts he would like to go to (Antarctica, Iceland, Brazil), which parts I had already been to and why I wanted to go to Asia. Then in the mornings, we kept hearing stories on the radio about the refugees stranded in Budapest and he wanted to know what it all meant. Why the train station in Budapest he knows well from taking a train to Vienna is closed to some people and why those people want to leave their houses to begin with. So I took out the map book. We found Jordan and Syria and traced the trip with our fingers all the way to Budapest. We went from the land of olive trees, melons, hijabs, camels and Arabian wolves through Turkey and Greece to Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary. In different circumstances, it could be a fascinating trip."

Eli and I talked a bit more about what it might mean to be a refugee when some friends and I organized a fundraising event at the Postmasters Gallery in Tribeca in early October. Our event went well, we raised a good amount of money to help the amazing volunteers who fed, clothed, represented, and showed so much humanity to, the refugees in Budapest and along the Hungarian borders. Then the borders were closed by the Orban government and the refugees had to (and still have to) find ever new routes to some sort of safety. In the meantime, really terrible terrorist attacks happened and the world's worst demagogues' words and fear-mongering, which also know no borders, resonate with a lot of people in Europe and the US alike. In Europe, many followed Orban's lead or embraced fear and hatred on their own.  Here in the US, Trump is not the only one, albeit the most extreme one, to misinform the public about the "refugee threat." Orban also had the dubious distinction of making the latest Economist cover:





But Eli doesn't listen to Trump or Orban. Instead, he learned a lot more about refugees in the past couple of months thanks to his amazing teacher, Grace.  She read books and talked with her third-grade class deeply and sensitively about the issue. The kids spent many weeks reading and discussing the book Azzi in Between by Sarah Garland. Then Grace asked them to write an essay, their first ever, inspired by the story of Azzi,  a little girl who has to escape her home because of war and flee to a different country leaving behind her grandmother. Grace worked with the kids and helped them polish their stories and yesterday the kids read their essays to the parents standing in front of the entire class and about 12 parents. The kids were really sweet and excited: some were intimidated and hiding their faces behind their papers (most of the girls, unfortunately), others (Eli!) enunciating well, self-confident, going off script even. I was really proud of him. 

But regardless of how they performed, it was clear that all these New York City kids with lives pretty far away from events that create refugees built up a lot of empathy and understanding. They really tried to imagine what it would be like to leave your house one day to the next and find yourself in a place where nobody spoke your language ("I imagined it like I was deaf and mute."), the food was really strange ("I'd be scared never to eat again because I didn't like the new food"), and you had to leave behind your grandmother or someone else you loved. It was the antithesis of what Orban et al. are about and I can only hope more kids get such a good education. Not to mention the difference in the visuals: