I wish refugees didn’t exist. Of course I do. I wish war, persecution, violence and discrimination didn’t exist, too.
But people have been fleeing the lands in which they were born for centuries – make that millennia – precisely because of war, persecution, violence and discrimination. It is as innate a part of the human story as giving birth, eating food and losing our teeth.
Watching men and women throwing burning bins at hotels being used to house refugees and vulnerable migrants gives me the sort of feeling I might have if my son had just swallowed a razor. Panic, dread and the paralysing fear that I have to act, even though I don’t know what to do. But there is something you and I can do. Something far easier than you might think.
My husband and I signed up to Refugees at Home about three and half years ago. At the time, we were renting a small, two-bed terrace house in Oxford; we slept in one room, our 18-month-old son in the other. Up until that point, most of the people I’d spoken to who hosted refugees were wealthy homeowners, living in London, with spare rooms, or offices, or even converted attic flats. This, I presumed, was what was expected of you. But I was wrong. When the person from Refugees at Home came to interview us, vet the space and explain what would be needed, she made it clear that our sofa bed in the front room, with a shared kitchen and bathroom, would be absolutely fine. The fact that our son’s socks were on the floor by a pile of his books? Fine. That my husband would be out at work during the day? Fine. That you could hear someone in the shower sneeze from the kitchen? Fine. Because the alternative, for everyone we have hosted, is worse.
Over the past three and a half years, we have hosted a number of young men; all of them quiet, but all of them better at talking about the Premier League than I’ve ever been. During that time, I have also watched some truly appalling Arabic soap operas, bought Lynx shower gel for the first time in my life and washed a kameez from Afghanistan at 40 degrees without thinking about what this might do to the embroidery (thankfully, it was largely fine). Our son has played football with teenagers from Sudan, folded towels to try to make our sofa bed look like a Premier Inn and learned how to destone a date. We are “emergency hosts” meaning we offer shelter for up to two weeks at a time. I have never asked why anyone left the place they were born, because that is not my business.
I am now lucky enough to own my own small, two-bed terrace house. We still sleep in one room; our son in the other. When I got the second payment on my book deal, I built an office in the garden and that is now where people stay when they come: family, friends and young men who have fled their homes to avoid persecution and death. One day, last winter, I watched one such man kneeling in the garden, in bare feet, facing Mecca to pray. I had offered him our son’s room for prayer but, just as he didn’t drink our tea or borrow my husband’s jumpers when offered, he didn’t want to impose. So, as I washed up, I watched his breath turn to steam in the icy cold and thought how little it took to extend this hospitality. Right now, there are hundreds of people like him, scared to go outside, scared for their futures, scared of the people who came in the middle of the day with fire and bricks and planks of wood to try to hurt them.
Obviously, I like people thinking I am altruistic and generous and a true humanitarian. It makes me feel better about all the snide and uncharitable thoughts I’ve had (and there are a lot of them). But for once, I’m not telling you all this to make you think I am kind. I’m telling you because it’s relatively simple, maybe easier than you expected. In fact, a lot of you might be able to do it, too. Refugees at Home has a strong, two-way vetting system; it is fully consensual on both sides throughout; and it is far less of a commitment than you may have thought.
I wish refugees didn’t exist. But since they do, I welcome them into my home.
• Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood
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