The diary entry of a refugee

28 November 2015
Saturday
It was just when I thought that our wandering days were over, and the house had started to feel like a place we could call home. Even though ammi was still missing and it had been a week since they said it’ll take forty two hours to locate her. I was struggling to bring some bread home, for we had to live on something. My sisters couldn’t go to school, because they said on the radio that it was unsafe to step out of the third refugee shelter we’d been in this year. They said that France had declared the actions of those cruel men as ‘acts of war’ and as a result, it was we who would pay the price. They call us monstrous and evil; they say Muslims don’t deserve to live.

Ammi  and abbu would read to us every night, I distinctly remember the night we first lost our homes,[ Qur’an 5:52] “whoso kills a soul, unless it be for murder or for wreaking corruption in the land, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind; and he who saves a life, it shall be as if he had given life to all mankind”, Then how can they say we propagate violence, who is to let them decide that we shall be punished for the wrongdoings of shallow and pity-worthy men, who know not of love and benevolence. Had they been brought up under the guidance of the mullah who engraved in our hearts the verses of the Qur’an, they would know the true essence of faith.

How will I console my little sister, at the mere age of five, that she may have lost her beloved ammi forever? Who will promise to uphold the virtues of our religion, if people continue to destroy its sanctity? How will I provide to my family and tell them that I would sacrifice myself to ensure their safety? It makes me laugh to think of the representatives at the United Nations; living in lavish houses, all promises of safety upheld, using fancy words to empathize with our pain. What do they know of true hopelessness? When your belief in Allah is the only thing that keeps you going…