Shireen-e-man

Agar baayad khodaahafez begim
shirin-e-man
khodaahafez-e-shirin begim
va befahm
ke dar har gushe-ye-khiaabun-zendegi
haazer hastam
montazer-e-didanet hastam
taa vaghti ke
dige baaham hastim
shirin-e-man.

If we have to say goodbye
my sweet
then let it be a sweet goodbye
and know
at every corner of life's street
I am ready
I am waiting to catch sight of you
until the time
we are together again
my sweet.

I see that you are doing research into attitudes of home office applicants.

I work informally to support asylum-seekers, including those who are refused and destitute. The suffering endured by applicants at all stages of the process is enormous, while they are told by the press and the public how lucky they are to be here and how grateful they must be. People feel anything but welcome, especially when housed by NASS in the most violent and deprived neighbourhoods. they feel that the system is dishonest and spiteful. I could give any number of examples of policies and decsions which appear to support this view.

You might be interested in the widespread perception among asylum applicants that the Government actually welcomes the presence of failed asylum-seekers as a way of propping up the economy by providing sub-minimum-wage labour. This was the only way they could make sense of the refused applicants not being removed from the UK.

People believe that there is no torture with electricity in this country, but instead torture by paper, with an endless bureaucratic process that leads nowhere.

One of my favourites was the "no-policy policy": applicants whose NASS support had failed (a very frequent occurance) would typically manage by borrowing from other applicants. Once their support had been restored, they would be advised to send a fax - at their own expense of course - requesting that any shortfall be made up. These requests were never repsonded to. Further enquiries eventually established that no decision could be made on amking such reimbursements until the Minister made a policy decsion, an of course it was a low priority................. the theory was that support was for subsistance only and as the applicant had evidently survived they had no subsistance need relating to the period - often several weeks - for which payment had been missed; repayment of money borrowed could not be budgeted for.

Another source of cynicism has been the Home Office's policy in the recent past of refusing ALL asylum claims unless they were incontroverible, and letting it be settled at appleal stage. Careful analysis of the stats for certain years shows intitial decisions on case other than minors running at around 97% refusal, with about 25-30% ultimately successful on appeal - in other words, nine out of ten claims that ultimately succeeded had been refused initially. Applicants are then of course commonly blamed for the costs of the legal process etc.

Then there's the real kick in the teeth - granted at appeal, but three weeks later a letter in incomprehensible legalese advising that the Home Office has counter-appealed, generally pointlessly.

You mentioned in some of your posts that "everyone" gets frustrated with the bureaucracy; I certainly believe that well-intentioned people at the Home Office get frustrated and burnt out, but can you really put yourself in the shoes of applicants? People whose lives are on hold for years and years, waiting for a decision? Many are those that say they would rather be removed than carry on like this, and yet even a voluntary return is not possible.

So all this may account for the "them and us" attitudes you seem surprised to have found. Of course, not everyone's experience of the immigration system is negative; there are the lucky ones, and then there are those who play the system, who are cynical from the outset and therefore not disappointed.

People on the Legacy section of this forum are generally people who have not been well served by the system, however you look at it - that is why the legacy exercise was required. so it is unsurprising you have been met with hostility and bitterness. One of the saddest aspects of this whole mess is that people who came to this country full of energy and hope end up bitter and frustrated, and not only against the Home Office. People end up convinced of the fundamental truth, that immigrants are not welcome here, however we dress things up.

I hope you continue to visit and to give guidance, it is useful for people to see things from the other side of the fence. I would certainly not offer anyone to look at their individual case or prove something by accessing their file (which might even get you sacked?). People come on this forum essentially for mutual support, and they should be able to express themselves freely and anonymously without it being able to be linked up with their case files.

You see, on the "us" side of them and us, we mostly believe, more or less clearly, that the immigration system is not only shockingly inept (I must say, it has been improving over the last few years), but we think it is profoundly unfair, and therefore we empathise with those who attempt to circumvent it, even if some of us may not agree with doing so.

Personally, I believe that just as glaobalisation insists that rich countries should be able to move goods and capital unimpeded around the world, poor people should be able to sell their labout around the world.Telling someone, your life chances must remain limited because of where you were born is immoral. In principal I support open borders - of course this does not imply a benefits free for all.

