A letter to a refugee child going to ‘a better place’

When it was time for goodbye, I had none to offer. All I had was big ears and big eyes – to hold all their words close in all the moments to come and so that I could remember their faces when I was lonely for the life we had shared.

Dear refugee child leaving your country behind,

Many years ago, I was like you. I was six years old and my mother took my left hand firmly in her right. My father carried a white bag with paperwork and a plastic basket with balls of rice and a bottle of water for the family. My older sister stood, at eight years old, stiff and still behind our father and before our mother and me. We were in a line, one of many refugee families boarding a plane. It was my first time on such a journey and I was leaving everything I knew behind.

I had been born in a refugee camp. It was all I knew. Grandmother told me stories of a life before the war, of mountains so high they grew into the sky. Father spoke of a dream where one day my older sister and I might become educated. Mother yearned for a life where a person could work towards a future and not just wait for one. The life I lived was one where the adults who loved me held me close and cousins ran around from sunup until sundown.