In the three years I have worked with refugees a lot of water has gone under the bridge and, as somebody wisely said, a lot of bridges have gone under the water. From the start, the aim of my charity work was to express with deeds how my faith urged me to live for the common good. Little did I realize I was in for an astonishing experience, one oscillating between Good and Evil, one reinforcing Right and Wrong, one exposing me to Life and Death: there have been several births in this period and, sadly, even deaths. A blog I wrote on the Vision First website about Awil’s death caused a spike of concern only explained by the circumstances of his demise. Here was a Somali refugee – eligible to become an American citizen – who tragically lost hope in the future and literally let himself waste away. Awil was so depressed he couldn’t eat; so distraught he never slept; so profoundly unhappy his body went into a coma he never recovered from.
I cried. In many ways we are all like Awil. He wasn’t old, neither was he sick. In fifty years of life in Mogadishu, he saw the prosperity of his youth replaced by the insanity of fanaticism. Brothers kill sisters. Parents kill children. Nobody is safe. Homes collapse on families. The heart of a people has been pulled out together with their humanity. Awil had a poetic mind that dared to look into the core of his being. There he encountered loneliness; a brokenness woven into the society he saw crumbling around him. The laughter that filled those homes and streets had vanished completely. In his last two years abroad he became a lost soul – walking home without having a home, returning to the dark memories of a wretched existence. Awil survived his family, but decided his life was not worth cherishing. If there is one word that summarizes this pain, it is “lossness” – an emptiness screaming at the long chain of losses in his life.