I do not expect others to share my view, but there it is. I hope all this casts some light for your research. I have chosen not to post this in the forum as it may only stir up more bad feeling.

Good luck

JIM

email to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA foundation)

Hi

firstly, I would like to support the right of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others to speak freely about all issues.

However, I feel that her campaign is misguided. She is entitled to her own views on Islam, and in spite of what many Muslims say about apostasy, she is entitled to promote her views; but her focus on Islam as being a threat to the West, and the cause of misery within the Muslim world, is way off the mark. Moreover, even if she herself opposes such action, her campaign is likely to simply add weight to those who would like to destroy Iran, invade Somalia with Ethiopian troops, etc.

All the abuses of women listed on the website certainly occur, but none are restricted to Muslim countries. Honour killings are well known to occur among Hindus and Sikhs, and occasionally even in Christian Mediterranean countries; female circumcision is unknown in most Muslim countries, but common among Christian Ethiopians and others.

A campaign against such crimes based on persuading Muslims that the very core of their culture and identity needs to be ditched in favour of Westernisation, widely seen as the grossest form of vulgarity, can never succeed - especially when it is easily demonstrated that such abuses are in fact not rooted in Islam.

If someone is genuinely concerned for the situation of Muslim and other women, rather than in becoming a mascot for the "clash of civilisations", they would do better to support the steady but unglamorous work being done by thousands of people all over the world to reform people's attitudes, promote education, explain why FGM is not Islamic, etc; it is better to work with people rather than just against them.

I am far from saying that Islam is or should be beyond criticism; but how does calling Mohammed a paedophile help? It is true that Muslim apologists overlook or shy away from such matters as Ayesha's marriage and hadith condoning FGM, and then there are the laws of evidence and inheritance, but we only bolster the position of America's Wahabi allies if we insist that Islam is immutable, and we take George Bush's all or nothing, with or against us approach. Indeed, those who are the enemies of Islam, who see the world in Osama's terms as believer v infidel, West v East, democracy v terror, should celebrate the 9-11 attack as bringing on the fight to the death between good and evil.

But instead of this easy "little jihad", intellectually lazy, suited to extremists and young hotheads, people of influence as you wish to be should be promoting the "greater jihad" the striving by all people of good faith to understand what is the best way forward, to find a better way than conflict if any other is possible. The Muslim world, and the smug West as well, is crying out for reform. We will not achieve it with bombs, insults, incomprehension.

Liberal democracies should promote their values primarily by refraining from unjust wars, from supporting vile dictatorships, from continuing economic and ecological policies that impoverish hundreds of millions, by allowing free movement of people (like Ayaan) to better their lives, and by making reasonable acommodations with other cultures as long as the primacy of host culture views is assured.

In this context, I support the criminalisation and active suppression of FGM and all forms of abuse committed against women residing in the West; I find the banning of scarves in French schools deplorable; I oppose banning the burqa as escalating a trivial issue; I think that shari'a law can be used as arbitration like the Beth Din subject to regulation and oversight which is wholly lacking today.

Ayaan, I would ask you, do you have more friends among the women you seek to protect, or among those who know little of the Muslim world? Do you think that Muslim women have on the whole benefited from your actions? Or have you simply been a weapon in what history may one day come to call "the Oil Wars"?

If you have read me to the end, I thank you.

Don't Go

Men killing and being killed
far from home
far from their mothers' loving arms
to be buried in lonely stony graves
swept by harsh winds that bring from afar
the tears from a mother's eyes
the cries from a mother's heart
cast into the open skies
sharper than an enemy dart

killed for a king, for country, for a half-mad dream
of wealth, of fame, of glorious name
killed as so many boys are killed
far from the hopes with which they came
hopes and hearts forever stilled

what use is it to say Don't go
young men always think they know
more than a hundred generations teach
more than the blood of ages can reach
more than a million mothers' tears beseech
Don't go, Don't go, Don't go.

