“…it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard,
distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.” Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Across the world refugees and migrants are seen without being truly seen. They are the subject of endless debate, the objects of rage or pity.
These are individuals and communities shrouded in a fog of discourse. They are portrayed either as victims or as perpetrators, as indicators of the failure of politics the failure of diplomacy and the failure of systems but never quite as human beings. We writers, politicians, populists, humanitarians even artists pretend to see them. And yet throughout all of this debate, individuals, are rarely seen or heard from. The first step to accepting their humanity is to recognize that up until now, we treat them as invisibles, grotesques, objects to be debated over.
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A Salvadorian teenager who had fled the violence of drug gangs made it as far as the U.S. border before she was detained by Mexican authorities and returned to El Salvador. Now she worries that the local gangs will take their revenge.
Yazidi family, three of their members killed by Isis have fled to Europe.
Kurdish Syrian family in Europe.
Milano, 2014. A Syrian man lives at a shelter for refugees tells me about his nightmares. “I have a recurring dream of the deaths of children.”
Syrian man, Idomeni
Syrian family trying to make their way to Germany. They say that Europe sees them not as humans but as ghosts.
Iraqi Christians who fled a crackdown in Mosul arriving in Greece
His son had been harassed for months by Salvador’s drug gangs. And on the night when their entreaties to join them or die left the boy petrified, both decided that despite the pain it was best for his 15 year old son to flee North to the US. After all, he had lived through the carnage of war that defined El Salvador during the 1980s — the nightly dispensing of bodies in the dumps. He had know what it was like to see the bodies lying naked by the roadside. But this was worse. Much worse. Despite the brutality of the civil war it had its logic. There were things you could do to survive. Neither the army nor the rebels demanded monthly payments from campesinos who could barely scratch out a living. And while they may have killed for no reason at all, there were ways to avoid their battles. Now their family and others, be it in the countryside or in the city, were the primary targets of violence. And so when he was told that the Mexican authorities had caught his boy and would return him in a matter of days to the place where death truly stalked him, all the old man could do is tremble in fear. As I took his photo he pointed skyward. “Only God can help us now,” he told me.
Jungle Camp, Calais, 2015. An Ethiopian woman in Calais waits for nightfall in order to make the crossing to the U.K. For all the time and money spent bulldozing, arresting, paying police, putting up walls, video surveillance, motion detectors and razor wire, authorities could have integrated each and every man, woman and child in that camp.
