A letter to a refugee child who must ‘survive’ in a new country

All you have to do is survive. Everything will come after. The beauty of your mother. The sound of your father’s voice in your language. The place you’ll take at that table full of children laughing.

Dear refugee child in your first year of arriving in a new country,

Your mother who everyone says was beautiful in the old country is no longer so here in the new one. She had to cut off her long hair to get a job at the factory. The aunties who have been in this country longer tell her that short hair is much safer when you are working by machines with big teeth and invisible hands.

She says the people at work don’t look at her. She tries to make a joke, “It is a good thing they don’t look at me anymore because if they do, I might look back and the heavy carts I push might fall on me!”