Thursday, October 26, 2006
Salim fled from Algeria with just the clothes he was wearing. Tamil Paul Sathianesan flew in from Sri Lanka with everything he owned crammed into a crumpled yellow holdall.
They all kept those bedraggled mementoes which serve as a poignant introduction to a new Museum of London exhibition chronicling how refugees grapple with life in Britain after gaining asylum.
Is it a welcoming land? Do they fit in or do they always yearn for their birthplace?
"I will always be a Chilean but you never really belong anywhere," said Nidia Castro, who fled with her children in 1976 when she feared her son's imminent arrest.
Reflecting at the age of 74 on life in multicultural London, she told Reuters: "The darker you are, the more problems you have."
"They bring many scars but also many skills," said Annette Day, the exhibition's curator who recorded interviews with 150 refugees from Iraq to Uganda.
Reflecting on how Britain welcomed them, she told Reuters at the exhibition's media launch on Thursday: "It is not a society without intolerance. But on the whole they feel they have been welcomed here.
"People are very keen to contribute and integrate but that doesn't mean they have to give up everything that is in their past, everything that makes them who they are."
Somali refugee Mohamed Maigag had no doubts: "I want to retain my culture and our identity and our religion and all that. But I've also got the same pride as anyone else. I want to integrate."
After fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, Lewis Elton said: "The fact that we were refugees disappeared remarkably quickly, so quickly that I somehow can hardly remember it."
The exhibition could not be more topical.
The country is engaged in a soul-searching debate about the benefits and pitfalls of a multicultural society.
The threat from radical Islam, rammed home by last year's London suicide bombings, has prompted the government to re-think its traditionally tolerant attitude towards ethnic minorities.
Should a single identity be imposed on all? Is the melting pot the best solution? Has multiculturalism bred segregation?
Amid fears of rising xenophobia, Afghan refugee Wahida Zalmai offered a heartfelt plea to 21st century Britain:
"This society has a rich multicultural tradition...It must not lose such a natural delicacy, should not destroy it."
Source: Reuters, Oct. 26, 2006