Under the Fig Tree

Your tears are not the only outward sign of your deepest pain
Your need is desperate
Your words are filled with horrors
You scramble to fill a bag with warm clothes for your children
For your baby

Your house is cold
Your cupboards are bare
Your plumbing is leaking
Your children are crying, unruly, aching to get out
But this cold room is the only safety you know
How can you start again here?
Your life has been torn apart
Senselessly

Your son is in a different land
Kept apart by distance, money, weather, borders By governments
Those in their warm clothes and heated houses
Those who have a responsibility to care
They have failed their duty to you
They plot and plan, distanced from the horrors
Why is this world so unfair?
Why you?

You live in a land that is barely welcoming
A place that is now your ‘home’
“How can this place be home?”
It doesn’t feel safe

How can you possibly process the death of your child, your son?
You have other children to care for, a family to hold together
Your mother, your sisters, your aunties, your community are not here
You are alone
Isolated
You long for a place to belong in this strange wintery land
For someone to hear you, to see your struggle, to care

“I hear whispers about people who care
who provide warm clothes
who offer a warm drink
where children can fill their bellies
A place where people like me can find community with others who have faced the same horrors
a warm place, a family
Free from discrimination
Who are these people and why do they care?

“There is something different about them. They are defined by love. How can I know this love?
Where is this place?
Could this be a place where I am accepted?
Could I find community here, are there people who will care about me?
Could I find a hot drink, food?
Would they be this generous?
Will I find light from the darkness here?”

My friend you are welcome here
come and meet the one who cares more deeply than any human
to find shelter under the
Fig Tree

Rochelle wrote this poem during her short-term placement with refugees in West Asia.
Name has been changed.