Remembering the Past; Rebuilding the Future
The refugee experience is not linear; it is an accumulation of experiences and memories, looping again and again in the reliving and the retelling and the remembering; it is disjointed, split open, and put back again the best it can be. One representation is visual, such as the map below that simplifies over nine years on the move into a sequence of places and trips. Another is oral, such as the following segments of our interviews with Bakhit, a matter of fact retelling of his life from his own point of view and which we were extremely privileged to hear. A third is another kind of visuality, the story told through pictures—pictures taken along on the journey and sent digitally from around the world. The final representation, a compendium of all of these versions, is this project, pieced together to highlight the images, memories, and reflections that hopefully re-member it as something bordering on the truth. The story changes with each iteration of retelling, with each remembering, but at its core are a few basic truths.
1) The Journey Is More than A Physical Displacement
As immediately comprehensible as it is, a map like this one edits out the most important parts of Bakhit’s journey; it reduces distances to mere centimeters on a page or screen and completely erases barriers to movement; it shows nothing about the why, or the how, or the who, the things and the people and the places left behind. So here is a starting point, a reference point to place Bakhit’s journey in a comprehensible framework. But the real story is so much more than a map.
Bakhit Fadul Daud was born and raised in Darfur alongside two brothers and sisters. While his father passed away years ago, the rest of his family remains there today. Life in Sudan was incredibly communal; while conditions were difficult and they were materially poor, they had each other, and in some respects that was enough. Though the majority of our interviews focused on Bakhit’s life after leaving Sudan, he was most animated when discussing life in Africa with Muthoka, who is from Kenya. Having never lived there, I was deeply moved by the stories of village life and the sense of welcome and community they presented.
Bakhit’s account of community in Sudan
Of course, this makes it all the more heartbreaking that he hasn’t gotten to see his family in over nine years; although they keep in touch, it’s obviously not the same.
On family
Even now, Bakhit refers to his friends from Sudan as family, and indeed, it’s not a far off comparison; every time we visited, we would find other people in the apartment, gathered around the TV watching soccer or eating at the table. Once, when we came to interview Bakhit, he had been called into work; however, Mohammed was home, and we spent an hour watching soccer with him and talking about life. So far from where they’re from, these men have found a way to construct a new home and a new family.
But the path to get here was long and hard, and this was not the first ‘home’ Bakhit had to build for himself. First, he went to Libya, which he recalls with nostalgia, referring to the owner of the shop he worked at for over six years as “like a father.”
Libya
As fond as his memories of Tripoli are, however, there is no going back—the situation there has changed too much, and escalating violence forced him to leave his home of six years. He moved then to Tunisia; at the time, no one was guarding the borders.
Then came perhaps the most harrowing part of his journey: from Tunisia to Europe. With more and more borders shutting down, dangerous boat trips across the Mediterranean are becoming a very common mode of escape, especially since, as Bakhit, says, “[the authorities] just say go, we don’t need you in my country anymore, you can go everywhere you want. They want to push all the people out. That’s why even the police officers when they see you, they ask you want to go to Europe, they take you by car and they leave you at the boat.”
Bakhit himself was one of hundreds who attempted that trip. But the easy access to boat (I say ‘easy,’ but in reality it cost about $1000 per person, an unattainable amount for many refugees; Bakhit borrowed the money from a friend whose family was fairly well off) was deceptive, as what followed was anything but easy.
The Trip to Malta
Malta
Bakhit’s frank depiction of the trip to Malta, followed by his time in the detention center, is a testimony of his strength and positive outlook; if one weren’t listening carefully, they could almost forget that he spent six months in what amounts to a prison. They could think that the next step, finding some way to survive in a completely foreign country, was easy—that getting a place to live, a job, a way to get to the job, were all fait accompli. This is not the case, but such struggles have become so commonplace in Bakhit’s life that they are hardly worth extra commentary. It is just the same when he ends that segment with “and then we got the chance to go to the US.”
2) It Doesn’t End with Arrival
But “getting the chance” to go to the US didn’t mean his journey, or the difficulties, were over. In fact, it was quite the opposite, as life in the US was in some ways antithetical to life in Sudan and even Europe. First of all, individuality and self-development are prized above all here, in contrast to the communality of Bakhit’s home. Here, he says, “nobody can see you.”
Individuality in the US
Then, there is the difficulty of learning an entirely new language, in order to make sense of a system that is hardly built to help ‘outsiders.’ While Bakhit praises such groups as Church World Service for their help, he also comments that the system in the US is even less welcoming to foreigners than that in Europe. Without groups like CWS, it would be nearly incomprehensible.
English
Thus, one of our first encounters with Bakhit, and an entirely mundane one at that, begins to take on more significance. The day we first met him, he and his friends were gathered around the small TV in the living room watching football. At the time, we didn’t recognize the significance of this ritual; we were merely grateful it gave us something to discuss while breaking the ice. But over the course of our visits, as we got to know Bakhit together and piece together his story, something became apparent. In a life of so many journeys, so many changes, and so much uncertainty, something as insignificant as a soccer match could serve as a source of stability. No matter where you are, you can turn on the TV and watch the same team—your team—play, year after year. But there’s more than that. So long as you are familiar with the basic rules of the sport, you watch and understand and enjoy it no matter what language the actual game is being broadcast in. And finally, the actual practice of watching together with friends served as an echo the communal relations so important in Bakhit’s home country of Sudan, and which he and other refugees have less and less time for as they work to make a living and succeed in the United States.
3) In the End, Being a Refugee is about Reconstructing your Future
And yet, despite all these difficulties, Bakhit remains optimistic, and even sees value in the individualistic nature of American life. At one point he told us, “For the future, it is better here…because here you have responsibilities, you have to go out and then you save your money.” This was in opposition to life in Sudan, where most money was spent on home improvement and collecting household items, clothes and jewelry—not a bad thing, just very different—or in Malta, where during the summer, he says, people hardly worked, and would go out and spend their money every night.”
In some ways, this is the common capitalist, neoliberal discourse internalized—but in the end, if that’s what it takes to get ahead, to survive and eventually thrive in America, it might be for the better.
So we ended by asking Bakhit what he would do if and when he did save up money, as is the American way? Would he spend it on American dreams like a fast car or a house?
If I Had Money
His answer pointed to how little, in the end, his values have really changed: he would spend to help others acquire the skills and education necessary to achieve a better life.
