When I was two years old my parents gathered everything we owned and sold it. With the money they bought bus tickets to Turkey and exchanged the rest to American dollars. Through Turkey, Poland and Germany we went to Sweden. The first stop was Trelleborg, where we stayed in a refugee camp. My mom bought cigarettes at the convenience store and learned Swedish verbs while my father played chess against one of Saddam's former generals. Naturally, I tried to sleep despite having nightmares of shelter and bombers that looked like dragonflies.
Trelleborg became Moheda became Nässjö became Karlstad. We moved between more cities than you have fingers on your hands but ultimately landed in Gothenburg. My parents decided to buy an expensive condominium, and several broken skateboards, broken hearts, written poems and pizzas later, I’m sitting writing about how it came to be that I moved to the land of cold, hard bread and Melodifestivalen. When my cousins talk about Sweden it sounds like a utopian and ultra-democratic paradise. I usually respond that it’s good but that it rains a lot in Gothenburg. What I don’t mention is how people hide in basements and attics. People who took the same bus from their countries, crossed the border and smoked the same type of cigarettes in anger at the same refugee camps. People who are now hiding because they are afraid of being sent back to their home countries where they would be stoned, murdered, maimed, tortured and mentally abused because they somehow don’t fit in.
When I was 26, I sang with my band at a school in a municipality that didn’t want to receive 30 unaccompanied refugee children. I was pissed at their parents while I at the same time wanted to be a positive energy to the students. They can’t be held accountable for their parents' racist attitudes.
After the gig at the school there was a big group of students who came up to us in the band and shook our hands, hugged and thanked us for playing for them. I smiled in secret, thinking that I live in a wonderful country. A country that has capabilities and resources. A country where a dark haired immigrant can come to Sweden as a refugee to then play music in Swedish to several hundred blonde and blue-eyed kids that understand every word I sing. Sweden is magical. Help show it.
Bonus – “No man is illegal” is working to create a new asylum policy. http://www.ingenillegal.org/
Text: Navid Modiri
Required time:
1 week or more
Cons:
The police can come and knock on your door and look for someone but it’s not illegal to hide refugees. It is illegal to hide, but if you’re helping a child or family get shelter and food for the day you’re doing nothing wrong. On the contrary.
Pros:
You help a neighbor in need and most likely the victims of structural inequality and a skewed system.
