Last night, I witnessed a community coming together to engage in an evening of storytelling, poetry readings, and prose readings focused on human rights issues and narratives. A dear friend and colleague, Dr. Molly Appel, crafted this consciously caring community from a literature class that probably never thought it would band together in such a meaningful way: to celebrate the fortitude of the human spirit in the face of human rights transgressions. I went in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to catch-up with colleagues and applaud former students’ works, but I came out choked-up and humbled by the care that students took in creating their research projects and creative pieces inspired by social justice issues.
Honored to have been invited to speak, I decided that my contribution would be a reading from one of the compelling Syrian refugee memoirs that I had just finished: Yusra Mardini’s Butterfly (2018), which details an Olympic hopeful’s journey from Syria to Germany to the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Yes, that Yusra Mardini, who escaped an unexploded bomb in her training facility pool in Damascus, swam alongside a broken dinghy from Turkey to Lesbos, before making her way to Germany to fulfill her dream of swimming in the Olympics. Her ghostwritten story is simply, but engagingly, told as Yusra details her physical, mental, and emotional journey. Suffering all the precariousness that refugees worldwide often do, Yusra and her sister, Sara, (also a swimmer), have to rely on their sheer determination in addition to smugglers, family friends, strangers-turned-family, journalists, and sympathetic bystanders to complete their arduous journey. Making her way through the inhospitable terrain of Hungary, where most Hungarians she encounters are suspicious of perceived Muslims, migrants, and refugees, Yusra finally reaches Berlin, where she seeks asylum. Once there, she finds her way into a swimming club, gains the support of a generous coach, and trains in a Nazi-era Olympic facility that hauntingly serves as an isolating backdrop to her newfound “salvation.” There are many of these ghosts throughout the text as Yusra, her sister, and their companions follow train tracks throughout eastern and central Europe, tracing a pathway to their promised land of Germany. Perhaps unknowingly, their journey becomes a reverse echo of holocaust deportation, incarceration, and incineration as they move from east to west alongside those desolate tracks. Ironically, this posits Berlin and its Nazi-era spaces as sites of salvation for many Syrians today, even though it had been the locale of annihilation for Others not a century before.
And so, we witness Yusra struggle (rightfully so) with her new surroundings, culture, and feelings about being a refugee, before being chosen to join the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team (ROT). In an unprecedented move, the International Olympic Committee created the ROT in 2016 to remind us of the capacity of human strength and resilience. As IOC President Thomas Bach said then: “These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem. We will offer them a home in the Olympic Village together with all the athletes of the word. The Olympic anthem will be played in their honour and the Olympic flag will lead them into the Olympic Stadium. This will be a symbol of hope for all the refugees in our world, and will make the world better aware of the magnitude of this crisis. It is also a signal to the international community that refugees are our fellow human beings and are enrichment to society. These refugee athletes will show the world that despite the unimaginable tragedies that they have faced, anyone can contribute to society through their talent, skills and strength of the human spirit.”
Perhaps you remember as I do, ten brave teammates entering Rio’s opening ceremony, clad in their matching khakis and black blazers, waving the Olympic flag in place of their respective country’s, while also beaming (when if anyone had a right not to, it would be them). My eyes brimmed over with conflicting feelings of pride and sorrow for all that these athletes had lost and hoped to gain. And there they were, waving to the world as living caryatids of human strength, and there I was, sniffling through a solitary ovation in my living room against the backdrop of crescendoing cheers.
In that moment, as Yusra’s staring at the Olympic rings on the ROT flag, she remembers her home on the other side of the world, recalling, “I close my eyes and see the Damascus skyline at dusk as the call to prayer rings out. I smell the rain in the olive orchards in Daraya. Syria. My lost country. What’s a flag anyway? In my heart, I’m no less Syrian. I know I’m still representing my people. All the millions of us forced to flee, all those who risked the sea for a life without bombs” (272). Home is precious, and it is lost to her…for now.
What I find particularly compelling about Yusra’s story is her repeated rumination on the word “refugee.” We witness as Yusra rejects the word, struggles with it, and comes to terms with it before finally accepting it. In a coda meditating on refugee as a signifier, she recuperates its oft-negative and dehumanized status, proclaiming, “So who are we? We’re human beings. I’m a refugee…No one chooses to be a refugee. I didn’t have a choice. I had to leave my home to survive, even if it meant risking death along the way. I have to keep spreading this message, because there will be more of us to come. I fled my country three years ago. But as you read this, other young people are chancing dangerous border-crossings, climbing into overcrowded, flimsy boats, or being locked up and thrown food unfit for animals.” (281). She invokes the depth of her experiences to humanize refugees everywhere, while also rejecting the greatest human rights abuses elsewhere, namely the American crimmigration system incarcerating those escaping civil conflict, violence, and poverty. After reading this book, what still haunts me is the notion that a refugee (potentially) shares in the same fate everywhere: to be feared, mistrusted, mistreated, exploited, incarcerated, and/or trafficked. Conversely, what continues to inspire me is the collection of stories belonging to those who support, aid, protect, and help the most vulnerable amongst us. What narratives like Butterfly show us is the chasm between the poverty of the human condition and the generosity of good will. Ultimately, it’s a call to action to help those in need with our revived sense of humanity.
