REFUGEE QUOTES III
quotations about refugees
It is as if families on the run are shattered by something other than just grenades. The flight and fear tears us apart and those parts land in all kinds of places -- we don't even know where.
HENNING MANKELL
Tea-Bag
America's experience with refugees has been, by and large, a happy one with very few setbacks or negatives. Cuban-born writer Humberto Fontova never tires of retelling how his "redneck" neighbors in Louisiana -- after he, his mother and siblings escaped Castro's clutches -- kept up a constant parade to his family's front door with baskets of chicken, pot roast, salads and vegetables. The cheerful givers and the grateful receivers couldn't even talk to each other yet. But that wasn't really necessary.
BARRY FARBER
"All Refugees Are Not Equal", WND, February 9, 2016
Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it's as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away.
NADINE GORDIMER
The Ultimate Safari
Farewell mother, home and friends,
We may never meet again;
Soon 'mid strangers I must roam,
Oh! the parting gives me pain.
Tho' I wander far away,
Lonely o'er life's stormy sea,
Who will shed one gentle tear
For a wand'ring refugee?
WILLIAM S. HAYS
"The Wandering Refugee", Poems and Songs
The refugee crisis is a humanitarian challenge that must be collectively owned and collectively solved, whether we are talking about legal frameworks, institutional responses or funding. By crafting new humanitarian solutions to this crisis, critical contributions can be made to international peace and stability.
KRISTIN SANDVIK
"The Refugee Crisis as a Global Humanitarian Challenge", European Council on Foreign Relations, February 3, 2016
Having been a refugee myself years to, I know exactly what it's like ... and I know what needs to be done to help them. Some of us really have to relive the nightmare of being refugees all over again. It's very hard to be professionally journalistic about it. I believe sometimes a journalist has to put down their camera and their pens to help people.
THUY VU
Radio Saigon
Memorable word, "refugee."
Refugee: neighbors will find his clothes, worn
Pairs of Lao sandals, bright colors once,
His books, note-books, all, in a jumbled pile;
Mention his name and say he's flitted away--
Unknown summer a streak of light
Flitted away, and this was his once,
Formerly, adequate house--iridescent,
Running coil binding his life.
TIEN TRAN
"A Final Mural", The Cistern: Poems