Humanising the refugee

A 2016 report by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 65 million people across the globe have been uprooted and displaced from their homeland on account of war and persecution. Yet, the so-called “refugee” crisis has remained a faceless one. The individual microscopic stories of people forced to flee for their lives and liberty do not often become the mainstream narrative as often as they should. Humans on the Run by Kumar M Tiku is one of the many recent books that attempts to bring these stories to life, and through them, make visible the human face of the refugee.

Twenty-five stories of individuals from war zones from India to Iraq, Syria to South Sudan illustrate the havoc ethnic, communal and religion-based violence wreaks on ordinary lives. Interestingly, Mr Tiku, a Kashmiri Pandit, is a “displaced person” himself, and one who can empathise with the anguish of the refugee: “The loss of the land into which my forebears and I were born is a stab whose pain refuses to be dulled even after a full quarter century in displacement,” he writes.

These stories, collected from refugee camps across the world, illustrate the universality of the refugee experience. Some testimonies are poignant. “My existence is as faceless here, as it was intimate back home...,” Mr Tiku quotes a Kashmiri Pandit now living in Delhi. Another aspect of the shared refugee experience is the suspicion, even derision, with which many view refugees. Many write about being accused of sponging off their host countries, or having terror links. An Eritrean who was forced to flee to Ethiopia, writes: “I wait and hope that one day, in the not so distant future, I will discover a place that welcomes me without suspicion...”.

Language is another barrier to integration; the book has testimonies of young adults who had trouble completing their education in exile for lack of familiarity with the local medium of instruction. And of course, the stories strongly bring out the trauma caused by the loss of identity, as well as valid identification documents, passports and visas. These often assume such importance in the mind of the refugee that everything else, even one’s own country, becomes secondary. “The passport that enables you to travel unhindered is your only homeland,” a Syrian refugee says in another part of the book.

Mr Tiku served the United Nations Children’s Fund in Syria, where more than a third and close to half of the population is without a home. “The sheer scale of human tragedy that has visited this once beautiful and historically rich land is beyond all human imagination,” he writes. However, the sense the reader gets is of lives punctuated by countless everyday tragedies. Every small memory erased, each trivial word forgotten and all the fleeting relationships left behind pick at the refugee’s psyche every day. They are haunted by the deprivations they have seen; imagine the hunger that compels a woman to wonder if she can eat the leopard print blanket covering her and her children…. Another testimony, made more horrific by the matter-of-fact way in which it is narrated, is of a Ukrainian who, while escaping his country, slept in a field full of rotting dead bodies in the hope that passing soldiers would think he was dead too.

It won’t surprise the reader, then, when Mr Tiku quotes refugees who say that substance abuse — alcoholism as well as drug addiction — are common in refugee camps. A Tibetan woman in Mcleodganj speaks of this in detail, sharing how her marriage was destroyed by alcohol. Mr Tiku’s argument that proper refugee rehabilitation needs to include adequate counselling and strong support networks is well made. Without this, simply helping refugees obtain citizenship and livelihoods may not be effective in integrating them into their adoptive homes. Humans on the Run offers some insights into how refugees might be rehabilitated. For example, an Afghan teacher who found herself in a camp in Pakistan rebuilt many lives, including her own, by starting a school for girls in the camp. Refugees who make themselves socially useful and productive perhaps integrate better.

The book, however, suffers serious shortcomings. Many accounts read like snapshots, as if the author met them briefly in the course of his work with UNDP. There is no description of the living conditions in refugee camps or of measures different countries are taking to ensure their rehabilitation. Perhaps this is why many of the stories read like testimonies narrated to interpreters, rather than results of detailed personal interviews. Further, they would have benefitted from better questioning and stricter editing; some, like the story of the Kashmiri Hindu doctor, end abruptly while others meander on and on. Further, Mr Tiku has organised the stories by their geographies — a mistake because the most valuable takeaway from his book is the universality of the refugee experience.

Humans on the Run Of Exiles and Asylum

Kumar M Tiku

Oxford University Press 

320 pages Rs 650