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Ragtag Saturday: Asylum – from Kurdistan to Leeds

Ripon is a City of Sanctuary: one of many cities throughout the UK proud to offer a place of safety, sanctuary and support to those fleeing violence and persecution.

At a recent meeting of the group, an asylum seeker from the Kurdistan region of northern Iran told her story. I’d like to share it with you.

X is an intelligent young woman with a loving and close extended family. After school, she went to University to study, and met the man she went on to marry.

As they began their lives together, they began to question their Muslim faith. They took their doubts seriously. They looked at other world religions, like Christianity. They prayed, they read, they trawled the net in search of answers.

One day, their house was raided. They came home to find their computer taken, their books in disarray, and anything dealing with religion also taken. They knew they were in danger.

Family members rang up. ‘You need to go. Quickly. Don’t bother to get stuff together, or get your affairs in order. Just go.’

So they did. First of all, they went to Germany, then England, where they spent about a month in the prison-like surroundings of an asylum seekers’ detention centre. They were advised to find someone in England who would be prepared to act as a sponsor. Somehow, X’s father found someone in Sheffield, and that’s where they went next.

I don’t really know the next bit of the story: only that she spent a great deal of time under the care of the NHS before they ended up in Leeds. And that’s where they are now. After more than two years, their application for immigration status has still not been heard, so they live on their allowance of £37.75 a week each which covers everything apart from housing: their food, household needs, clothing, transport, fuel and heating…..

They’re intelligent and highly qualified – X’s husband is an engineer, she a business studies graduate, and both of them have learnt English from scratch whilst being here. But neither of them is allowed to work. They would like to. They’d like to be tax-paying and contributing members of British society. Instead they draw their meagre benefit and do voluntary work and eke out a precarious existence, not knowing what will happen next.

X has had a break. The University of Bradford has offered her a place, and a scholarship open only to asylum seekers to read for a Foundation year in medicine. She’s grateful to the NHS and wants to give something back .

I have no photos to illustrate this story. Instead, I’ve chosen a gallery of images from Unsplash to try to help us all imagine what she thinks of when she remembers the life she has lost in Iran: her family, the countryside and townscapes, the culture she has left behind. She must have complicated feelings: grateful on the one hand to be safe; fearful of the future; homesick for her family and former home, and the life she thought she and her husband were preparing for; excited by her new opportunity; worried about money – all the time, and about their asylum application.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is Sanctuary.https://wp.me/p9YcOU-nq

To view the gallery full size, click on any image.

Ragtag Saturday: Three months of trying…..

Maybe it’s time for a Zoë update. You remember Zoë. She was the baby granddaughter who couldn’t wait until her due date of October 25th, and frightened us all half to death by being born on August 7th instead.

She’s getting on for six months old now. Corrected though, she’s only just over three. She spent astonishingly little time in an incubator, was out of hospital before she hit 5 pounds in weight and has been doing well ever since.

All the same. In her early weeks, she did little but sleep, eat … and grow. Her milestones are those of a late October baby. She still spends a lot of time sleeping, eating and growing, but now she’s adding skills daily. She discovered how disarming her smiles could be. And now, she’s putting in energetic sessions trying desperately hard to biff at the toys hanging from her baby bouncer. Such an effort! But so rewarding when she lands the telling punch.

This is my contribution to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: effort.

Help!

Yesterday, I published a post about My Old Notebook.  It got plenty of readers, so I was a bit puzzled not to get any comments from the usual suspects, or indeed from anybody at all.   Dan Drews of Life as I See it with One Eye Closed – thanks Dan – told me that somehow, comments have been disabled.  I’ve been battling with WordPress Help to get to the bottom of this, and …. I’m stuck.  Are any WP users able to help?  Comments are still open on my previous posts, which is how Dan made it through, as I assume they’ll be closed on this one too.  Grrr.

The Car Park of Destiny.

It’s a long time since I’ve updated you about my daughter Ellie. Here, in her own words, is the latest instalment.

Fanny the Champion of the World's avatarFanny the Champion of the World

I haven’t written an update for a while, and to be honest, I’ve been enjoying getting back to normality (and trying to learn how to parent teenagers), with limited success. I think that writing Fanny through my grief and treatment was my way of releasing stress when I had nobody else to tell. Now, I do have someone to tell, who loves me deeply, but with that happiness and contentment has come a bit of Writers’ Block. Our stories don’t end as long as we’re alive, but perhaps I wanted Fanny to have her happy ending, and I wasn’t sure if there really was any such thing.

In fact, I suppose I thought a new beginning had come instead – in July last year, when my husband’s ashes were interred in the graveyard of the church where he and I had married 15 years before, almost to the day. I’d…

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Crepuscule Mark Two

My last post showed a sunrise over Corrèze. This is the sunset from our friends’ house in Laroque d’Olmes. You can’t see the Pyrenees from here, but the foothills, the Plantaurel.

Here’s the view from town.

Lovely as it is to see our friends (five hour lunch, eating, drinking, talking and laughing on a shaded terrace anyone?), Laroque has been a horrible disappointment.

 

Since we left, quelques petits commerces have closed. InterMarché has come to town. And McDonald’s. They’re building a Lidl, so I took a picture of the town through the webbing and netting of the building site. It’s not a small town any more. It’s one of those out-of-town roads lined with out-of-town stores. I’m just glad we no longer live here.

Ragtag Tuesday: Thirsk goes yarn bombing

‘Yarn bombing is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fibre rather than paint or chalk. It is also called yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting, or graffiti knitting.’ Wikipedia

Thirsk has adopted yarn bombing in a big way.  It’s the town where I first came across it, at Remembrance tide two years ago.  St. Mary’s church was festooned – drowned almost – in a sea of poppies knitted by keen volunteers from miles around.  It was a arresting, beautiful, and had the effect they were seeking.  As we paused to look and admire, we did indeed remember the fallen of the two World Wars.

A display of knitted poppies by Thirsk Yarn Bombers at St Mary’s Church, Thirsk (Photo: Northern Echo)

This year, Thirsk asks us to remember the NHS (National Health Service), now 70 years old.  Various knitted offerings are clustered in the Market Square.  It’s witty, charming, and reminds us all how much almost every one of us is grateful for the NHS and all who work in it.

 

Today’s Ragtag Challenge is ‘Yarn’

Ragtag Tuesday: Blue light

If you saw my post at the weekend, you’ll know my head and my heart are just in one place: thinking of little Zoë, one week old today and doing well: her mum has been allowed home, so that’s one milestone.  Luckily the hospital is a walkable distance from the family home, so that’s all good.

The Ragtag Challenge word today is ‘blue’.  So this gives me a chance to show you William visiting his new little sister as she experiences life under an UV lamp: all good for clearing up the jaundice that many little babies seem to experience shortly after birth.

William watches Zoë.

And here’s the blue knitted octopus that the nurses gave her to clutch at, as she waves those little arms about. 

She’s doing well, so far.  29 weeks in the making, and she even has some hair.

Ragtag Tuesday: Dappled

‘Dappled’ is such a summery word.  It speaks of strolling through woodland on a sunny day, as the sunlight dances through the tree canopy to brindle the path below.  It defines the russet spots that stipple the silvery trout weaving around in a clear and still-flowing stream.  It describes a piebald foal frisking in a field alongside its mother.  And it’s sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows of a parish church, painting the cold stone floor with warmth.

 

Woodland near the Strid, Wharfedale.
I couldn’t manage a trout or a horse. My daughter’s dog Brian can stand in for both.
Ripley Parish Church.

That’s why I chose ‘Dappled’ as my Ragtag word prompt on this July day.