Grey

My days and nights are samely grey
no rising sun anoints me
no colours bless my dawn
no shining sun enlightens me
no stars observe my night
my days and nights are grey

I have nothing to worthwhile to say
no length of sleep refreshes me
no exercise enlivens me
no words of man excite me
no love of woman awakens me
I have nothing to say

I wish my empty days away
my grey unchanging days
I turn my unmarked diary's page
and so count out my lengthening age
I wish my empty days away
my grey unchanging days

The Coming and Passing of Wars

The Coming and Passing of Wars - May 1945

Like the turning of seasons
when in winter we cannot imagine being warm,
a distant memory, like childhood and innocence
the days that seemed impossible to see again
have returned

The guns and the killing and the madness have stopped
it's no longer normal to take aim and shoot at a stranger
misery is not celebrated, torture not excused, pity not mocked
and dazed, we think of peacetime problems again
and the time of blood and winter snows
seems like a long dark dream that never really was

except for the dead, the wounded, the killers, and the widows

And we ask ourselves
as our children will surely wondringly ask us
what was it all for?
was there not another way?
will the winter snows come again?

Flowers of Africa

A man died in Africa last night,
a proud man in a proud country:
you'll have heard of neither one nor other.
In this world of pain
who or what is Eritrea?

I went to see his daughter today,
felled like a broken bird,
like a flower snapped at the stem,
folded over in pain,
far from home, far from home;
and who or what is Eritrea?

Eritrea, ceaselessly you bleed your children
into the two seas;
the red stain spreads
from the Red Sea land
and is lost, lost in the black depths.

The mothers and the fathers weep back home,
their children sleep, if sleep, all alone,
and we, we keep our hearts of stone:

let them die on the deep sea
or die back home, or over here,
let them die like flies,
the flowers of Africa.

Ziba

I met a beautiful young woman
her life overwhelmed with pain and sorrow
and although I didn't recognise her
I knew her

I saw her struggling with children
juggling love and desperation
and bewildered frightened kids
and I knew her

I saw the harshness of her life
and the warmth of her heart
and though I didn't know it
I knew her

I felt her vulnerability
admired her strength and hope
and lack of bitterness
and I knew her

How could I not fall in love with you
protect you, support you
come to life before your eyes
most beautiful lover?

For I had found one long since lost
the mum I'd had before she paid the cost
the one I'd forgotten, my beautiful Mother
discovered at last in the eyes of another.

Snowbloodia

Serbian absurdities
tragic atrocities
black and blue bruises
bloody noses on bloody birthdays
nobody knows
Slobodan somebody
bloody slob of a nobody
now makes us all no-bodies
blood in the mud
so bloody snowy
no blood in the bloody bodies

Blind with the blood in your eyes
burning with the blood of your birth
ethnically filthed
your filthy hands are rotted
in pure blood
Slobastard Serb
may it cleanse you from this wretched Earth

Where filth is thrown
the foul shall follow
this stinking corpse filled mud
that soon shall swallow you
is purer than your sweetest dream
our darkest night.

** With sincere apologies to all Serbs, I acknowledge your sufferings, this was written in anger.
** It has been suggested that Milosevic, both of whose parents committed suicide, was an abused child.

Kurdistan 1991

The news pays nightly hommage
to Kurdistan
and I make nightly pilgrimage
to Kurdistan
daily I perform my painful duty
witnessing to the agony of a nation

as if by sharing in the suffering
I could lessen theirs;
as if my faithless prayers
could reach God's ears;
as if my precious tears
outweighed an ocean.

Armenia

Slipping over the sill of history
from memory into mythology
from passion to trivia
the forgotten people of the forgotten valleys of those long forgotten years

Armenia: I imagine
an almost empty land
of ochre mountains and silent lakes
everything tinged with washed out red
empty to a vast sky
the end of summer;
a haunted land
whose manings and messages are invisible
to its present transient inhabitants
who see the piles of stones, but not
the cherished churches, gardens, homes
of another time, another life.

I see it still, in nineteen-sixteen;
how sad it is, neither gardens nor graves
no-one remembers Armenia.

*********************
"Who now remembers the Armenians?" - said to be Hitler's response to an aide who hesitated at the posibility of exterminating the Jewish people.

Paki shop

In the local Paki shop
the customers come in to talk
talk up the hopeless housing
talk down the high-rise rents

The shopkeeper stands respectfully
it's not his place to speak his truth
of racism and emigration
isolation, separation
working
uncounted hours, unfeared of years
in your local Paki shop

Saved for, paid for, silently prayed for
it's not his place, full stop.

