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This is not an actual title of one of the short story collections that make up Comma Press’s\u00a0Refugee Tales<\/em>. It\u2019s how I\u2019ve synthesised the message of the stories. In fact, even the phrase \u2018short story collection,\u2019 may be slightly misleading. There are stories, and they are short. But it\u2019s not short story fiction. Here are stories told by refugees, asylum seekers who have survived the journey to the UK, in the hope of finding a safe place for themselves, and their families, if they\u2019re fortunate enough to have their families with them. But we, the general public, hear their stories through the medium of storytellers, of writers: Ali Smith, Kamila Shamsie, Marina Warner, Helen Macdonald, are amongst the list. Given the contentious nature of the questions surrounding issues like, who has the right tell the story of the \u2018Other\u2019? Cultural appropriation, and controlling another\u2019s narrative, how do we have a collection like Refugee Tales<\/em>? It\u2019s because they are refugees, because they are the \u2018indefinitely detained\u2019 people. Locked away in detention centres across the UK, hidden from view, denied a voice \u2013 a platform to speak from. It\u2019s one of our basic rights as a human, isn\u2019t it? To tell our own stories, ourselves?<\/p>\nThis is where the Charity Gatwick for Detainees Welfare Group come in to the picture. The aim of their project is simple: bring these voices to the centre, give these people the space to speak, a safe place. Taking the Canterbury Tales as a narrative framework, Refugee Tales<\/em> tells the stories of real-life refugees and their endurance in the face of terrifying, inhumane experiences. Experiences that do not end when they reach the UK. The book is a collaboration between the Charity, the writers and Comma Press.<\/p>\n Ra Page, editor of Comma Press, introduces Anna Pinkus, founder and co-ordinator of Refugee Tales,<\/em> Kamila Shamsie, award winning writer and journalist, and Marina Warner, award winning writer of fiction and cultural history.<\/p>\n Before the readings begin, Ra Page gives us an overview of the Charity\u2019s work. We learn that the group supports and befriends people at the detention centres, there can up to 700 held at any one time \u2013 they\u2019re not criminals, they haven\u2019t done anything wrong \u2013 they\u2019ve simply asked for asylum. For this, they\u2019re held indefinitely. Ra Page puts it into perspective for us: \u2018If you\u2019re in a prison, you can count down towards the end of your time, but a detainee centre, you count upwards, the number of days you\u2019ve been held. There is no limit to this number, no line that marks the end. You just count the days. The longest count, that we know of, is nine years\u2019.<\/p>\n Nine years. It\u2019s not just a matter of physical detention, there\u2019s the effect on the person\u2019s mental health \u2013 never knowing if you will be given asylum, never knowing if you\u2019ll be returned to the country you escaped from to face further horrors. There are people who\u2019ve had to endure torture \u2013 will they be handed back to their tormentors?<\/p>\n What is the point of this suffering? Why, and how, here in the UK is it possible to hold people seeking safety in this inhumane matter? One answer is the silence surrounding the issue. How do you respond to something you don\u2019t know is happening? How do you respond to asylum seekers when the label itself is treated as a dirty word \u2013 the individuals lumped together as some homogenous group with no identity except the one imposed on them by others? And if these asylum seekers, these men and women, these husbands and wives and sons and daughters and grandparents, aunts, uncles, orphans \u2013 because yes, there are those who\u2019ve lost everything and everyone, how do these asylum seekers let others know of their plight if there is no space to speak? More so, if their right to speak freely is taken away?<\/p>\n Refugee Tales, <\/em>is one medium through which the \u2018whispered stories\u2019 of asylum seekers can be told. Their stories can only be whispered because they know they\u2019re not really safe. There is the ever present fear of recriminations from the regimes that have already caused lasting physical and psychological damage. So they quietly tell their stories to the writers, who, protecting the identity of the speaker(s) put it into writing.