Family Life

Two people in love
fitting like hand in glove
a hidden fist clenched
soul and body wrenched

the first time was the worst
the rest monotony at best
is this what all the world lives for?
a child born, a woman torn

husband and wife, trouble and strife
as now they know, found out too late
it wasn't worth it, all a mistake
they ache and hurt and bite and hate

a mother and child
one smothered, one wild
each alternately in turns
while smouldering bitterness icily burns

Marriage

To have and to hold
to love and enfold
to cover with gold
to bare and behold

To buy and be sold
to tell and be told
to scare and to scold
to fear growing bold

To hate getting old
to chase from the fold
to kill and be cold
to millder and mould.

*millder, a dialect word formed as a cross of mildew with moulder.

Prayer to the Rain

Oh may it never stop, this cleansing rain
may it fall heavier and heavier
clean the roads and houses new
wash away the marks and stone
wash away all sign of life
Oh may it rain and more and more
wash away all of life
cleanse this Earth of all our works
cleanse our souls of every stain
sweep away our cluttered lives
undo our deeds, unbind our bonds
wash away our sin and pain
may it rain and rain and rain.

Nightwind

Walking through the nightwind
long and cold and heavy and dark
invisible river
flowing over me
pushing between the houses
small and unlit
beneath a bottomless starless sky
no sound but this steady exhalation
unvarying, unliving
quietly, slowly robbing me of warmth
stealing through these endless empty streets
quiet, but in this total silence
loud as a funeral wail
unseen, but large as the sky
devoid of smells, of noise,
of any sign of life,
this dying breath of Earth.

Dusk

That moment of the evening
when the cats sit still
and all the world is hushed:
the labours of the day are done
the night's exertions yet to come.

The sighing breeze of evening
and the softest colours of the sky
with all enwrapping tenderness
bathe the toilers of their sweat
soothe the troubled hearts of men
and usher in with gathering night
one by one the silent stars.

Home from Home

I love Longsight
scruffy, vibrant, full of life
where Africans and Gypsies, Jamaicans and Afghans
all can feel at home
in our little Anglo-Pakistan.

I love Rusholme
where Mumbai meets Little Mogadishu
and the summer evening air is scented
with shisha and curry and diesel.

I love the city centre
the masonry mountains
the pride of past ages
and the hopes of today.

But Chorlton is where I come to be with me
to drink coffee, read the papers
to think, to write, to listen to music
to visit the river, to feel the changing seasons
to watch the people walking, to note the passing years.

I have my home in Longsight
amid the hurley burley
of asylum struggles and shopkeeper wars,
I work in Gorton
peeping in on fractured lives
and people getting by, doing their best,
But I live my truest life in Chorlton
alone in coffee bars or by the river
I am not lonely, I’m with myself.

By Chorlton Brook

The leaves wave to me,
gently, insistently,
the wind caresses me,
softly, so softly,
the rich soil clings to me,
asking me to linger longer,
the water on its ceaseless journey
calls to me
the birds ing for me
the raindrops bathe me
the swaying branches reach out to me
and if I allow, they stroke my face,
and endlessly repeat for me
you're not alone, you're not alone.

A daughter of this house is married

She is my precious jewel
her beauty shines among other women's
her clothes hang with elegance
she walks with grace among the throng
her silence speaks clearly in the crowd
her eyes match the softness of her voice
so look after her

Hard years have followed hard years
in the bleak years empty of hope
she persevered
with quiet faith and dignity she endured
she survived the crossing of the deserts and the seas
the borders and bureaucracies
to bring herself here today
so look after her.

A daughter of this house has got married. She has been refused by the Home Office, but life continues. She is not allowed to register her marriage, but she did not marry in order to get their precious papers, their permission to live; she married to make her life, trusting that things will work out, as I believe they will. The Home Office does not have the power of God over us, nor are their laws more worthy are respect than our morals.

She has no father or mother in this world, and so we are her family now, and a great privilege it is. She is missed in this house, but she knows she will always have a home here.

At the wedding reception, I was seized with the realisation of the movement of the links of the chain of generations. I have seen enough Habesha wedding videos to recognise the traditional songs and dances and the choreographed sequence of events that represent the passage from daughter to wife, from girl to hopefully mother. Each generation alters things slightly, and allowance has to be made for changed circumstances in a new country, without those that should be present. But still there is something timeless; it is a privilege indeed to participate, and yet I also feel sad: people move on, and maybe I am left behind.