<\/p>\n Two of these stories are: The Mother\u2019s Tale<\/em> and The Lover\u2019s Tale<\/em>, as told to Marina Warner and Kamila Shamsie respectively. The writers read them in turn. The stories, as expected, are dark and profoundly moving, the more so for the emotional restraint in each writer\u2019s performance. Kamila Shamsie, narrating \u2018John\u2019s\u2019 story, maintains an objective distance, whilst Marina Warner draws on religious, allegorical, references to convey Cecilia and Ambrose\u2019s story.<\/p>\n John\u2019s story is one of abuse and torture. His name has been changed for his safety, likewise, his country of origin is demarcated as a line. Kamila Shamsie draws a line through the air each time it comes up in the reading. John managed to escape from his country of origin to a nearby country a number of times \u2013 only to face recapture, imprisonment and torture, each time. He has a wife and three children \u2013 none of them are safe. The friend who helped him to escape to the UK was killed for helping him.<\/p>\n Cecilia lives with her daughters and her husband, Ambrose, (though everyone knows they\u2019re not married, we\u2019re told in the story) \u2018live in a single room, about the third of the size of a tube carriage.\u2019 Ambrose, a computer engineer, came to work for a company: \u2018but I overstayed my visa. For six years now, I have been an \u201cillegal immigrant.\u201d<\/p>\n Ambrose isn\u2019t always at home, he\u2019s been \u2018picked up three times.\u2019 Each time he\u2019s been held indefinitely at the detention centre. Each time he\u2019s been released \u2013 no explanations, no reasoning, no idea if he\u2019ll be deported or allowed to stay. Each time they pick him up, he doesn\u2019t even know if he\u2019ll ever be allowed to see his family again. But then, he\u2019s released. He goes home to Cecilia and his daughters \u2013 they wait. Wait for the next time he\u2019s taken away. Again, the question arises \u2013 what is the point of this endless suffering? Marina Warner tells us how depressed Cecilia is, it comes through clearly in her narration: \u2018I am afraid,\u2019 she says, \u2018all the time. It\u2019s all I can think of. And when I try to remember, my mind\u2019s a blank.\u2019 Cecilia can\u2019t face leaving the room anymore because \u2018last week an asylum seeker who, when asked […] said he was an asylum speaker, and was savagely beaten up.\u2019<\/p>\n There is a tremendous round of applause from the audience after the readings and a stimulating Q&A. The situation is bleak, it is toxic, but there is that small hope too. Stories have a power. This is what Refugee Tales<\/em> in its Canterbury Tales narrative framework is about. Taking the stories of the silenced and turning up the volume so we can hear them.<\/p>\n At the start of the interview, Anna Pincus recounted a conversation she\u2019d had earlier, about Germans who said they did not know there were Concentration camps in their villages. \u2018How could they not know this? And yet, we realised, it is possible. We have these detention camps, 32,000 people detained in eleven centres across the UK. People being broken down, systematically, reduced by this kind of regime. Our Charity has a very specific target \u2013 to end this indefinite holding.\u2019<\/p>\n I wonder how many of us, the general public, are saying now \u2018I knew\/I didn\u2019t know.\u2019\u00a0When Kamila Shamsie read John\u2019s story, it ended with him saying, \u2018The system is bit…\u2019. But what I heard, and noted down was: \u2018the system is a bitch.\u2019 A rather apt Freudian slip, I think.<\/p>\n Refugee Tales II: Caroline Bergvall, Kamila Shamsie & Marina Warner; Central Library, 16 October 2017. This is not an actual title of one of the short story collections that make up Comma Press’s\u00a0Refugee Tales. It\u2019s how I\u2019ve synthesised the message of the stories. In fact, even the phrase \u2018short story collection,\u2019 may be slightly misleading. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Manchester Literature Festival<\/a> continues until October 22 in venues across Manchester. This piece also appears at Chapter & Verse<\/em><\/a>, the Manchester Literature Festival blog.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"